By R.J. Oriez
GUIDON staff

One advantage to joining the Army while in high school is a better selection of Military Occupational Skill training.

When Sgt. 1st Class Herman Jurgens and his crew at the Army recruiting station in St. Robert talk with a high school senior, they can tell him what training is available the next summer — even if it is only August of their senior year. Once someone graduates from high school, they can only look about three months out.

“Seniors seem to think ‘I’ll graduate and then I’ll enlist.’ It’s not a good idea,” Jurgens said.

Jurgens explained that the Army loads its training heavier for the summer and, until spring, only seniors get access to it.

“The Army tries to take care of seniors the best they can,” Jurgens said. “Because it’s their first choice for a career; so, they try to give them the best opportunity.”

One who recently signed is Daniel Calhoun, a senior at Waynesville High School. He signed last month to report for active duty in August. He is slated for combat engineer and airborne training.

Calhoun was not a difficult sell.

“My dad’s been in the Army,  and he told me how fun it is so it sounded like a good idea,” Calhoun said. “They had a lot of jobs available, but dad’s a combat engineer, and I like what he does.”

Once it gets to be March or April, the seniors lose their advantage and compete with everybody else.

“What’s there is what’s there. When they’re gone, they’re gone,” Jurgens said.

That is not to say that once someone graduates from high school they are out of luck.

“We take care of everybody individually,” Jurgens said. “We try to get them what they want.”

Jurgens told of how he was able to help a 38-year-old get into Officer Candidate School.

“There’s a wavier for everything,” Jurgens said, though he stresses that there is no guarantee that a waiver will be approved.

The Army recruiting goals are actually down.

“The President had the mission of growing the Army,” Jurgens said. “We met that mission almost a year early. So now we’re just back to the point we’re trying to sustain the current level of readiness.”

With the reduced need for recruits, the Army can be pickier about who it accepts.

“The Army has restricted the amount of waivers we can run,” Jurgens said. “That’s (Army Recruiting Command’s) way of managing the individuals coming in.”

He cites the felony waiver as one that is not currently available. Likewise, if a recruit has a G.E.D., they also have to have a minimum of 15 hours of college credit — unless the G.E.D. was earned as part of a Job Corps program.

“That doesn’t mean it won’t change,” Jurgens said. “I never turn anyone down; I’ll just say to keep checking on it.”

With the constant change that is part of the recruiting community, it is difficult for any one person to keep up and potential recruits may have questions that a recruiter cannot answer off the top of his head.

“Don’t be afraid to say ‘I don’t know.’ Show some humility,” Jurgens tells his recruiters. “But say ‘hold on a second, let’s look that up.’”

Jurgens says the biggest challenge faced by any recruiter is the presumption many people have that a recruiter lies.

“Nobody in this station is going to force feed anybody anything. They don’t need to,” Jurgens said. “We have no need to do that.

“Bottom line is that this recruiting station needs to put in four people per month, and we double that every month.”