Maine ranks 3rd in Army recruitment

More than 400 young men and women from Maine shipped off to active-duty Army boot camp in 2007, a recruitment rate that is the third-highest in the nation per capita.

While Maine topped the charts in the number of recruits per 1,000 men and women ages 17 to 24 who qualify for the military (the Army excludes those incarcerated and medically unfit), the state’s soldiers represent only 0.5 percent of the 80,410 total enlistees in 2007.

Despite Maine’s national ranking, the number of active-duty recruits in 2007 slightly decreased from 2006, said Douglas Smith, spokesperson for the U.S. Army Recruiting Command out of Fort Knox, Ky.

“The risk of war is certainly a factor. We know that we’re not only dealing with the applicant these days, we’re dealing with the entire family,” Smith said. “In today’s modern warfare, there is no such thing as a front line or jobs that are not at risk.”

The war in Iraq and subsequent troop surge has made recruiting more difficult in recent years, considering the greater number of soldiers needed to fulfill the current mission, Smith said. As a result, the Army got very serious about recruiting in 2005 and 2006, said Maj. Lance Gilman, commander of recruiting and retention for the Maine Army National Guard. At that time, the National Guard had 25,000 fewer soldiers than full force, and recruiting and retention became a top priority, he said.

The Maine Army National Guard reached its benchmark goal in 2007, with 405 soldiers taking the oath of service. Maine Guard recruiters were ranked ninth in the nation in 2007, Gilman said.

Maine’s Army Guard has about 2,100 soldiers, but Smith said recruits do not sign up for the Guard instead of active duty to avoid multiple deployments. The role of the Guard has shifted from contingency to operational forces, and an enlisting soldier cannot avoid overseas deployment by joining Guard any more than he or she could in the active-duty Army, he said. If soldiers are going to deploy anyway, many soldiers are choosing to sign up at home and go overseas with trusted friends, Gilman said.

“If you’re thinking about joining the service, would you rather sign up at your local armory where you know the [recruiter] and they know your family, and be deployed with people you know, or go active duty and be stationed out of state?” Gilman asked.

The close community atmosphere is part of the reason the Calais area is one of the Guard’s most successful recruiting areas in the state, he said.

On the active-duty side, York County families sent the highest number of Maine’s active-duty recruits, at 68, while Franklin County shipped five to boot camp, the fewest in the state, according to Army records.

Somerset County was the only Maine county to rank in the nation’s top 100, per 1,000 eligible Army recruits. Thirty recruits from Somerset County reported for boot camp in 2007, which is equivalent to 4.7 enlistees per 1,000 eligible youths between the ages of 17 and 24, according to information provided by the U.S. Army.

The emphasis on troop numbers has made it difficult to attain the Army’s 90 percent high school graduation goal. From the late 1980s to 2004, at least 90 percent of soldiers had graduated from high school, Smith said. In 2005, only 87 percent of Army recruits had graduated from secondary school, and by 2007 that number dropped to 79 percent, he said.

Maine was ranked 23rd in the nation for its 71.9 percent of Army recruits who held a regular high school diploma.

“The recruiting environment became tougher,” Smith said. “Because of the volume of the mission, and making bigger numbers, we’ve fought to reach that [90 percent graduation] goal.”

trobbins@bangordailynews.net

990-8074