Home from Iraq, officers consider leaving the service

KILLEEN, Texas — Army Capts. Dave Fulton and Geoff Heiple spent 12 months dodging roadside bombs and rounding up insurgents along Baghdad's "highway of death" — the six miles of pavement linking downtown to the city's airport. Two weeks after returning stateside to Fort Hood, they ventured to a conference room at a local hotel to find out about changing careers.

Lured by a headhunting company that places young military officers in private-sector jobs, the pair, both 26, expected anonymity in the crowded room.

Instead, Fulton and Heiple spotted nearly a dozen familiar faces from their cavalry battalion.

"This is a real eye-opener," said Fulton, a West Point graduate who saw a few cadets from his class. "It seems like everyone in the room is either from my squad or from my class."

The Army continues to slip further behind its overall recruiting goals, figures released yesterday showed, a trend that has prompted officials to develop proposals to double cash bonuses and offer mortgage aid for enlisting.

Two-thirds through the fiscal 2005 recruiting year, which ends Sept. 30, Pentagon figures show the regular Army was 17 percent behind its goal, the Army Reserve was down 20 percent and the Army National Guard was 24 percent down.

The thing that keeps senior generals awake at night, though, is the potential loss of junior officers. With thousands of soldiers on their second combat deployment in Iraq or Afghanistan and some preparing for their third this fall, evidence is mounting that an exodus of young Army officers may be looming. The Army's pool of young captains, which forms the backbone of infantry and armored units, could be the hit hardest.

Army lieutenants and captains left the service last year at an annual rate of 8.7 percent — higher than any year since 2001. Pentagon officials say they expect the attrition rate to improve slightly this year. Yet interviews with several dozen military officers revealed an undercurrent of discontent within the Army's young officer corps that Pentagon statistics do not capture.

Many young officers, who until recently had planned to pursue careers in the military, are completing their four- or five-year commitments, then deciding that it's a future they can't sign up for.

The officers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan just wrapped up a year of grueling counterinsurgency operations — a type of combat the United States largely avoided after its struggle in Vietnam and that many in the Pentagon believe is the new face of war.

These officers, in most cases, have more counterinsurgency experience than any of their superiors. And they are the people the Army most fears losing.

The officers interviewed for this article are proud of what they accomplished in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they generally are optimistic that the two nations can emerge as functioning, if unstable, democracies.

Yet their pride is tempered by uncertainty about what lies ahead in an unconventional war in which victory may never be declared.

"The undefined goals of the war on terror are making it really hard for the Army to keep people right now," Fulton said.

The Pentagon hopes that by next year, a significant troop reduction in Iraq will allow the Army to slow the pace of troop deployments, giving soldiers two years at home for every year in battle.

Yet Pentagon officials admit it is uncertain that this can happen by 2006.

"I still don't know if we can make it," said a senior Army officer at the Pentagon. "You tell me what Iraq is going to look like next year."

Meanwhile, the Army is dispatching combat units to Iraq and Afghanistan after soldiers have had only one year at home.

Timothy Muchmore, a civilian Army official at the Pentagon and a retired tank officer, summed up the problem this way:

"You take a junior officer, you send them overseas for a year. They win a lot of medals, and they're a hero. But when you send them back a second time, the odds go up that they won't make it home alive and it becomes even harder on their family. Are they any more of a hero for having served a second time? No.

"The guys returning from Iraq and Afghanistan believe they have done at least the minimum for the security of their country, and they are proud of their service," he said. "But the world is now their oyster."

Inside the Killeen hotel, Fulton and Heiple listened to a well-rehearsed pitch about what the world might have to offer.

Andrew Hollitt, a beefy, gregarious former Army officer turned headhunter, spoke in marketing terms about how eager private-sector employers were for young, combat-tested officers and senior noncommissioned officers.

"You are a commodity that brings a tremendous amount to the table," he told the packed room.

The Lucas Group was not trying to persuade them to leave the Army, Hollitt said, only to present them with options.

After the recruiting session, Hollitt said he had yet to see the same volume of young soldiers contact the Lucas Group as he did during the late 1990s, when the military drawdown forced the Pentagon to push young officers out of the service.

But, he said, the quality of those leaving the military was very high. "I am seeing the highest caliber of candidates now that I have seen in five years of doing this," he said. "The companies we work with are absolutely, unbelievably impressed."

Capt. Vincent Tuohey, another member of their battalion just back from Iraq, says the military now has an entire generation of young officers who are battle-hardened and knowledgeable about battling insurgencies.

Heiple and Fulton were wary about what they had just heard. And it was not that the average starting salaries of $50,000 to $70,000 were much more than they earned in Iraq when combat pay and bonuses were included.

Instead, one of their biggest concerns about working in the civilian world was that it was "cheesier" and less serious than what they currently do for a living.

"I kind of worry that the corporate world is a lot like 'Office Space,' " said Heiple, referring to the 1999 movie that parodied American office-park culture.

The Jonestown, Pa., native said he would not have traded the experience of leading troops in combat or of earning the 1st Cavalry's trademark Stetson hat and gold spurs — given to cavalry soldiers when they have served in a combat zone.

Yet, with these achievements behind him, Heiple, a Notre Dame graduate, said he was looking for a life with more stability. Heiple decided while he was in Iraq that he would leave the Army when his commitment expires this month. He plans to move with his girlfriend to Austin, where he hopes to attend law school at the University of Texas.

Fulton returned from Iraq in March, and went on a cruise to Mexico with his wife during his 30-day leave. His wife, Fulton said, wants him to leave the military more than anything.

The couple this month will move with their 3-year-old son to Fort Knox, Ky., where Fulton will begin a six-month course on commanding armored units.

He will have a year left of his Army commitment when the course is completed, and Fulton says that he is leaning toward leaving the service.

"If West Point didn't have a five-year commitment," he said, "I'd probably be pursuing something else right now."

A college graduate with an Army ROTC scholarship usually owes four years of active duty to the military, along with a period in the Army Reserves or National Guard. A West Point graduate owes five.

Army officials know that if they are able to persuade captains to remain in uniform a few years past their initial commitment, the odds are good they will commit to a full, 20-year military career.

But in the words of one Army captain, a West Point graduate who spent 10 months in Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004 and plans to leave the Army next year: "A lot of guys making their decision at the five-year mark are not making their decision for [just] the next three years. They are making their decision about whether to make a career out of the military.

"The guys in my age group are looking ahead and deciding that's not a life they want to live," he said.

Yesterday's Pentagon recruiting figures were reported by The Associated Press.