STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
The U.S. Army is investigating a cluster of suicides in the Houston Recruiting Battalion. Five soldiers there have taken their own lives since 2001. Across the country, in fact, 17 Army recruiters have committed suicide during the same period. Recruiting is considered one of the most stressful jobs in the military, and NPR's John McChesney explains why.
JOHN MCCHESNEY: Back in March of 2007, Aron Andersson locked himself in the cab of his Ford 150 pickup, called home to say he was going to kill himself. He shot up the dashboard radio, and then put a bullet in his head. He'd threatened suicide five months earlier and his father, Bob Andersson, reported him to the military.
MCCHESNEY: I don't know if that was the right thing to do, but I called a major and told him that, you know, his girlfriend had said he threatened to commit suicide, and she told me that, you know, he was going through night terrors and a bunch of other things. And you know, he'd get up to go to work in the morning and he'd his girlfriend that he was exhausted, and she'd say, well, yeah, you know, you've been jumping over the couch and hiding behind the chairs and stuff half the night like you're in battle, and then he wouldn't even realize it in the morning
MCCHESNEY: Aron had served two tours in Iraq. He was furious with his father for reporting him, saying his Army career would be ended.
MCCHESNEY: And I just simply told him that, well, Aron, if you don't talk to me ever again, I can live with that. But if I didn't turn you in and something happened, I don't think I could live with that.
MCCHESNEY: Robert Andersson says his son had trouble delivering the required two recruits a month, especially after his experience in Iraq.
MCCHESNEY: How could you be over there and see some of the things that he saw and dealt with and try to hire people to go over there and do that?
MCCHESNEY: Chris Rodriguez, a friend who worked with Aron as a recruiter, says no one wanted to lie, but the pressure on recruiters is intense during wartime.
INSKEEP: A soldier doesn't want to get down and really beg a person to join the Army, but I think often, at times, these recruiters and myself, we felt like we were begging them and trying to do anything just to convince them to give it a try like we had. We often sat in the recruiting station - sometimes really late - and talked about how we'd rather be in Iraq than recruiting.
MCCHESNEY: Aron Andersson was diagnosed with PTSD and depression and returned to recruiting duty. His unit was advised to keep an eye on him and five months later, he took his life. On August 9th of this year, Staff Sergeant Larry Flores, also an Iraq veteran, hanged himself in his garage with an extension cord. Fellow recruiters told the Houston Chronicle that a week earlier, Flores had been yelled at and threatened with firing for failing to meet the goal of two recruits each month. He was also having trouble with his wife. Two weeks later, Sergeant First Class Patrick Henderson, also an Iraq veteran in the same recruiting company with Flores, hanged himself in the garage behind his home. Like Aron Andersson, Patrick had earlier called his wife, Amanda, from his pickup, saying he was going to kill himself.
MCCHESNEY: Crazed, hysterical, couldn't - you know, he was crying and screaming, and I kept asking him, what's wrong, and he goes, I just can't deal with it anymore. I just can't deal with it anymore. He said, I've got the shotgun.
MCCHESNEY: Amanda and a friend talked Patrick down that time. She says the next morning, he was delusional and imagined he was back in Iraq. He was sent off to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio for evaluation, then returned to his outfit but relieved from recruiting duty. Amanda, herself a recruiter in the same battalion, says she remained terrified.
MCCHESNEY: (Crying) And he tried to convince me, but I knew in the back of my head deep down that if you were going to try it once, you were definitely going to do it again. So, I knew something was wrong.
MCCHESNEY: There's been a fourth suicide in the Houston battalion during this same time period involving another combat veteran. No other details are available. The Army says a fifth reported suicide in Houston was not a recruiter. I stopped by the Houston battalion's headquarters and was escorted inside, where I was told there was an investigation under way and no one could talk to me. As I walked outside, the U.S. Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox in Kentucky called my cell phone to tell me a general had been appointed to look into the matter. Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn called for that investigation.
INSKEEP: I asked for an independent investigation. This is not what I call an independent investigation, but it's a step in the right direction. And my hope is after this command investigation, that we can see what that produces and then we'll, I hope, hold hearings.
MCCHESNEY: One of the questions the senator wants answered is whether it's wise to order combat veterans to take recruiting jobs. Most of them don't volunteer. James Larsen is a retired senior policy analyst for the Army Recruiting Command.
MCCHESNEY: I believe, short of being shot at and, you know, risking your life, that recruiting is probably the toughest job in the Army.
MCCHESNEY: Larsen says a few years ago, a study commissioned by the Army looked at the level of stress hormones in recruiters.
MCCHESNEY: Recruiters have the highest stress levels of any occupation in the United States. Policemen, firemen, special operations, you know, spies, you name it, head and shoulders, recruiters have the highest stress levels of anybody.
MCCHESNEY: Whether or not recruiters have the highest stress level, there's little doubt that they are under extraordinary pressure to sell the Army to a small number of reluctant consumers. Add to that the marital stress brought on by 12- to 14-hour workdays, the isolation of being stationed in small towns far from a base, and in the Houston battalion's case, alleged abusive treatment of those who didn't produce their quota, and you have a potentially toxic cocktail. Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn.
INSKEEP: The other part of this that was troubling was the idea that there was pressure - suggestion there was pressure being put down the chain of command to keep this quiet.
MCCHESNEY: Senator Cornyn wants to know if the Houston battalion's problems are an isolated case or whether recruiter stress patterns are similar in other places. Sergeant Henderson's wife, Amanda, believes the problems are widespread, and that the Houston battalion in particular ignored all the danger signals.
MCCHESNEY: It needed to be looked at heavily whenever the first one had taken his life, not wait until the fifth one had taken his life. The fifth one was my husband.
MCCHESNEY: John McChesney, NPR News.
INSKEEP: Whatever the cost may have been, we can tell you that all the military services - the Army, Navy, the Air Force and the Marines - met their recruiting targets in 2008. The U.S. Army signed up over just over 80,000 recruits. Last April, NPR reported that the Army was accepting more recruits without high-school diplomas in order to meet its goals. Early in the decade, over 90 percent of new recruits had diplomas, but by 2007, the figure had dipped to 79 percent. We can tell you the figure improved slightly in the past year.
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