Army Offers Soldiers Four Days Off to Play Grand Theft Auto If They Reenlist

Let me make sure I’ve got this straight.

The United States Army, the same institution that stormed Normandy and held the line at Chosin Reservoir, is now bribing soldiers to reenlist with a four-day pass to sit on the couch and play a video game about stealing cars and shooting at cops.

Bless their hearts.

The 9th Brigade Engineer Battalion at Fort Stewart, Georgia, put out a memo on July 28 telling 130 eligible soldiers that if they sign up for at least two more years of service between August 1 and November 14, they get a special four-day pass timed to the November 19 release of Grand Theft Auto VI. Battalion commander Lt. Col. Ryan Hodgson signed off on it. A career counselor dreamed it up. Fort Stewart spokesperson Lt. Col. Angel Tomko confirmed the whole thing to the Associated Press and NBC News, saying the idea was “to have a unique incentives program that connects to what soldiers are interested in.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CC BY 2.0) via Wikimedia Commons

Twenty soldiers have already taken the deal. Twenty out of 130 looked at the offer of four whole days to play a crime simulator and said, “Sign me up, Sergeant.”

Now, I support our military. I always have. I want good people to serve, and I want them to stay in. But I have a few questions for whoever’s running the retention shop down at Fort Stewart.

Is this really the pitch? “Defend your country, and we’ll let you pretend to carjack a virtual tourist in a fake Miami”? That’s what we’re offering the men and women who carry our flag? Four days of couch time with a controller in their hands?

The game itself, for anyone who hasn’t been near a teenager in the last twenty years, is a satirical crime playground. You steal cars. You run from police. You pull heists. It’s rated Mature, which means the Army is essentially telling young soldiers, “Hey, you can’t have a beer at 20, but here’s four days to simulate grand larceny on the government’s dime.” The publisher’s CEO, Strauss Zelnick, called preorder numbers “unprecedented and astonishing,” so I guess the Army figured they’d ride that hype train right past the reenlistment office.

Here’s what gets me. The Pentagon can’t figure out why recruitment and retention are in the tank. They’ve commissioned studies. They’ve rolled out ad campaigns. They’ve changed fitness standards and uniforms and grooming policies. And the best idea a career counselor could come up with is, “What if we just give them the week off to play Xbox?”

Rockstar Games (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

Maybe the problem isn’t that soldiers need more video games. Maybe the problem is that the people running things have forgotten what it means to serve something bigger than yourself, and they’re projecting that onto the troops. Maybe soldiers are reenlisting at lower rates because the bureaucracy treats them like children who need to be bribed with screen time instead of adults who deserve to know their service means something.

I don’t blame the 20 soldiers who took the deal. Four days off is four days off, and Grand Theft Auto VI is going to be the biggest entertainment release of the year. I’d take the pass too. That’s not the point.

The point is that somewhere in the chain of command, a lieutenant colonel sat down, typed up a memo on official letterhead, and wrote that a four-day pass was “specifically designed to coincide with the highly anticipated release of the video game Grand Theft Auto VI.” He put that in writing. With his name on it. And nobody up the ladder said, “Ryan, maybe we rethink this one.”

The Army used to offer soldiers purpose, brotherhood, and a chance to be part of something that mattered. Now it offers them a controller and a crime spree. And the brass wonders why the best ones are walking out the gate.