With Peace Breaking Out, Soldiers Ponder Getting Out : Military: Most service personnel are staying put. But many see big cutbacks on the horizon and are considering making the leap back to civilian life.

Bob Thorlakson looked back at 22 years in the Army and ahead to the shrinking military of the post-Cold War ‘90s and made a decision.

“I got out. I decided not to wait around for the cuts to hit,” he said.

Thorlakson and untold numbers of other men and women in the American armed forces are trying to make their peace with peace.

Some are leaving. Many more are considering it. Most apparently are hoping to hold on, unsure whether they will avoid the ax but unwilling just now to give up the uniform and make the leap back to civilian life.

“You read so much about the cutbacks that are coming down the road,” said Lt. Col. Bill Daniels, who plans to retire this year after he completes his 20th year in the Air Force.

These private struggles are being played out across the nation and at U.S. bases abroad as the Bush Administration and Congress scale down defenses in light of a suddenly receding Soviet military threat. Big force reductions are coming--some estimate 300,000 people over four years--although the crunch is not likely to hit many military families until next year.

Thorlakson, 45, didn’t know when he retired last December if he would have been forced out by the cutbacks. He held the rank of lieutenant colonel and was nearly eligible for promotion. But the Army’s future--and thus his own--looked so murky that he took his chances on a civilian job.

Like many others who had never held a job outside the military, Thorlakson stumbled at first. He took a job selling family financial services but soon found it didn’t suit him. He quit. Now he is looking for work in personnel management.

Thorlakson, of suburban Washington, is confident that he will find a good job. But for many others facing similar decisions, the prospect of change can be intimidating--even though it’s too early to know how many one-time soldiers will be competing for civilian jobs.

“They are apprehensive. They don’t know what’s going on,” said Jack Merritt, a retired Army general who keeps in close contact with servicemen. He is executive vice president of the Assn. of the United States Army, a champion of Army causes.

The fear is felt even among those just entering the service.

Merritt spoke recently to ROTC cadets at Norwich University, a military school in Northfield, Vt.

“That was foremost on their minds: ‘Is there a future for me now?’

“My answer is, of course there’s a future, but it will be a future for fewer people,” he said.

Pentagon planners are worried too. They’ve never had to shrink an all-volunteer force, which now has 2.1 million active-duty personnel. Many careers will be slowed, many ended. And some will be changed even before they begin. A recent Pentagon report to Congress said many ROTC students, some of whom signed up as long as five years ago, will not be allowed to enter active duty. They will have to serve their required time in the reserves.

Soon, probably starting next year, the pink slips will start coming. The Pentagon is concerned that this might hurt morale and discourage America’s youth from taking a chance on the military in the future.

In force reductions after World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars, thousands of draftees were itching to turn in their weapons and get back into civvies.

“That’s not true today,” Christopher Jehn, the assistant defense secretary for force management and personnel, said in an interview. “Everybody in the military wants to be there, including many who believe they made a career commitment to the military.”

“They’ve all got contracts with us,” Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said recently. “And so how we treat them is going to have a big impact on our continued ability to recruit and retain first-class people to serve in the military.”

The problem is most acute in the Army, which plans to cut about 135,000 from its total force of 770,000 by 1994. And Congress could order more.

Most Army cuts will hit the enlisted ranks but officers also will be dropped. The Pentagon recently asked Congress for greater authority to fire officers in grades below lieutenant colonel. It said this would be done only as a last resort, but added: “The Army’s situation is severe enough to warrant such action,” even if more is done to encourage officers and others to quit voluntarily.

Brig. Gen. Timothy Stroup, the Army’s top personnel manager, said one of his main goals is to prevent former soldiers from feeling that they were unfairly forced to leave.

“They go back to the hometowns of America . . . to be the fathers and mothers of the next generation of young men and women that join the military,” Stroup said. “It’s important that we have satisfied alumni.”

Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said: “Memories are long. If we botch the job now in scaling back military spending, can we depend on an all-volunteer force to come to our rescue in the future?”

Many in Congress are calling for deeper and swifter reductions than the Administration has proposed. They know that the quickest path to a “peace dividend” is to save on troop costs, even though the Defense Department cautions against a politically inspired rush to retrench. The Pentagon spends nearly half of its $300-billion-a-year budget on manpower.

The Pentagon said it can reach its goal of shrinking the armed forces by 50,000 people this year with few if any firings. Fewer recruits will be hired to fill the usual number of vacancies left by retirements, resignations, deaths and discharges.

Attrition alone won’t do the trick in 1991, though, or for the next several years.

Because the services have not yet resorted to dismissals, the fear of firing is only beginning to set in.

“When you see those cuts, then you’ll see a different attitude among the young kids with 10 or 12 years of service: ‘Where am I going?’ they’ll wonder,” said Col. Fred Allega, a Marine pilot who is retiring, but not because of the coming squeeze.

“People are feeling more secure than they should,” said Navy Capt. Bruce Sherman.

Stanley D. Hyman, president of Identify Research Institute, which advises military people on making the transition to civilian life, said most soldiers are at least vaguely aware of the painful adjustments they face but are trying to ignore them.

“It’s like they’re thinking, ‘I know I’m going to the dentist to have all my teeth pulled, but it’s next year. I’m all right now. When it’s going to be tomorrow, I worry.’ ”

Hyman hears from soldiers around the country. One recent day, while talking with a visitor at his home in McLean, Va., Hyman got a call from a sailor who said he was thinking of quitting because his base at Norfolk, Va., would be cutting back.

“This guy is scared,” Hyman said after hanging up.

Signs of increased anxiety among military people are just beginning to appear, said Hyman, who has been advising service families for more than 20 years. He predicts that force reductions will take a heavy emotional toll in the next several years.

“We’re going to see more suicides, more family breakups,” he said.

Jehn, the Pentagon personnel chief, said he needs Congress’ help to make the force reductions as quickly as required but as painless for people as possible.

The Defense Department is asking for authority to provide severance pay to enlisted people who get the ax--something never done before. Under current law, officers cut after five to 20 years of service are given one month’s base pay for each year of service, up to $30,000. Jehn said enlisted people should get equal treatment.

Stroup, the Army personnel chief, said the department also needs more latitude to cut officers.

“We don’t want to do that, but we have to reduce the force and you want to keep your force balanced so you don’t have too many senior officers and no junior officers,” he said.

Jehn said the department also is developing an experimental program, in cooperation with the Labor Department, to help servicemen with 10 to 14 years of experience adjust to the civilian job market. They will be advised on ways of searching for a job, conducting themselves in job interviews, and writing resumes.

“Those kinds of things most of these people aren’t going to know,” he said.