PEBD 800411

PEBD is the Army acronym for “Pay Entry Base Date”.  That’s the date when you first take the oath to get sworn into the Army.  Mine was 11 April 1980, 42 years ago today.  Little did I know then how frequently I’d be reminded of that date, or how significant it would turn out to be in my life.

Little did I know at the time what a journey was ahead of me when I signed up for Army OCS (Officer Candidate School).

I joined the Army under the delayed-entry program, or DEP.  They sign you up, but let you delay basic training until a date in the future.  In my case, I joined in April but didn’t report until the end of September, because I wanted to spend the summer after college backpacking around the west.  I did that, and reported to the Army on 25 September 1980, giving rise to another date I’d see many times over the years: my “Base Active Service Date” or BASD.

The BASD was the basis for most things that involved time in service, e.g. service obligations, eligibility for promotions, etc.  But the PEBD was the basis for pay-related actions.  So whenever there was a time-in-service related pay increase, it was calculated from the PEBD rather than the BASD.  Over the years that extra five and a half months added up.

It had an even more important effect when it came time for retirement.  The Army has been slowly changing its retirement system over the years, gradually changing the way retirement pay is calculated, and finally moving completely away from the traditional defined-benefits plan to the current defined-contribution plan.  Each successive change in the system resulted in less-generous retirement benefits. The first significant change took place on 1 September 1980.  Because my PEBD was in April before the change, my retirement was calculated under the original system, which will work in my favor for the rest of my life.  I didn’t even realize this until I started planning for retirement.

But I was not even dimly aware of any of these financial implications when I first signed up.  I was just ready to go, impatient to get on with it, to *do something* and set a direction for myself in life. So I decided to join the Army.  The actual process of joining turned out to be an introduction to how the Army worked, and to how I'd need to be persistent and focus on my objective if I wanted to get anything done.  

I contacted a recruiting office and went through a variety of tests and other bureaucratic processes.  Then the recruiters spent at least a month trying very hard to influence me to enlist for the Defense Language Institute and become a linguist. As interesting as DLI sounded, I really thought that I would rather be an officer.  It was very hard to get them to give me any information about other options than enlisting as a linguist (I'm sure they got bonuses for finding linguists, as it was hard to qualify., The Defense Language Aptitude Battery was hands-down the hardest, most exhausting test I have ever taken in my life).  I finally made a call directly to Recruiting Command at Fort Sheridan and insisted upon speaking with an officer.  When they finally put an officer on the line, I told him I was a recent graduate of Northwestern University and that I'd been trying to join the Army for awhile. I told him that the recruiters were trying to steer me into an enlisted field, but that I thought there ought to be some way for me to become an officer.  Within a few days I was sitting in front of a board of officers at Fort Sheridan answering their questions, and when I walked out I had their recommendation for Officer Candidate School and an appointment to go downtown to the AFEES (Armed Forces Entrance and Examination Station) to get sworn in.

The day I first took the oath to get sworn in to the Army is a date that will always stick in my mind.  It was a cusp, a decision point at which I took a decisive turn that would determine the course of much of the rest of my life.  As such, 11 April is usually a day of reflective contemplation for me, as well as an occasion to lift a glass to those who helped and influenced me along the way.

Mood: Reflective

Music:  Bach, Concertos for Oboe and 2 Harpsichords