Armored Corps seeks new recruits at home

By YAAKOV KATZ
In an effort to curb a drop in motivation, the Armored Corps has launched a new project to inspire young recruits to serve in tank divisions - considered a grueling and nonprestigious military service. Similar to the settlers' faceto-face campaign launched in the run-up to the Likud 2004 internal referendum on the Gaza Strip disengagement, Armored Corps officers are going to the homes of every recruit slated for service in the corps for talks to alleviate fears and instill motivation. In total, company and squadron commanders have already visited hundreds of homes in the run-up to this week's March draft. The idea behind the project, a senior Armored Corps officer told The Jerusalem Post, was to locate recruits who would potentially refuse to serve in the corps before their enlistment at the Tel Hashomer Bakum Induction Center. "Every draft there are kids who say they don't want to serve in tanks and we then have to convince them at Bakum," the officer said. "We wanted to locate those recruits before their induction and deal with the problems while trying to raise the level of motivation." The teenagers who were against serving in the Armored Corps, the officer said, raised fears regarding service inside machines like tanks. "They thought we don't do anything except sit inside tanks all day," he said. "We explained to them that today we operate like any other infantry unit in the territories."