The sagging economy, of course, has bolstered military recruiting at all age levels. But the older recruits represent a new, and perhaps more challenging, opportunity for the US Army, the only service that accepts recruits over 35. (The maximum age is 35 in the Navy, 28 in the Marine Corps and 27 in the Air Force.)
It is not clear yet how well older soldiers handle the rigors of combat. The US Army says it does not segregate older recruits in basic training and does not consider age when deciding where to assign or deploy them. Of the nearly 5,000 military personnel killed in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, about 600 have been over 35, most of them career soldiers. The oldest was 60-year-old Steven Hutchison, who served in Vietnam and retired from the US Army in 1988 only to re-enlist in 2007 under a special program for retirees. Hutchison was killed last month in a bombing in Iraq.
During a break in marksmanship training at Fort Sill last week, several older soldiers said the economy had not been their only motivation for enlisting. “I didn’t want to be 75 and think back, ‘I wish I had joined the Army,’” said Private Mark O’Brien, 36, a corrections officer from Portsmouth, N.H. “There’s nothing worse than regret.”
But for Batson, 35, the threat of layoffs was the driving force behind his joining. A mechanical engineer from Utah with five children, he was spared when his company laid off workers last year, but the close call worried him. Deciding he needed a fallback option, he turned to the National Guard.
Now, if he is laid off and cannot find work, he figures he can go full time with the National Guard or the regular US Army. In exchange for that job security, he says there is a good chance he will do a tour in Afghanistan.
“My natural priority is my family,” Batson said. “I’ll do anything I have to do to take care of them.” Along with the rigors of basic training, the older soldiers say the hardest thing is being away from their families for nine weeks. The second hardest thing, they say, is coping with undisciplined, couch-potato soft, video-game-obsessed teenage recruits who are, technically, their peers.
Dixon, 38, builds log houses in the Boise area but recently joined the Idaho National Guard in part because he wanted to change careers, perhaps to become a medic. He said he had been chewed out for chewing out youngsters in his platoon for what he considered slacker behavior. He was so tough on one for tromping across a newly waxed floor in his boots that the teenager broke down in tears.
“I should have taken into consideration that it was a 17-year-old kid,” Dixon said. “It’s not a man, not somebody that I could hold to a level of accountability. My son’s 17.”
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