27 July 2010
 
Date of Rank

(Lieutenant Thomas Wheat Swearing in some New Fish. Photo courtesy t3.gstatic.com)

 
I recall the day with a sort of vague cotton wool memory. It was in Detroit, at the Military Entrance Processing Center, and a disengaged Petty Officer handled me after the young Lieutenant had me raise my right hand and recite some words.
 
He went away to do something important, and the Second Class Yeoman cut me some orders to go home.
 
“I need orders to go home and wait to report to Aviation Officer Candidate School at Pensacola?” I said. “That is months away. It seems ridiculous. A waste of time.”
 
The YN2 looked at me without curiosity. “You are in the Navy now. Get used to ridiculous. This is nothing, trust me.”
 
He paused. Then he said “Sir,” with a smirk.
 
I took him at his word, and the smirk, went home and got drunk with Porky, marveling that I felt exactly like I did the day before, and just as intoxicated. I dimly realized that something radical had occurred, even as we opened another frosty Stroh’s fire-brewed Bohemian beer in the loft where I was living over Porky’s parent’s garage in Palmer Woods. It was a grand house they picked up for a song after the riots. Nice place to live, as an interim, though I was about to find out that everything is interim in the Navy.

Hurry up, wait, hurry up. Move here and there. Orders are orders.
 
I was subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or UCMJ, for one thing. The UCMJ is a code, to be sure, but neither uniform nor just as civilians understand things.
 
24 March 1977 it was, written just that way in the military manner. That day came back to me often, as the Date of Rank, or DOR, that figured on every pay calculation and promotion for the next twenty-seven years.
 
It was really significant, since the time spent hanging around the estate in poor bedraggled Detroit counted to all sorts of thing later, including total time in service for retirement purposes. It was good that I took that gray Michigan day to go down and get the little ritual out of the way, the one in which I swore to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
 
I mention that this morning because my younger son is going to mouth the very same words in front of another young Lieutenant on the Navy side of the Andrews Air Base flight line in two hours time.
 
He will become an enlisted man during the wait to start Officer Candidate School; it is for pay purposes only, and he can always exercise his other DOR options, I think, which is the famous “Drop on Request,” which is what we could say to the Drill Instructor if things got too hard. It would be the way out if he doesn’t like people yelling at him.
 
I am going with him. My service earned me a sticker for my windshield, which in these times of enhanced security will enable us to pass security at the gate and drive right to the admin office for the little ritual that means so much.
 
I am thinking we might stop for a beer on the way back. It is a Date of Rank thing.

Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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