CARBONDALE - As the U.S. Army announced Tuesday a nationwide plan to attract new recruits, regional recruiting offices said they have done quite well in recent months.

"The Heartland of America is not in that same boat (as the rest of the country)," said Dave Palmer, chief of advertising and public affairs for recruitment of the U.S. Army St. Louis Command. "I think it is due to a strong sense of patriotism in this region."

The St. Louis Recruiting Battalion, which covers a 74,000-square-mile area that includes Southern Illinois and Missouri, was number one in new recruits for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.

Officials reported that the Army fell 6,600 short of the nationwide goal of 80,000 "missions" for the year. The Army, which had the largest share of combat casualties and injuries as a result of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, is the only U.S. armed service to have fallen short of its recruitment goal - the first time that has happened since 1999.

The Army has proposed new financial incentives for enlistees, greater use of computers, a new way for recruiters to make their pitch, and a proposed finder's fee for soldiers who refer recruits.

Parts of this new strategy were put into practice several months ago; others await congressional approval.

For example, since July the Army has been offering prospective recruits what it calls "assignment incentive pay." That is $400 a month in extra pay for as many as 36 months if an enlistee agrees to join any of the brigades of the 1st Cavalry Division or 25th Infantry Division scheduled to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan.

The incentives are expected to boost enlistments.

"It is not only enlistments, it is retention," Palmer said. "If retention is doing really well, then that is fewer folks that we have to actually enlist and we're getting a lot of people who are re-enlisting en masse. I'm sure the incentives help, but you also have to have the commitment and the dedication to serve. Military service is not for everybody."

By 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sgt. 1st Class Priscilla Davis had re-enlisted two Southern Illinois soldiers and was well on her way to completing her monthly "mission." She pointed out that the U.S. Army no longer refers to successful recruitment numbers as "quotas."

One of the men Davis re-enlisted said one of the reasons he was choosing to go back to Iraq was because "I am a better soldier than a student."

Sgt. Timothy Creedon, a recruiter at the Marine Corps Carbondale substation, said his office has consistently brought in at least three recruits per month. While the Marine Corps struggled for part of the year, its numbers recovered.

He said the number one question he is asked by potential enlistees is, "Am I going to Iraq?"

"I tell them there is a 50-50 chance they could be deployed to Iraq," Creedon said. "There aren't any guarantees."

Opinion surveys indicate that daily reports of soldiers dying in Iraq have dampened young people's interest in joining the armed services.

According to the Department of Defense, there have been 1,950 U.S. casualties in Iraq since operations started in March 2003. There have been 200 total deaths in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

When the Army saw its recruiting efforts fall drastically below expectations - starting last February and bottoming out in April with only 58 percent of that month's goal achieved - it embarked on some new approaches.

The most important may have been the assignment of extra recruiters. The active-duty Army added nearly 1,300 recruiters during the year, for a total of 6,401 as of Sept. 30, and the Army Reserve added nearly 600, for a total of 1,547 recruiters, according to S. Douglas Smith, a spokesman for Army Recruiting Command.

The Army also has asked Congress for permission to raise the maximum enlistment bonus from $20,000 to $40,000.

-The Associated Press contributed to this report.

nicole.sack@thesouthern.com

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