U.S. Army 'Suddenly and Chaotically' Ordered 800 Soldiers to 'Be Recruiters Immediately'

Without warning, hundreds of noncommissioned officers were ordered via email to report to the recruiting school at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in less than a week, with hundreds more set to start at the school in December -- a sudden unexpected move by the Army as the service scrambles to boost its recruiting force by 800 by the end of the year.

The orders came after a breakdown in how the Army tracks how many recruiters it has coming through the pipeline along with retention of existing ones, according to Lt. Gen. Douglas Stitt, the Army's top personnel officer. The sudden depletion of recruiters caught Army planners flat-footed, with officials unable to provide a clear explanation as to what went wrong. Now, NCOs will likely have to move during the holiday season and in the middle of the school year, sowing chaos for families.

"Given the six-day heads up, we have zero time to plan child care," one noncommissioned officer told Military.com on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. "We can barely find and afford child care during the week as it is, so now my wife may end up having to quit her job entirely because it is impossible to find on the weekend."

The Army has roughly 10,000 recruiters, but that force has been bleeding troops over the past year. The 800 emergency recruiting students will allow the service to maintain its numbers. Recruiters have reported to Military.com in recent months of working longer hours and, in some cases, getting fired for missing quotas.

"I want to apologize to the soldiers and families for receiving this last-minute notification; that mistake is mine," Stitt told reporters Wednesday. "It's not lost on me, particularly at this point in time on the cusp of the holidays, the [impact] this has on our soldiers and NCOs."

The mad dash to fill its recruiter ranks has the Army dismissing minimum standards to send soldiers to the school, including getting rid of requirements that they have passing fitness scores and be in compliance with body weight standards, according to an internal email reviewed by Military.com. Some soldiers who were set to be drill sergeants will be reassigned as recruiters.

Marine Corps Forces Central Command, which is in charge of the service's operations in an increasingly unstable Middle East currently roiled by last month's surprise Hamas attack on Israel, announced Wednesday that it would be canceling its annual Marine Corps ball due to "unforeseen operational commitments and the nature of our current mission."

A spokesperson for the command, also known as MARCENT, told Military.com after the announcement that the cancellation of the ball was a "prudent measure," given the situation unfolding out of Israel.