Marine Corps News Room

http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/10302005/business/70601.htm

By Michael McCord
mmccord@seacoastonline.com

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PARRIS ISLAND, S.C. - There are more than 5,500 recruits at various stages of their basic training schedule at the Marine Corps Training Depot. They come in various sizes, with different aptitudes and attitudes and ethic backgrounds.

What they have in common, beyond the drive to survive this grueling training and graduate, is that they were recruited.

Recruited, for example, by people like Marine Corps Master Sgt. Aaron Winchenbach, who runs the recruiting office in Dover. It’s hard to imagine a more daunting task in this era. It can’t be easy to recruit a young man or woman for a potential starting annual salary around $13,000 and the promise of a 13-week orientation process that challenges both physically and psychologically. And, oh yeah, reminding them they could be deployed to global hot spots and die in the line of duty in a war growing more unpopular with the American people.

The Marines aren’t kidding when they talk about their slogan of wanting a few good men. When a recruiter comes metaphorically knocking at a recruit’s door, recruiters like Winchenbach have their own marching orders. Don’t settle for just anybody. The Marine Corps is the smallest of the armed services with around 175,000 members. And talking to them, I learn they much prefer quality over quantity.

"We want kids who want to be Marines," Winchenbach, a 19-year veteran of the Corps and considered one of the top recruiters in New England, told me days before I traveled to Parris Island. The trip is courtesy of a Marine Corps public affairs junket for educators and media members to see what recruits experience and to talk to a few from the Seacoast.

Winchenbach said his recruiting angle is to challenge potential recruits with the idea of benefits beyond the material ones of college, money and career with something more spiritual - becoming a Marine, a challenge in its own right with the reward of joining a small band of warrior brothers and sisters defending the country.

"We aren’t a jobs program," Capt. David Baril told me succinctly.

Baril, executive officer of the Portsmouth recruiting station, said the Corps has a very scientific approach, which includes mountains of paperwork and calculated screening of those who might be overwhelmed by the demands of military life, Marines style.

While the Pentagon spends hundreds of million annually in marketing the armed services to potential recruits, the Marine Corps is at the back of the budget bus when it comes to recruiting. This requires a shrewd marketing strategy to both recruits and their parents.

"Even if their son or daughter is 18 and don’t need their parents’ permission to enlist, we want the parents on board because it makes for a better Marine," Baril said.

He also said the "millennial" generation wants the approval of their parents far more than those of Generation X.

Baril explained the calculus of recruiting - 33 percent of American youth will never serve in the military, 33 percent want to - the other third "is up for grabs."

"We have to redouble our efforts to do a better job of appealing to those who are curious about the longest, most demanding training, and why the drill instructors yell at them and push them to do the same tasks," Baril said. "We don’t do half-assed training, and that’s why we are the best fighting force in the world."

Which is another way of saying our son or daughter could very well be deployed, but training pays off in keeping them as safe as possible.

Michelle Hill-Dugal’s 18-year-old son Daniel graduated from Dover High School in June and left for Parris Island last month.

"When there’s a war on, it’s very difficult to let go," Hill-Dugal told me. But, she said, her son carefully considered his options for 18 months and talked about his choice as if it were a "calling." As headlines referred to mounting casualties in Iraq, Hill-Dugal showed them to Daniel, but he told her he understood the risks.

Hill-Dugal said she considered the information and counsel she got from Daniel’s recruiters to be "awesome." But a lot of parents and their potential recruit are less receptive because of the volatile state of global and domestic affairs.

Winchenbach acknowledged the obvious: "We have to deal with a lot of rejection because of what’s happening in the world."

The war is testing recruiters’ mettle as never before - it has become the longest conflict in U.S. history fought by the volunteer military. Recruiters, who often don’t have the best reputations with the public at large, are under more pressure as combined recruiting numbers for the armed services have dropped. They have also come under more scrutiny.

Last month, The Boston Globe ran a front-page story about a Massachusetts college student who joined the Marine Corps Reserve and felt his recruiter misled him about when he could be deployed. The student was called up for active duty and he insisted the recruiter told him that could not happen until he graduated from college.

Baril said the incident, which happened in his district, was a misunderstanding and is being investigated. "It rarely happens and that’s because we go to painstaking lengths to explain every detail of the contract we sign. We don’t need to be unethical because it doesn’t serve our needs."

While the Portsmouth recruiting district (which includes Maine, New Hampshire and eastern Massachusetts) reached 104 percent of its quota in the most recent fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, recruiters admit this is a tough area to work. Portsmouth High School hasn’t had one student join the Marines in a while. As of this past week, there were nine Seacoast recruits at Parris Island. Reasons include this being one of the wealthiest areas in the Northeast and high school graduates’ wide range of life and career options that mostly don’t include dying at the hands of insurgents in Iraq.

At Parris Island, recruiter Sgt. Phillip Baugh, said his recruitment area of New Haven, Conn., is becoming tougher. On the one hand, he said, interested recruits are hot on joining the infantry, the most demanding of military occupations.

"A lot of these kids are action junkies who have played a lot of Nintendo. But they will get sobered up quick," said Baugh, an infantryman (his specialty: machine guns). Baugh saw combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and also served with a Marine humanitarian relief unit in Kosovo.

Baugh, a native of Jamaica, faces increasing difficulty breaking through to potential recruits and especially their parents. He’s encountered a political wall hard to jump over.

"The kids want to live their life and so many parents don’t want to hear it," he told me. "They say ,‘We don’t want our son dying in an unjust war for oil.’ They tell me, ‘I didn’t vote for (President) George Bush and (I) hate this war. Call back when a Democrat is elected.’"

On the other hand, Stephen Bolz, 18, of Kittery, Maine, must qualify as a recruiter’s dream. Bolz said he’s wanted to be a Marine since "I was seven."

He graduated from Traip Academy and arrived at Parris Island last month when he was still a 17-year-old. Bolz confidently said he liked the support he got from his parents, but "I was going to join no matter what." As for the war in Iraq, Bolz didn’t blink. He plans to join the infantry and become a "scout sniper."

"I can’t wait to get over and serve my country."

Michael McCord is business editor of the Portsmouth Herald and Herald Sunday