Dad, You Should Have Been a Colonel

For the last fifty years of his life, George was referred to often as "the Colonel." The term was partly one of respect, but it was primarily rooted in his service in the U.S. Army and the active Army Reserve, service which dated back to his original enlistment in 1940.

In 1961, George was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel, hence the respectful nickname he had until his passing in 2011.  It was the rank he held when he "was retired" from the Army after almost 30 years; for reasons that are today's story, he never was promoted to full colonel before his mandatory retirement arrived.

This is not a story to get anything done, mind you.  It's just a story.  Nothing can be changed, nor does anything have to be.  But perhaps someone in the bowels of our Government will read this, and remember, on some future occasion, that their actions have consequences.

I'm not going to exaggerate this story as a case of heroism; it was one of service.  George joined the Army at 24, before the war, which by then had already enveloped Europe, involved the USA.  He had enlisted and was already serving when the Pearl Harbor attack got things very serious in a big hurry.  A very intelligent man but without a college education, he immediately applied for officer training, and waited while his application was processed.

It was while he was on a troop train far out west that his commanding officer pulled him off at a stop and told him to turn around and head back east -- he had been picked up for training and would be going to Officer Candidate School.

As I mentioned, George's story was not the most heroic war tale.  He went through school successfully, was commissioned as a second lieutenant in ordnance, and headed off to England, where he became an expert in small arms technology and repair, even patenting a small tool for repairing Enfield rifles.  A captain by the end of the war, George made the decision to leave the active Army and join an Army Reserve program, one that had been set up to maintain a strong component of reserve forces for combat and combat support.

He specifically was enrolled in a version of a "lifetime" reserve program.  Essentially, he would serve on active duty two weeks of every year until retirement, and also go through specific training over the years, in his specialty (ordnance, particularly small arms).  Since training was his Army role, the program mandated that the officers in it would be promoted on time -- seven years in grade to become a major, seven more for lieutenant colonel, finally seven more for colonel -- as long as they successfully performed their annual duties and achieved sufficiently high grades on all their training along the way.

Having worked hard on his training in parallel with his civilian career, George was dutifully promoted to major in 1954 and lieutenant colonel in 1961.  He assumed that his final promotion, to colonel in 1968, would be fairly routine and he could retire as a "full bird."

George made the trip to face his promotion board in 1968, only to find that his records had been misplaced by Army Personnel; the board did not have them.  Without records, they could not act on his promotion, and action was delayed until the next meeting of the board -- one year later.

Of course, a lot can happen in a year.  In George's case, what "happened" was that his age, years in service and years in grade combined, in the Army's formula, to mandate his retirement, though against his will, before the subsequent board could even meet.  And retire him they did -- as a lieutenant colonel.

George would tell the story over the years, of course, but he refused to allow anyone to do anything about it.  It offended his sensibilities that his own desires should affect the Army or the way that the Army did business.  Friends certainly offered to intervene, but he would not let them.  He was Army all the way, and if that's what happened, he was going to live with it.  And live with it he did, through the 1970s, and '80s and '90s.  By 2009, still around, he had kept his case to himself for 40 years.

Some time in 2009, though, I had a conversation with him and mentioned my consulting work and that I had met the previous week with some Air Force general about something.  He paused, and looked at me -- remember, he was 93 years old and a widower by then -- and said, "Do you think you might try to fix the issue with my promotion?".  Surprised, I told him I would do what I could.

By 2009 we had Al Gore's Amazing Internet, and it was pretty easy to get contact information for his congressman, his senator's office, Army Personnel and the like.  Moreover, George had kept everything -- he had all the letters and documents from his program from the 1940s and 1950s, and from the promotion board in 1968.  They were easy to scan, package and supply.

George's senator's office pointed me to the right people at the Department of the Army, and I was fairly quickly able to locate the right office.  There is, amazingly, a procedure for cases sort of like this, and I filled out a ton of forms and scanned a lot of documents for them.  By the way, George had to sign a few, too, and even then he signed them reluctantly and had to be reminded that he was the one who had asked me to pursue this.

Now, I am a member of AFCEA, the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association.  AFCEA is essentially an organization of people in both the contracting and the active military community.  Its local chapters meet monthly for well-attended lunches where senior military officers do presentations on upcoming programs and procurements.

My chapter, Northern Virginia, as part of its program, introduces and celebrates one old veteran each month -- WWII vets around 2010 were either pushing or already over 90, so there was a lot of applause when they did that each time.  And those lunches attract over 400 people each time; most of whom are strongly military-oriented.  Those 90-year-old vets are respected. 

I was thinking how fantastic it would be if, at one of those lunches, I could introduce a now-94-year-old WWII veteran and have his story read, and have some Army general shake his hand and pin colonel's eagles on his shoulders.  I'm tearing up now thinking of that ... I did mention that George was my dad, right?

Six months after I sent in the application, George received a letter from the Army stating that they simply had no records available from the era validating his evidence that he actually merited the promotion based on performance.  Essentially, even though they conceded the rules of the program he was in, since the promotion board never actually met on his case in 1968, they couldn't validate that he "deserved" the promotion, and he would remain a retired lieutenant colonel.

I knew that I had done everything possible, and he knew it, too.  I sure can't say the Army did everything it could, not in 2010 and certainly not in 1968, but I'll have to believe it because there's nothing to do or say now.

George lived long enough to where, had the Army actually done its job and promoted him, I could have arranged that ceremony at an AFCEA meeting.  And, knowing the bent of the attendees, they would have been standing and screaming for him at that promotion ceremony, for minutes on end.  And Dad would have loved that, as he got finally the promotion he earned and some surprising appreciation.

Like I say, I do hope that anyone reading this who works for the government -- well, I hope you take this story to heart as you do your job.  Because your colleagues, at least in this case, didn't.

Whatever.  When I look up and talk to him in Heaven, I can still call him "Colonel Dad."

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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