Too Few Men

Some Marine recruiters will sign up almost anyone

THE MARINES ARE LOOKING FOR A FEW GOOD MEN. So says the recruiting motto for America's elite fighting force. But since the draft was abolished in 1973, the Marines, as well as the other branches of the U.S. armed forces, have been having considerable difficulty filling their ranks. As a result, a Senate armed services subcommittee was told last week, some Marine recruiters sign up criminals, illiterates, men who are physically unfit --almost anyone who walks through the recruiting-office door.

Former Sergeant Donald Robinette described how recruiters in northern Ohio falsified high school diplomas and police records to meet the demands for recruits from his commander, Major Klaus Schreiber, who considers himself "the best recruiting officer in the Marine Corps." Said Robinette: "The pressure never stopped. We were doing everything to get the bodies and they still wanted more."

At one point, Schreiber threatened to break a recruiter's arm if he failed to meet his quota. Schreiber told the committee that the threat was not serious. Said he: "We're in the Marine Corps. That's the way we speak. We're not graduates of the College of the Immaculate Conception." With considerable pride, Schreiber reported that he managed to raise his staffs performance from 59% of its quota to 100% after he took charge in 1977. His reward: headquarters increased his quota by 13 percentage points.

To meet such demands, ex-recruiters and Marine lawyers from across the country testified that recruiters have gone to such lengths as enlisting a violence-prone youth out of a juvenile home and even signing up a fictitious candidate. To qualify a youth with a long police record, a recruiter would drop the first letter of the candidate's name so that the police check would turn up no trace of his crimes. Schreiber told recruiters to ask Marine hopefuls leading questions like, "You haven't smoked marijuana, have you?" Answers, of course, were negative. Some recruiters coach candidates in advance to ensure that they pass aptitude tests, or use bright stand-ins for those who seem sure to fail. Robinette said that one ringer in northern Ohio had taken the test for 15 candidates and was so proficient that he could deliver any score needed.

Once enlisted, these unfit Marines constitute a new class of military untouchables. The U.S. Court of Military Appeals has ruled that a fraudulently recruited serviceman cannot be court-martialed. Thus the Marines had to drop a case against an enlisted man who was charged with stealing TNT from his unit at the Marine Corps Air Station in Kaneohe, Hawaii, because his recruiter had forged his high school diploma and concealed his juvenile crime record to qualify him for service.

According to the Pentagon, nearly 11% of the 74,888 people who joined the Marines in the past two years have been discharged for reasons, ranging from medical disabilities to drug abuse, that should have disqualified them at the time of their enlistment. Congress could solve the problem by bringing back the draft, but this would be highly unpopular and is unlikely.

Making matters worse, unsympathetic officials often refuse to turn over lists of high school seniors to recruiters, and parents frequently become incensed and abusive when recruiters phone to talk to prospective enlistees. So the pressure on recruiters to fill this year's Marine Corps quota of 39,300 enlistments will remain intense. Says Schreiber: "My quota for every recruiter was as many as he could possibly enlist." On the double!

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