Promoted!

Thursday 22 January 2009
0745

The 2008 Army Reserve LTC promotion board results were published last week and I am promoted to Lieutenant Colonel (finally!)

Ever since I got back in the Army Reserve after an absence of many years, I’ve been enrolled in the military education courses I should have had years ago, had I stayed in, all of which were required for promotion. Since my long absence also meant that by date of rank I was long overdue to be considered (and long past the mandatory maximum time in grade), I was also immediately in the zone of consideration.

This circumstance created a level of pressure for me, because on the one hand I was not educationally qualified for promotion, but on the other hand I had to go before mandatory promotion boards. Since I was already past my maximum time in grade, non-selection would mean I’d have to get out of the Army.

I enrolled in the necessary courses as soon as possible after my reappointment in the Army Reserve, and have been working on them ever since. The first one was called CAX, and was just a two-week resident course that I took in the late spring of 2006. The big one has been ILE (Intermediate Level Education) which they used to call “Command and Staff” since it’s given by the Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. I enrolled in this course right after CAX, in June 2006.

Because I was mobilized in September 2006 and have volunteered for additional deployments since then, I have completed the entire course of study while deployed. The Army actually has a pretty good policy on mandatory education – for every month I have been deployed, Ft. Leavenworth granted me an additional month on my deadline for completing the course. So even though I originally had an eighteen month deadline for completion, it was extended to give me time to finish after returning home.

But because of the mandatory annual promotion boards and the consequences of non-selection (not to mention my desire to be promoted), these extensions really didn’t help me at all – I have been in a race against time to get ILE completed. Because the entire course is online through the "School of Army Distance Learning", my ability effectively to work on it has been subject to my internet connection situation, which has sensitized me to that over and above my desire to connect with my family.

The announcement for the first board in September 2006 took me by surprise, but I got my packet together in time and was all set, including my request for an education waiver (which allows you to be considered even if you haven’t finished the required schooling). At that time the requirement for the waiver was that you be enrolled in ILE, which I was. At the last minute my file was pulled from that board, though, because I had not been on the RASL (Reserve Active Service List) for one year before the convening of the board (another requirement).

I made progress in the course through 2006/2007, and put together my board file for September 2007 in the same way I had in 2006. Unfortunately for me, they had changed the policy on education waivers and now I had to be finished with both Phase I and Phase II in order to qualify. Because I was only partway finished with Phase II, I did not qualify for the waiver. Nonetheless I had to be considered by the board, and was thus not promoted due to being “educationally unqualified”. This was a real kick in the head, because non-selection for promotion is a bad thing. One time non-select is bad; two time non-select means you're out of the Army. My chain of command got letters and were required to counsel me, etc. Of course I was able to tell them why I hadn’t been selected (the letter they received didn’t tell them the reason), and that I was doing everything I could to qualify. So it didn’t reflect negatively on me from that perspective. Still, it was galling to be caught in the system like that, especially since I hadn’t known about the policy change until my request for an education waiver was refused in August, right before the board.

So I soldiered on, knocking out the courses and writing the papers, etc. Some of it was very interesting and stimulating, and some of it was quite tedious. I especially enjoyed one of the papers that I had to write on a military history topic, for which I chose a favorite subject – the M1 Garand rifle. As the 2008 board approached, I finished Phase II and got my completion notice and education waiver just in time to complete my board file before going on leave between tours.

The board convened 7 September 2008, and I knew at that time that they would probably announce the results sometime in late December or early January. Meanwhile I had a new duty assignment, new unit, and new duty station. So in addition to all the things attendant to taking a new job, I had to work on ILE Phase III. I had a bit of a surprise when I started it – they had archived the version of the course I originally started in, and put me in the Phase III of a later version of the course. The layout of the course had been fairly substantially reorganized. Whereas in the original version, my Phase III would have been pretty short, this new version of Phase III had quite a bit more work. (Yay!) But I had no choice, so I just sucked it up and did it. The good news was that this version was finally much more up to date in current COIN doctrine than the one I’d been in before. So the assignments were very current and much more relevant to what we are doing over here.

I sent in my second-to-last assignment on 30 December, which left me with the end-of-course exercise to complete. It was a pretty large assignment requiring the integration of quite a lot of material without very much guidance from the school. I basically had to lock myself in my room for a couple days to get it done. I finally just got it Fedexed to the school a couple days ago. It will take them about a month or so to grade it, process it, and graduate me from the course.

Meanwhile on 15 January the board results were announced, and I was selected! So now the question arose as to what my status was. I had been told by my advisor in the officer branch at HRC (Human Resources Command) that when you get promoted on a waiver, you have to wait to pin on the rank until you graduate from the course. So that was the guidance I went by, and that’s what I told everybody who congratulated me when the list came out.

There was also a great deal of confusion about whether I needed to be in an O5 slot to be promoted. I was told very authoritatively that I had to have an O5 paragraph and line number before I could get promoted, and was also told just as authoritatively that this requirement is waived when you are deployed, and they just promote you. So I really had no idea what was going to happen.

It was kind of strange, though, because a couple days after the list came out I received a set of orders promoting me to LTC effective last December. Then I looked in my online HRC file and my rank had been changed to LTC. I received an LES (Leave and Earnings Statement) for the pay differential, which listed me as an LTC. The commander here (an active Army officer) questioned me about it, and told me that his view was that I am promoted.

Mark Twain once wrote that “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble – it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so”.

I sent an inquiry in to HRC yesterday, and received a reply last night. Once again, the policy for the US Army Reserve had been different than the policy for active Army officers. To correct this they had issued a policy change a couple years ago. The net result is that I am eligible to pin on rank immediately. So today I came to work as a Lieutenant Colonel.

Once again, confusion reigns about personnel policies involving Reservists. There’s no way that any one person can know everything, so I don’t blame anyone. I am just glad that the commander questioned the policy and motivated me to make the inquiry – I have to admit that it’s more fun to wear the rank than to have to explain to everyone why I’m still dressed as a Major, after they heard the announcement that I’d been promoted. (When the public announcement went out, the first image that popped into my mind was Rickie Ricardo telling Lucy “You got some ‘splainin’ to do!”)

So last night I sent the HRC reply to my inquiry to all the relevant officers here, and sent a note to my family members telling them the good news. I got back several nice notes congratulating me, but the one that really "made my morning" today was from my youngest daughter (with whom I play World of Warcraft):

Congratulations, dad!
You've leveled up!
You have gained:
20 hit points
40 mana points
You are now revered with the U. S. Army!

:)

Mood: Happy
Music: Mozart, Piano Sonata # 11