RE-ENLISTMENT Marines offered financial incentive

A rifleman said the bonus helped persuade his wife to let him re-enlist.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
SAN DIEGO -- With the prospect of continued fighting in Iraq, the Marine Corps is offering bonuses of as much as $30,000 -- in some cases, tax-free -- to persuade enlisted personnel with combat experience and training to re-enlist.
The plan is working, officials said. Fewer than two months into the fiscal year, Marine re-enlistment rates in several key specialties run 10 percent to 30 percent ahead of last year.
Officials are confident that by midyear they will have reached their target for encouraging re-enlistment among riflemen, the "grunts" who are key to the Marines' ability to mount offensives against insurgent strongholds such as Fallujah, Iraq.
In most cases the young Marines are agreeing to stay in their current jobs for four years. In others they are allowed to transfer into jobs that the brass considers equally vital: recruiters, embassy guards and boot camp drill instructors.
"No amount of money is too much to retain combat experience in the corps, rather than starting over," said Maj. Mark Menotti, assistant head of enlisted retention for the Marine Corps.
Nothing new
Giving bonuses to encourage Marines to re-enlist is not a new program. But this year's bonus schedule marks the first time that "combat arms" specialties have received the largest of the bonuses. A year ago, the top bonus for a grunt was about $7,000.
Along with riflemen, machine-gunners, and mortar-men, specialties also receiving sizable bonuses are those critical to success in Iraq -- including intelligence officers and Arabic linguists.
Lance Cpl. Matthew Jee, 21, of Borrego Springs, Calif., received a bonus of $19,000 to re-enlist for four years. An assault-man with expertise in firing the Javelin rocket, he plans to shift to the intelligence field.
"They need a grunt's view of what kind of intelligence you need when you're out there on the street," Jee said at Camp Pendleton, where he recently returned after seven months in Iraq.
Sgt. Joey W. McBroom, 30, of Lafayette, Tenn., a rifleman, said that he had planned to re-enlist even without the bonus, but that the $28,039 "helped my wife to agree to my re-enlisting."
In an e-mail from Iraq, McBroom said he plans to put 40 percent of the bonus in a mutual fund, 30 percent in an account for his children's college, 15 percent in savings and the remaining 15 percent for "a nice wedding ring for the wife, finally."
Another rifleman, Cpl. Anthony Mazzola, 23, of Fort Worth, Texas, has more immediate plans for his $21,700: "I plan to take all of my money to Vegas and have a crazy weekend," he e-mailed from Iraq.
The Marine Corps has earmarked $52 million in bonuses for the fiscal year the started Oct. 1, up from $51 million in 2004.
Two-thirds of the bonus money will go for Marines re-enlisting for a second hitch. One-third will go to enlisted Marines signing up for a third or fourth tour. Officers -- except in particularly difficult to retain specialties such as aviation and law -- are not eligible for bonuses.
The amount of the individual bonus is determined by a formula involving the length of re-enlistment, how early the Marine makes the commitment to re-enlist and a multiplier determined by the commandant of the Marine Corps.
Among other things, the multiplier involves a statistical analysis of how much money will be needed to ensure that enough Marines re-enlist in a particular specialty.
Among combat veterans, there is a sense that they are being paid for having learned things that cannot be taught at the school of infantry. Many are eager to pass that knowledge to others.