Ossifers

German Army Gen. Volker Wieker, chief of defense, places the medal for the Knights Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany on U.S. Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a ceremony at the Defense Ministry in Berlin, Sept. 10, 2015.
DoD photo by D. Myles Cullen
(Source)

There are three types of officers in the Armed Forces of the United States of America...

No, no, no. I don't mean good ones, bad ones, and second lieutenants (ensigns for you nautical types).

There are commissioned officers, warrant officers, and non-commissioned officers. (The Pedia of the Wikis has a fair article on military officers, covers multiple nationalities and has some interesting factoids. You can read that here.)

For the U.S., a commissioned officer receives his or her commission from the President of the United States and in most cases has a four-year college degree. Commissioning can take place through one of three sources (I'm speaking generally of line officers in this instance, not doctors, nurses, lawyers, and the like who can be directly commissioned into the service after attending "knife and fork" school as we used to call it) - one of the service academies (think West Point, Annapolis, etc.), the Reserve Officer Training Corps, or ROTC, which is a special program in many universities and to which one must be selected, or a potential officer can attend Officer Candidate School (OCS, or Officer Training School - OTS - as the Air Force calls it, yes, we always have to be different), which requires one to have a college degree and which takes roughly 90 days. A civilian (or an enlisted person) goes in one end and comes out the other as a second lieutenant/ensign. Also known as "90 Day Wonders." No, it's not a compliment.

My three kids all went through Navy ROTC, my son-in-law did Navy OCS. So yes, Big Time is a 90-day wonder. I have yet to call him that as he is, in my estimation, an exceedingly fine officer. As he's now a Hinge, and no longer a member in good standing of the JOPA, we tend to treat him with a bit more respect. I mean he's like ancient for a fighter pilot...

(Yes, LUSH, you may tell him I said that. 😁 And yes, Hinge and JOPA are both described here.)

Okay, got all that? The next type of officer is the warrant officer. Currently the Air Force has none of these, the last one retiring back in the '80s. The Army, Navy, and the Marines all have 'em. A lot of your chopper pilots (what the Army calls helos) are warrant officers. I knew one warrant officer, Army type, in Korea who worked in the same building as our shop. He was an old(er) crusty dude. A technical wizard who garnered great respect from all who dealt with him.

I spent some time with a couple of Navy warrant officers out at sea on USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (calm down, it was one day, I don't wish to come across as too salty, well I do, but I can't really back it up). They look like chiefs (they wear khakis like the officers and chiefs) but have an immense amount of gravitas. Very crusty, very salty. I get the feeling that if they fell overboard, Neptune himself would return them to the ship with his apologies. Impressed I was!

So the way I understand things, and my research seems to confirm this, is that the service secretaries are the ones who provide warrants to the lowest grade of warrant officer. W-1. From that point on, the President of the United States "commissions" them. (See here.)

Warrants are above all enlisted grades (E-1 to E-9) and are below second lieutenants/ensigns in the hierarchy. But woe betide the junior officer who doesn't take a warrant officer seriously. My thoughts are that said junior officer may not have much of a career after that!

The last, and certainly the finest, of the officer types are the non-commissioned officers. The Army, Marines, and Air Force call them sergeants, the Navy calls them petty officers. Petty as in minor, not petty as in trivial. Call an old chief trivial while in the Navy, I dare ya. Just make sure your insurance is paid up and your will is up to date.

Of course, I was a non-commissioned officer in the Air Force, had that gig for 21 years. From buck sergeant (back then we had such a thing) to Master Sergeant. My fellow sergeants and I would often joke that if "Lieutenant So-and-so doesn't pull his head out of his ass soon, I'm gonna march into the colonel's officer and resign my non-commission." I actually had a lieutenant who started to explain to us that one could not resign something we didn't actually have. Yes, I played dumb with him and was having a riotous time playing the fool until the captain came in, shooed the lieutenant out and gave me the "stop messing with the lieutenant" look. Which officers, good ones anyway, learn shortly after making captain. (Oh yes, that would be lieutenant to you nautical types. Why does the Navy seem to do everything different? Because they can, tradition and all that, Sir Winston's views on that notwithstanding.)

So where am I going with all this blather? Well, I have a story to tell. A story in which I don't exactly cover myself with glory, but felt like I walked away with honor intact. Kind of like surrendering a fortress and being accorded the "honors of war" by one's opponent. Kind of, but not exactly.

I alluded to this story here, I never really did tell you why I went to San Antonio and why on earth was I in Fort Collins, Colorado when the nearest Air Force bases were fifty miles away. (One to the north, where The WSO was born, and one to the south, where The Nuke was born, more or less.) I also mentioned the hideousness of the cuisine at one Air Force installation here. Again, what the Hell were you doing there Sarge? Secret squirrel stuff?

Not hardly.

I have been reluctant to tell this story, though there is much hilarity to be had in the remembrances of certain events in the early months of 1987. There is also a certain amount of bitterness which yet remains, lo these thirty-one years later.

It was (with apologies to Dickens) the best of times, it was the worst of times. Of wisdom and foolishness there was much. There was light, darkness, hope, despair, I tell you, this story has it all.

Because, Dear Readers, once upon a time, Your Humble Scribe, your much beloved Sarge, was on the cusp of gaining a commission as a second lieutenant in the Air Force of the United States. I was right there.

And walked away from it all.

Regrets? A few.

Would I do it differently? Probably not. I am what I am, and I know what I am.

A sergeant, first, last, and always.

In the days and months ahead I shall tell this tale. In installments naturally, as why do it all in one post when I can stretch it out over a number of posts?

So there it is. I've confessed, now it's just the details which need telling.

Take a deep breath, make sure your seat belt is securely fastened, the ride could get bumpy at times...

Tomorrow: Chapter One, How I got there.



They say that confession is good for the soul. We shall see...