Army exceeds retention goals

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=18545

If Army officials were worried that constant deployments would drive too many soldiers out of uniform, they can rest easy.

As the Army closed out fiscal 2003 at the end of September, so many soldiers had raised their right hands to re-enlist that the service met its retention goals and then some, retaining 106 percent of the soldiers it hoped to keep.

“We needed 51,000 soldiers to re-enlist, and we got 54,151,” said Sgt. Maj. James Vales, a senior retention manager at Army headquarters in Washington.

Of those, Vales said, 1,955 soldiers re-enlisted at the last minute, taking advantage of an 11th-hour $5,000 bonus offered in the last two weeks of the fiscal year. Nearly half of those takers were midcareer soldiers with fewer than 10 years in the Army, he said.

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This year’s re-enlistment success comes after the Army dropped its goals twice over the past 12 months. Initially, Army officials had tasked retention noncommissioned officers to keep 57,000 soldiers from getting out of the Army.

That and a bit of bribery and no one will remember what their chocolate ration was last month anyway.

I know, it was 10 grams and then Big Bunnypants* graciously raised it to the current generous 20 grams.

Orwell was absolutely dead spot-on right, he was just 17 years short of reality.

First, set a goal. If that goal is unreachable, set a lower goal, etc, etc, until you can finally exceed the goal.

Send out scary stories about how you might not meet your goals for several weeks.

Then, make a big announcement about how you exceeded your goals!!!

If you live to spend it.

I thought they were still operating under stop-loss anyway, which means that re-enlistment is kinda moot for a lot of people.

because of the war in Iraq.

Let's say you join up for four years active duty, at the end of those four years you still have four more years the military can call you backup or keep you if needed. After the total eight years is done the military cant keep you. In the military you can't leave when you want to until your total eight year commitment is over.

4 years Army
20 years Air Force

will that cover the funneral cost?

Pfffffff......