Global Policy Forum

By Sig Christenson

Army Capt. Jeanne Hull put in her walking papers after 10 months in Bosnia and logging back-to-back stints in Mosul and Baghdad that ran two years. Tired of war and ready for something new, the West Point graduate set her sights on graduate school. She wasn't alone. "A lot a lot of my classmates, if they are not out already, a lot of them want to get out," said Hull, 27, of Colorado Springs, Colo.

The Army expects to be short 2,500 captains and majors this year, with the number rising to 3,300 in 2007. These officers are the Army's seed corn, the people who 10 years from now should be leading battalions and brigades."We're ruining an Army that took us 30 years to build," Republican maverick Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., told a group of reporters at a recent conference.

The Army blames its expansion from 33 to 42 brigades, growing its force by 30,000 soldiers to 512,000, as the reason for the dip. But Hull and others point to the Army personnel drawdown that followed the end of the Cold War, conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, the rapid rate of deployments and aggressive corporate recruiters trying to lure the best and brightest officers into high-paying, private-sector jobs. The Army denies the shortage is a crisis, but its top civilian, Francis J. Harvey, acknowledged concerns, telling the Washington Post: "We are worried."

Harvey later downplayed the problem in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, saying the attrition rate is slightly above the average of 8 percent and is being countered by the production of new young officers. Those outside the Army who are familiar with the problem say it must be reversed if the service is to avoid going "hollow" as it did in the wake of Vietnam, reaching the point where it couldn't win wars. The hard part is convincing officers to stay in after enduring two and even three combat deployments.

The war-weary Hull, who graduated fifth in her West Point class of 947 cadets, had planned to leave the Army even before flying out of Baghdad in June 2005. She chose Princeton after being accepted by a Who's Who of the world's elite universities — Harvard, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Cambridge and King's College in London. The sticking point wasn't going to graduate school but how she'd get there. Before it would pay her way, the Army wanted her to first attend the Intelligence Advanced Course, a prerequisite for a company command. After that she would have had to up to three years in the field before going back to school.

Her boss, Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who oversaw the creation of Iraq's security forces, decided to bend the rules. Hull became one of the first captains to enter Princeton under the Advance Civilian Schooling Program without first attending the captain's career course and putting in time as a company commander. "I did (bypass the process)," Hull concedes, "but I would have gotten out if I hadn't had the opportunity."

Perhaps in recognition of the forces drawing officers out of uniform, the Army since has loosened its rules for admitting people to the program and increased the number of offices entering it from 412 to 600. The Army also is promoting young officers faster. It has offered West Point and ROTC cadets who will be commissioned this year the chance to attend a fully funded graduate school in exchange of three more years of active duty. So far 300 cadets have signed up for the deal. The idea is to blunt the temptation of officers, more than a few of them with families, to trade Army green for safety and a slower pace of life. There's no shortage of headhunters looking for them. One company, the Lucas Group, held seminars in Killeen near Fort Hood, a Marine base in Miramar, Calif., and Fort Benning, Ga., in recent weeks.

The Army paints a rosier picture, particularly among enlistees. It notes that two of three soldiers eligible for re-enlistment are signing up so far this century. The overall re-enlistment rate for active-duty soldiers is higher than the period prior to 9-11, Army Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty said, calling it "high, even by our standards." He cited "patriotic fervor and a desire to not leave the service before getting into the fight against terrorists" as factors in those retention trends. Retention has been strong among active-duty soldiers, with the Army exceeding its target each year since the terrorist attacks.

But large bonuses offered to veteran troops, particularly those in the war zone where the benefits aren't taxed, are a likely driver in the equation. Today, 48.5 percent of all re-enlistments occur while soldiers are overseas. Cash payouts average $12,800 under the Deployed Selective Re-enlistment bonus. Hilferty said last year's 8.6 percent attrition rate for lieutenants and captains was slightly above average but lower than the loss of junior officers in 1999 and 2000. The Army also saw a rise in the exit of lieutenants and captains in 2004, but the jump came after a "historically low" attrition year in 2003, he said, insisting the numbers show "that we do not have a serious problem." In the National Guard, which has played a significant role in the occupation, the number of first-term and career enlistees staying in exceeded the guard's goal from 2001 through 2003, but fell short by 835 soldiers in 2004.