Fake Promotion – An Ode to Military Humor

If you have read my recent posts, you know that I have been discussing my family’s departure from Hawaii on our way to Tacoma enroute to North Dakota and the East Coast.  I was ultimately headed to the East Coast to Fort Lee (now Ft Gregg-Adams), Virginia to attend the Logistics Executive Development Course.  The stops in Tacoma and North Dakota were to visit relatives.  That reminds me, I should probably tell you my theory of relatives sometime.  Not now, but some other time.  See, Einstein had his theory of relativity.  Well, my theory is kinda like that.  Only, my theory is about relatives.  Kinda neat, huh?  Oh yeah, the stop in North Dakota was also to retrieve my red Chevy van.  Well, I have talked about our journey across the United States to get to Fort Lee, Virginia.  We had some interesting exploits along the way and you can read about those exploits in some of my recent posts.  After arriving at Fort Lee, Virginia, I spent some time in my most recent posts talking about finding a place to live.  I mentioned in one post that we found a place in a trailer park in Petersburg.  And I mentioned in that post my sentiments about the manager of that trailer park.  But my family and I decided not to let that pickup driving, backwoods dwelling, varmint hunting, shotgun hauling trailer park manager interfere with our ability to get along and adapt to our new environment.  Even though we were treated as if we were “other-colored” people, we learn to improvise, overcome and adapt.  My son was getting along just fine and playing with his friends and time moved on.  Well, as I said, time moved on.  My family all got integrated into life at Petersburg and Fort Lee.  Even I got accustomed to life at Petersburg and Fort Lee.  My running routine began once more, I ran through those woods pretty much every evening after school without fail.  And if you read my most recent post, you no doubt read about the orchestrated run that was thrown together by the cadre at the Logistics Executive Development Course.  However, my most recent post didn’t talk about running at all.  No.  It talked about country briefs.  But that wasn’t my most recent post.  My most recent post actually talked about having to deal with the sensitive politics revolving around Allied army officers attending the Logistics Executive Development Course.  If you read that post, you no doubt know that I was right in the thick of things because I was appointed as a liaison officer.  The subject of today’s post deals with another sensitive subject – promotions.  The Logistics Executive Development Course was open to senior elite Army captains, promotable captains, majors, and elite Allied army officers.  I was in that first category – senior elite Army captains.  I was due to be considered for promotion with my first look for promotion to major that year.  I didn’t think that I would be picked up below the zone for major, so I didn’t even consider looking for my name on the list.  In fact, my branch advised me that I probably wouldn’t be picked up for promotion below the zone.  However, the commanding general of The Logistics Center and Fort Lee was a cousin to the commanding general of the Nineteenth Support Command.  The commanding general of Fort Lee called me into his office by name to tell me that his cousin had called him to extol my blessings and accomplishments while under his command and that his cousin should do everything in his power to ensure that I got promoted.  Well, things don’t exactly work that way.  As far as promotions go in the Army so I took everything that the general told me with a grain of salt.  Imagine my surprise when the commanding general of Fort Lee held a special ceremony to promote me.  I had received no promotion orders from the Department of the Army and I had received no sequence number for promotion.  This had to be some terrible mistake.  Apparently the joke was on me because two days later, when the real orders came down from the Department of the Army, my fake promotion from the commanding general of Fort Lee was revoked.  All of my friends asked me what I had done to get demoted two days after I got promoted.  All of my other classmates who pretended to be my friends just laughed behind my back.  That was a cruel joke to play but the real story was that the general was trying to give me a field promotion which wasn’t valid except in time of war.  And we weren’t in a war, much less in a theater of operations.  I suffered some emotional distress at the general’s expense.  But other than that I experienced no exercises in futility.

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