An average of 130 to 140 people from Maine join the U.S. Air Force each year
By Daniel Hartill
Staff Writer

AUBURN – Though U.S. soldiers, sailors, Marines and pilots remain in Iraq, one local recruiter has yet to hear the big question: If I join, will I go to war?

“No one has ever asked, not once,” said Staff Sgt. Korey Silknitter, who began recruiting for the Air Force one month ago.

Prospective airmen and airwomen seem more concerned about money for college than with the likelihood that they could end up in a war zone. Of course, Silknitter, whose last job was watching over a Midwest missile silo, can’t answer the war question.

“I don’t have a direct line to Secretary of Defense (Donald) Rumsfeld,” said Silknitter. “I don’t know.”

However, he can answer the school questions.

Education, both college tuition and the practical skills people can learn in the service, dominate questions, said Silknitter, the Air Force’s first full-time recruiter in Lewiston-Auburn for more than a year.

It seems to be the prime question in Maine, said Master Sgt. Joseph Merrill, who oversees Air Force recruiting across nearly the entire state.

“It’s the No. 1 reason people come to us,” said Merrill. “They want to know, ‘What’s in it for me?'”

Last year, more than 370,000 people were in the U.S. Air Force. About one-tenth as many, 37,000, join every year. Of those, 130 to 140 come from Maine.

Perhaps there would be more if the state still had an Air Force presence, he said.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, the service closed bases near Presque Isle and Portsmouth, N.H. It left only one in the entire Northeast, Hanscom Air Force Base, near Bedford, Mass.

Silknitter takes new and prospective recruits to tours of that base. He gives them details of the GI Bill and other education draws, such as the Air Force’s community college system, in which people can earn college credit for doing jobs.

His own life is an example of someone helped by the service, he said.

Now 27, Silknitter began his military career in the U.S. Marines, volunteering at 17.

When his four-year enlistment ended, he left. He worked for a while as a guard at the Cumberland County Jail. After that, he sold Toyotas.

Eventually, he joined the Air Force, where his brother flies F-15 “eagles.”

Silknitter is working on a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and aspires to be an officer. Meanwhile, his wife and children carry the health and dental benefits of the service, he said.

“I feel fortunate if I can help someone get what I have,” said the recruiter. “I really do.”

dhartill@sunjournal.com