In 'army of one,' restless soldiers just desert

Garcia's plan, he says, was to return to his parents' house in New Jersey and, when he was ready, maybe turn himself in.

He knew the Marines would have a warrant out for his arrest. Yet, while getting approved for a new credit card may have been tricky, Garcia hardly felt like a bandit during that time.

"The only thing I was nervous about was getting caught [as I was leaving]," he says, referring back to his midnight crawl out of the barracks with his luggage.

Things didn't go quite according to plan. Police in Kearny, NJ., where Garcia was staying with his parents, arrested him two months after he went UA (unauthorized absence).

But after six weeks of part-time work on a base in Quantico, Va., he got what he wanted: an other-than-honorable discharge. This September, he returns to school at the Hudson City Community College in New Jersey.

The Army, for one, wants to cut down on its desertion problem. "We're making every effort" to rehabilitate soldiers, rather than discharge them, says spokeswoman Elaine Kanellis. This fall, the Army hopes to take the deserters who return, as 95 percent of them eventually do, and send them back to their original units.

The Army also tracks reasons enlistees leave early, whether or not it was with the service's permission. The ones most frequently cited are medical disorders, misconduct, personality disorders, and pregnancy.

Behind those stated reasons lie deeper ones, military analysts say.

The issue of retaining people who want to leave the military early is "really more a decision about economics, culture, and lifestyle today, and dealing with authority," says Michael O'Hanlon, an analyst at the Brookings Institution here.

Thus, it is "harder to fix" than recruiting or reenlistment problems. In addition, more enlistees today see the military as an employer, he says, and are less willing to respect authority.

Also increasing as a reason, says Mr. Segal, is departure for "reasons of sexual orientation." Segal says many enlisted personnel are using this as a "get-out-of-jail-free card."

If someone is unhappy, he says, he or she can just tell a commanding officer they're gay and be discharged.

Regardless of why enlistees leave, many do so under extreme duress. "At some point, there's something that snaps," says hotline volunteer Merrill.

"Almost anyone that calls us wants out of the Army or whatever branch they're in," says Bill Galvin, a counseling coordinator at the Center on Conscience and War in Washington. But "even people with legitimate grounds for discharge, they ask, 'What if I go AWOL?' "

Mr. Galvin suggests that access to the Internet, making it easier for enlistees to learn their rights, might account in part for a rise in desertions.

Just this past week, he says, "I can think of two to three cases of people who decided to go AWOL... We didn't want them to, but [then] they find out it's an easy way out.... It's a no-brainer."

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