Answering Uncle Sam's Call

By Maureen Dowd

With the economy down and patriotism up, the military is "in "

When Richard Gere, resplendent in his Navy whites, carried Debra Winger off into the celluloid sunset in An Officer and a Gentleman, audiences everywhere cheered and cried. If the 1940s-style sentiment was effective, the symbolism was apt: the military's "white knight" image, tainted for years by the stigma of the Viet Nam War, has been spit-and-polished. "Things have really changed," marvels Rick Field, a Navy recruiter in Longmont, Colo. "It's back to the days when the troopers are the good guys."

Not only is the military standing tall again, it is staging a remarkable comeback in the quantity and quality of the recruits it is attracting. Recruiters, once denounced by antiwar students as "baby killers" and barred from campuses, are welcomed even at elite universities. ROTC programs that faltered during the Viet Nam era, when protesters were fire bombing their headquarters, are flourishing again. The military academies are enjoying a steady increase in applications. Says Colonel Manley Rogers, director of admissions for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point: "If someone wishes to complete his basic training by Christmas '83, he should go and enlist immediately. In recent years, there has never been such a queue to join the Army."

Certainly, the depressed economy has increased the allure of the jobs, technical training and generous student loans offered by the military. "Students know that if they go in and become, say, nuclear-weapons specialists, they can come out and demand a salary of $60,000 a year," says History Professor James Leutze, who heads the ROTC board at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Military salaries, while not always competitive with those paid for comparable jobs in the private sector, are more than respectable, especially considering the wide array of benefits that are available: free medical care, room and board, and PX privileges. Monthly pay for a recruit is $574; for a sergeant with four years' service it is $906; for a major with ten years' service it is $2,305. The services' slick $175 million-a-year advertising campaign promising adventure and fulfillment has helped win over the TV generation. "Kids are walking down the school hallways chanting 'Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines,' just like in the commercials," an official of the Army's high school ROTC program in Washington, D.C., was quoted as saying.

But many military officials feel that the key difference is the enhanced patriotism among the nation's youth. "There's a return to the view that the military is an honorable profession," says Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb. Agrees U.S. Air Force Academy Director of Admissions Lieut. Colonel Larry Thacker: "With the Salvadors and Lebanons, young people are perceiving the threat to national security more. They are very much into dedication and commitment of service."

Recruiting for all four services combined is running at 101% of authorized goals, having reached 338,200 last year. (Overall military strength last year was 2.1 million.) "We've been closing out our quotas halfway through the month," says Sergeant Larry Soper, an Army recruiter in Tulsa. The retention rate is now so high (68% of those finishing their tours in fiscal 1982 reupped, and the percentage is even higher this year) that the services are refusing some re-enlistment applications and reducing annual recruiting targets. "They come in here and say to us, 'I want this or I want that or I don't join,' " says Field. "We tell 'em to hit the bricks. There's a lot of others beating the door down to get in."

Commanding officers rave about the better class of recruits coming in. Says Major General Theodore Jenes Jr., the commander of Colorado's Fort Carson Army post: "The quality we're seeing is going up at an astounding rate. The new kids are easy to train. They have a better sense that the world is a pretty dangerous place and that somebody's got to defend all those things that we believe in." The days of a judge telling a miscreant to join the Army or go to jail are over. "We won't take a man if he has a parking ticket outstanding," said Nashville Navy Recruiter Tony Thomas. Indeed, the services frown on would-be recruits who have not finished high school. In 1980, 68% of the enlistees had diplomas; today that figure is up to 89%, a dozen points higher than the general population.

The military academies are also enjoying halcyon years, attracting more and better-qualified students. Compared to private colleges, where tuition and expenses have been climbing sharply, the service schools are a real bargain: not only is tuition free, but recruits get allowances of up to $500 a month. West Point received 27% more applications this year than it did in 1980, and the Naval Academy had 29% more. The Air Force Academy, which was up 40%, reported 12,300 applicants for the 1,450 positions in this year's freshman class. "We are now just as selective as any of the best universities in the country," says the Naval Academy's Rear Admiral Robert McNitt.

On the sprawling campus of the Air Force Academy at the foothills of the Colorado Rockies, the cadets savor their new status. Says David Tubb, 19, a freshman from Viroqua, Wis.: "My friends are envious. They think I've got a lot going for me." Agrees Classmate Richard Kobor, 18, of Syracuse: "Everyone looks up to you. People call you sir. The military is in."

Nationwide, ROTC enrollment exceeds 105,000, a 64% increase over the 1974 figure of 64,000. "In the mid-'70s, the ROTC students refused to wear their uniforms on campus because they suffered all sorts of ridicule if they did," says Colonel David Ernest, Army ROTC head at the University of Texas. "Now they wear uniforms to class and no one looks at them twice." Viet Nam and Kent State have retreated into hazy memories. "College freshmen today were eight or nine years old when the last American troops withdrew from Viet Nam," says Major Robert Pistana, in charge of recruiting for Army ROTC at the University of Georgia. "To them, Viet Nam is ancient history, something the old folks talk about.''

--By Maureen Dowd. Reported by BJ. Phillips/Atlanta and Richard Woodbury/Denver

With reporting by BJ. Phillips, Richard Woodbury This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.