Troops: the Few, the Proud and the Underpaid : Compensation: They put their lives on the line for Uncle Sam, who gives them peanuts in return, experts say.

Half a world apart, Jeremy Kneip and Al Preciado are paid to stare down death.

Kneip, 20, has faced the fear of chemical weapons and Scud attacks as an El Toro Marine lance corporal stationed in the Persian Gulf. Preciado, 26, encounters thieves and junkies eight hours a day as a Santa Ana police officer.

Each job requires a high school diploma and some physical fitness, and each man has 2 1/2 years’ experience. But the similarities between them stop when it comes to compensation.

Kneip earns $21,268 a year, including housing and food allowances; Preciado brings in almost twice as much--$39,800 a year, not including overtime.

“The military is grossly underpaid,” Preciado said.

Uncle Sam has never lavished big paychecks on those in the military, though today’s all-volunteer force is better off than its predecessors. And while it is difficult to correlate military and civilian pay because of differences in benefits packages, some compensation experts--including a few inside the Pentagon--say that U.S. soldiers are poorly paid, especially when compared to those doing dangerous jobs here at home.

Nearly all of the young men killed at Khafji, for instance, were earning between $9,000 and $11,500 a year in basic pay plus about $178 in monthly bonuses for serving in a combat zone. Soldiers stationed during peacetime in such high-priced areas as Southern California, San Francisco or New York quickly develop all kinds of problems trying to live on such low wages.

Consider:

Eighty-two percent of all Marines at the Tustin and El Toro Marine Corps air bases hold second jobs, many of them menial, according to Maj. John L. Sayre, director of the Family Services Center, which serves both facilities. Some Marines at Camp Pendleton are on food stamps.

“That’s really awful,” said Robert Levering, co-author of the “100 Best Companies to Work For in America.” “No matter what benefits they offer, it can’t be a great place to work.”

Barracks for married soldiers--who now account for nearly 48% of enlisted personnel--are so scarce that there is more than a year’s wait in some locations. Families with children are given about $570 monthly to find apartments in Orange County, where the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $750 a month.

“We’ve done enough studies to know that’s too little for places like Los Angeles,” said Col. Bob White, deputy director of compensation for Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.

While the military recognizes risk with extra combat pay and related bonuses, the additional compensation is canceled out by combat troops’ loss of the food allowance, which is ordinarily given to anyone living off base. So, many soldiers have taken a slight pay cut even though they are facing greater dangers.

“When I went over to the Gulf, that was the first thing that came up,” said Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove). “At no time should your cumulative salary be reduced.”

Added James M. Hosek, defense manpower specialist at the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica, “It’s crazy.”

As the Gulf hostilities wind down, some military supporters think it’s high time the nation re-examines its conscience and pocketbook. Floating through the corridors of Congress are some 50 pieces of legislation related to increasing military compensation.

“This is a national disgrace,” said Sen. John Glenn, chairman of the Senate subcommittee on military manpower and a leading advocate for military pay raises. “These problems remind me of something (Rudyard) Kipling said: “For it’s Tommy this and Tommy that, and ‘chuck him out, the brute.’ But it’s ‘savior of his country’ when the guns begin to shoot.”

“That is how the military gets treated sometimes,” Glenn said. “Now that the guns have gone off . . . we can redress some of the things we should have taken care of a long time ago.”

Kneip’s wife, Sharon, is eager to get the help. The struggles of her daily existence say a lot about life on a military wage.

Her husband is thousands of miles away and still facing danger, but his paycheck actually shrank by $6 when he shipped off to Saudi Arabia. His $184 monthly food allowance vanished about the same time Kuwait did. The Defense Department cut off those funds because Kneip and everyone else in the desert gets three meals ready to eat a day.

The additional $110 a month in combat pay and $68 in related bonuses for serving in a war zone fall slightly short of making up the difference. “For people putting their lives on the line, they sure as hell aren’t getting paid enough,” Sharon Kneip said. “Personally, if I was fighting a war, I wouldn’t just take $110. I don’t think my life is worth just $110. How did they come up with that figure?”

Housing presents another hardship. For eight months, the couple and their infant son have waited for base housing at the El Toro air station. Base housing is free. While they wait, they are paying $850 monthly in rent for an apartment--nearly $300 more than the off-base housing allowance.

Things are so tight that her mother has moved in and is paying half of the bills.

“They (the Marines) are cheap,” Sharon Kneip said. “I really don’t know how they pull it off.”

Today’s voluntary troops are generally considered the best ever, powerful proof in some quarters that military compensation is more than adequate in attracting qualified personnel. Some critics contend, however, that this may not be true much longer if salaries and benefits continue slipping.

The financial struggles here at home are the steepest among junior enlistees, those young men and women in their late teens and early 20s who did a good part of the ground fighting.

“Any military member below the grade of about E-6 (staff sergeant) is no question having a tough time,” said the Defense Department’s Col. White. “We have a long way to go.”

Martin Binkin, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washingtonand co-author of “Paying the Modern Military,” said frustrated families like the Kneips are steadily growing in number as more married men and women enlist.

“There are a million stories like that in the naked city,” Binkin said. “Welcome to the volunteer force.”

Still, today’s volunteers are better off than draftees of the past. During World War II, a single private first class earned $54 a month ($401 in 1990 dollars) in basic pay and was fed chipped beef on white bread. Twenty-five years later, someone of the same rank brought home just $113.40 a month ($380 in 1990 dollars) fighting the Viet Cong. Today, an unmarried private first class earns $845 a month in basic pay.

Everything changed in 1973, after President Richard M. Nixon created the all-volunteer armed forces. Suddenly, the military had to compete with the private sector for employees, and its pay and benefits soared--for a few brief years. Military pay raises failed to keep up with inflation, which soared in the late 1970s.

By 1980, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Edward C. Meyer testified before a House subcommittee that his was a “hollow Army,” unable to attract enough qualified people to keep it going. The Navy couldn’t even send some of its ships to sea because of a scarcity of sailors. Pay and bad feelings stemming from the Vietnam War were considered the two primary causes of the military’s recruiting problems at the time.

The Reagan Administration restored order by increasing military pay for enlisted personnel by more than 25% in the early 1980s. Since then, however, pay hikes have come in dribs and drabs, and the Senate subcommittee on military personnel and compensation estimates that salaries have failed to go up as fast as those in the private sector by at least 12%.

Polls show that the majority of Americans support the Gulf troops, but less clear is whether they would put their money where their mouth is and start giving up a bigger chunk of their paychecks. “Will those same people flying the yellow ribbons pay more in taxes to give the military what it deserves?” Glenn asked.

Getting more money is an uphill battle because of the nation’s $280-billion deficit. The Congressional Budget Office estimates every 1% pay raise for military personnel costs taxpayers at least $750 million.

Salaries and personnel costs already are the Pentagon’s second-largest expense, just behind a catch-all category that covers the upkeep of equipment, traveling expenses and medical care for soldiers and dependents.

Forty-six percent of the Pentagon’s 1992 budget--$78 billion--is slated for military compensation, $10 billion more than was allocated for the procurement of new hardware, such as missiles and tanks.

The gap in pay between similar military and civilian jobs seems the greatest at times such as these, as the nation concludes a desert ground war of proportions that haven’t been seen since World War II.

Hazardous jobs in municipal and private sectors aren’t nearly as dangerous as those performed in combat but typically pay better. Some think the military should take a closer look at these positions and how much they pay; many think the comparison isn’t completely fair because there is no civilian equivalent to a foot soldier.

Several years ago, San Jose State compiled a list of the riskiest occupations in the United States as measured by the number of job-related deaths. The most dangerous work was logging, with some 129 deaths per 100,000 workers.

Choker setters, an entry-level position in the logging industry, start at $11.49 an hour, or $23,900 a year, as required by a union contract followed in much of Northern California. They can earn up to an additional $4,000 if safety and quality records are outstanding. Most live in rural areas where the cost of living is low.

Electric power-line and cable installers--with 50.7 deaths per 100,000--ranked as the fourth-most dangerous job in the San Jose State study, the same slot the peacetime military would have fallen into had it been included.

Southern California Edison employs about 825 linemen and 200 apprentices and has suffered two job-related fatalities in the last five years--one man fell to his death from a San Joaquin Valley electrical tower; another was electrocuted in an underground vault in the San Gabriel Valley.

Qualifications for the job of lineman apprentice are very similar to those of the military, and most successful applicants are physically fit high school graduates ranging in age from 18 to 25. Brand-new trainees at Edison make $14.20 an hour, or about $30,000 a year.

The disparity in pay between defending your country and simply repairing it hasn’t escaped the attention of military officials, some of whom think the Defense Department needs to look at how the private sector rewards risk taking. “We are doing some similar studies,” said Col. White. “We do know that people in hazardous duties on the outside get paid for it.”

Dornan, a member of the House subcommittee on military compensation and personnel, is working on legislation that would immediately increase combat pay from $110 to $150 a month and do away with the Defense Department’s provisions for cutting food allowances.

“We should close the gap in anything that involves risk,” Dornan said.

Since its basic pay is often below that of many private sector jobs, the military has relied on its benefit packages to attract recruits. New enlistees can qualify for up to $10,800 in college tuition; those remaining in the service for 20 years qualify for a pension that they can begin collecting immediately after retiring, and in many locations entire military families get free medical care.

Each of these benefit plans, though, has a few catches. For instance, a new recruit must declare on Day 1 that he or she is interested in a college education and then agree to have $1,200 deducted over the next year. If the enlistee decides six months into service that he or she wants to go to college, it’s too late to qualify for the tuition program.

The retirement plan is just as regimented. If someone serves 20 years, they will receive 40% of their annual basic pay for the rest of their lives. (It’s 50% for soldiers enlisting before 1986). Should someone leave after 18 or 19 years, they get nothing.

“Few companies have those kinds of hitches,” said author Levering. He said the benefits aren’t so good that they mitigate the low pay and hazardous duty.

So the natural question is, why do so many young men and women still sign up.

The reasons are diverse, ranging from patriotism and family traditions to a lack of employment choices in some depressed regions of the country.

Some racial minorities--most notably blacks--account for a disproportionate share of enlistees. Nearly 30% of the Gulf troops are black, even though African-Americans make up just 12% of the U.S. population, according to Defense Department statistics.

Army recruiting offices in Detroit, where the unemployment rate for young black men is about 16%, do a brisk business. Binkin, of the Brookings Institution, did a study that concluded that 40% of all qualified young blacks enter the military, compared to 14% of qualified young whites.

The military provides free training and guidance, and some recruits find lifetime careers along the way. Many, however, fail to pick up the high-tech skills they hoped to, learning little more than how to shoot a gun.

Rand’s James Hosek said that “20 to 25% of the people leaving the military make direct use of skills they learned there.”

Some, however, got what they bargained for--a chance to see the world.

“There is one word that is involved here that you must never fail to take into account: adventure,” said Dornan, a retired Air Force fighter pilot. “People will always seek out adventure and not be expected to be paid totally for the risks involved.”

Operation Desert Storm is the first real test of the all-volunteer army, and many think pay will have to improve once the dust settles. Congressional committees are mulling over everything from combat pay to cost-of-living adjustments for troops transferred to such places as Southern California.

Glenn, for one, thinks the country has a moral responsibility to do right by its warriors. “Even though they volunteered, the real question is, “Is it fair?” he said. “The answer is, ‘No, it’s not fair.’ ”

The Wages of War BASIC PAY PER MONTH ENLISTED MEMBERS

YEARS OF SERVICE Rank Less than 2 2 3 Private $753.90 $753.90 $753.90 Private first-class $845.10 $845.10 $845.10 Lance corporal $878.10 $926.40 $963.30 Corporal $932.10 $984.30 $1,042.20 Sergeant $999.30 $1,087.80 $1,140.60 Staff Sergeant $1,139.10 $1,241.10 $1,293.00 Gunnery sergeant $1,323.60 $1,428.90 $1,533.60

COMMISSIONED OFFICERS

YEARS OF SERVICE Rank Less than 2 2 3 Second lieutenant $1,444.20 $1,503.30 $1,816.50 First lieutenant $1,663.20 $1,816.50 $2,182.50 Captain $1,907.40 $2,132.70 $2,280.00 Major $2,052.60 $2,499.60 $2,666.40 Lieutenant Colonel $2,435.10 $2,859.30 $3,057.00 Colonel $3,445.00 $3,345.30 $3,564.60 Brigadier General $4,107.90 $4,387.20 $4,387.20 Major General $4,944.00 $5,092.20 $5,212.80 Lieutenant General (3-star) $5,458.50 $5,601.30 $5,720.70 General (4-star) $6,259.00 $6,375.60 $6,376.60

Source: Department of Defense Compensation Office 10 MOST DANGEROUS BLUE-COLLAR JOBS Here are the 10 most dangerous blue-collar jobs based on a study of 1987 mortality statistics. Peacetime military service would rank only fifth on this scale:

Deaths per Rank Job 100,000 1. Timber-cutters and loggers 129.0 2. Asbestos, insulation workers* 78.7 3. Structural metal workers 72.0 4. Electric power-line workers 50.7 Peacetime military** 49.5 5. Firefighters* 48.8 6. Garbage collectors 40.0 7. Truck drivers 39.6 8. Bulldozer operators 39.3 9. Earth drillers 38.8 10. Craft apprentices 37.5

* Includes a significant number of deaths from occupational illness ** Based on accidental deaths in 1989 Source: J. Paul Leigh, San Jose State University HOUSING ALLOWANCE Monthly subsidy for married military personnel with one or more dependents

Rank Payment Private $289.80 Private first-class $289.80 Lance corporal $304.40

Additional housing allowance for married soldiers stationed in high-cost areas

Rank Payment Private $288.90 Private first-class $296.58 Lance corporal $304.36

Source: Department of Defense Compensation Office