I’m currently reading The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (The complete annotated edition), and one statement caught my attention so far. During the Mexican War, 1846-1848, the then Lieutenant Grant mentioned that during the Army Occupation at Corpus Christi, “the rank and file were composed of men who had enlisted in a time of peace, to serve for seven dollars a month, and were necessarily inferior as material to the average volunteers enlisted later in the war expressly to fight, and also to the volunteers in the war for the preservation of the Union” (42).

As today’s U.S. Army continues to struggle with their enlistment goals, there is an opportunity to reassess enlistment methodologies in order to get the right men and women for the job. 

• Ed’s Notes