A Conversation with a Military Recruiter

March 19, 2009

“We shouldn’t be recruiting in high schools,” said the recruiter as part of an hour long discussion of recruitment practices and the idea of service to our country.

He had called me to complain about the language in our DEP brochure that said “Your recruiter wants you to believe that you will get in trouble, even arrested. “

“I am an honest recruiter and all of my recruits and their parents are fully aware that they can change their minds.”  He went on to talk about how frustrating his job was with 12 hours days seven days a week.  He was frustrated by number of people who don’t trust him due to the other recruiters and he felt unfairly tarred by their actions.   He discussed how he had never wanted a job recruiting and lived in fear that some day he would receive a call telling him that someone he recruited was killed in action.

He avowed he would never tell a recruit he wouldn’t be deployed because, “that’s what the military is all about.”
He talked about how the world had changed since he joined. “Fewer than one percent want to serve their country any more, to fight to protect that, and I don’t understand that.”  He listened without comment to my suggestion that there were other ways to serve your country than killing and that many people felt that fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan had nothing to with protecting the country.

He talked about retiring.

We talked about the recruiters who would do anything to make a sale and he made sounds of disgust over some of the horror stories I had to tell.  “that’s part of the problem,” he said, “They are selling when we shouldn’t have to sell anything.  People should joint because it is what they want.”

The he said it: “We shouldn’t even be in high schools. I hate going into high schools.  Eighteen year olds don’t know what they want.  First they want to join, then they get a girlfriend and they want to quit and be with her.  The next week the girlfriend breaks up with them and they want to go and be in the military until the next week when they get back together. “

“I don’t think we should be recruiting kids. I would rather recruit college students and adults; people who know what they want.”

“If we did our jobs right you wouldn’t even have a job you would go out of business,” he went on.

I applauded his honesty and told him I always assumed there were honest recruiters somewhere just because of the numbers.  I told him the Center’s work would remain as long as there is war, since there will always be people who join the military and then have a change of heart.

I asked him if he talked to women about the chance of sexual assault was double in the military over the general population, the suicide rate, and the racism.

He was silent.