A Phone Call from Millington

It is six-fifteen here, Pearl Harbor Day, and there is a dull glow on the horizon that suggests the sun may rise again in the east. It will take another seven hours to form a glow in the east from Honolulu, 62 years to the minute when the Japanese warplanes flew low over the Waianai Mountains from their carriers to the northwest, shooting up Dillingham and Wheeler airfields as they headed for Hickham and Battleship Row. Arizona still weeps her drops of fuel oil from the bunkers that were full within her that Sunday morning. Holy Services were just starting on the fantails of the capital ships. The oil still casts a sheen across the lovely waters of the harbor and down to the narrow channel to the open sea. 

It is an appropriate day to consider a life in the Navy. It is crisp and cold in Washington, quite unlike the warmth of the Hawaiian Islands. The Flag Board convenes at the Bureau of Personnel in Millington Tennessee on Monday. I will be considered, along with all the other Navy Captains in my line of work, for selection to Admiral. This is my first look in the “primary zone” as they call it. We did not have a selection last year, since the Navy promotes only to vacancy in the Flag ranks. The odds of getting as far as I have are challenging, You can do the math- it was 100% selection to LTJG, 95% to LT, 80% to LCDR, 70% to CDR, and 50% to CAPT. The actual effective odds are less than that, of course, what with hold-backs and preferences and early picks for the teacher’s pets and old mistakes being fixed just when it was your turn to make it on time. There are better officers than me who have not made it, and worse ones who have gone farther.

A good career is based on successful and sustained respiration, an interested look, and the luck that someone has not tagged you with a security breach or dereliction of duty. A lot of luck. You have to be fortunate enough not to work for a lunatic that will kill your career out of malice or incompetence- we have plenty of those, and we work under stress out there in the wide world when even good people start to act a little squirrelly. It is interesting to observe what lack of sleep can do to people’s judgement. And you have to look around and hope that you are competing in your assignment with ordinary mortals, and not future Admirals.

But that is the Navy, and the Navy way, and I have loved it for over a quarter century. On Monday, a senior Admiral will head a panel that will review all our records and listen to the recommendation of a senior Intelligence Officer on what the records mean. Then nine Admirals will vote on the one officer of sixty who will be selected to be our next Flag, and based on the seniority and progression of our three intelligence Admirals, will be the Director of Naval Intelligence.

The odds are one in sixty. I am a realist. I was a supporting actor on a Flag Board one time, so I have no illusions on how they work. I am comfortable with the fairness, and according to the Flag officer who briefed my record to the Captain’s Board a few years ago, I have one of the best records in the community. But I am not serving in the Navy in my current job, nor the one before that. Those assignments had impressive titles and commensurate authorities, but I performed them knowing that others were getting closer to my Service and the line officers who actually make the choices for advancement.

So it will come as no surprise when they report out the results. I know the top two candidates, and one of them is one of my best friends. He has a four-star officer lobbying hard for his selection. But you never can tell. There is the old story about the officer who wrote a letter to the President of the Board one year. “Mr. President” he started out. “Every year when the list comes out there is one name on it that makes everyone say “How the Hell did that lucky son-of-a-bitch get on the list?” I respectfully request to be that son-of-a-bitch this year.”

Actually, I don’t, and I didn’t write any letters to the Board. I almost forgot it was happening. Making Admiral is even worse than making Captain. It is a commitment of another six or seven years. The jobs are awful, and for my community usually means moving to Hawaii, and shuttling back and forth to DC before being ordered back to One of Those Jobs that start at 0530 and run on until the Chairman or the CNO goes off to his social function at night. With the weekend to catch up on critical memos. I don’t want to do that.

But I do feel the ghost hands of the fierce competitive spirit that kept me clawing through the Squadron, and the OPINTEL Center, and the Numbered Fleets and BUPERS and the Airwing and J2 and Congress and the Navy and DIA Staffs. I am proud to say that I was a Numbered Fleet Intelligence Officer. There are only five of them, and only four real ones afloat. That was the hardest job to get, and the most fun to perform.

I forgot to do a Fitness Report last summer. I realized with a start that my Boss was leaving and I was going to need to her signature on a piece of paper or my record would be incomplete. I am the only 0-6 assigned to CMS, and so there is no one looking out for me, nor anyone to draft and proof the paperwork. I threw something together and my Boss signed it. I think it had the usual glowing words. Thinking I had done the minimum to fulfill the Navy’s requirements, I plunged back into other things. Snow came to us in Washington just after mid-night on Wednesday. The Government was shut down for the most part on Thursday, and I loafed at home, thinking of the things I should be getting organized for the Holidays. I did none of them, and luxuriated in a Snow Day.

One of the things I was not thinking about was the selection board. I literally slid into the office on Friday, taking the back roads to Langley to minimize my interaction with Virginians on the icy roads. I consequently arrived a little later than normal. In my younger days I would have arrived even earlier than normal to get the jump on my co-workers, but I no longer have to do that. I checked my phone messages- that is another cultural thing. In the Pentagon my phone had a little light that went alarm-bell red when there was a message waiting, and a button to push to bring it swiftly to your ear for immediate action. At Langley there is no light, no indication there is anything waiting. The messages can pile up even when you are talking on the phone and you would never know without dialing up your own number that anyone wanted to talk to you.

Culture.

Anyhow, this morning there were three messages waiting for me. One was from another Navy Captain, calling to cancel our meeting for a beer the evening before due to the condition of the roads. He was calling from the office, he had gone in despite the roads. There was a tone in his voice when he said he would call me at home with the same message.  He did, and I was there to take the call, a little embarrassed. There was a call from the State Department desk officer about a bi-lateral with some nation or another. And there was a call from Millington, Tennessee.

The hair went up on the back of my neck. That is the call you don’t ever want to get. The Bureau of Personnel got ripped up by its roots here on the hill overlooking the Potomac and was plopped down on the old Naval Air Station at Millington, Tennessee, about ten years ago. The place is convenient to nothing and nobody, but it is Politics with a capital “P.” The Navy needed to keep a presence in the states that have no coastline and no ships to stay competitive with influence in Congress with the Army and the Air Force who have installations everywhere. Millington was one of the hundreds of old bases that are strewn around the country, the legacy of the Civil War and Indian Fighting and the Great Wars of the last century. My Dad did pre-flight training in WWII at Millington, marching around endlessly, waiting for a seat in a cockpit at Pensacola to open up. Without something important at the facility, it would likely get placed on the Base Reduction and Re-allocation list. The short and ugly phrase was “BRAC’ed,” pronounced like cracked. And moving the Bureau mean Military Construction, or MILCON, and jobs and just enough judicial pork to make everyone happy except the poor sailors who had to make the move.

So BUPERS decamped from Washington like the Colts left Baltimore and you can never see your assignment officer anymore while on a Temporary Alternate Duty trip to Washington. Serving on a Board in Tennessee is a little like going to Siberia. A call from Millington means that the Navy wants something from you, and trust me, if it was a good thing somebody better connected in the bureaucracy would already have grabbed it.

So with some trepidation I called back. The note was from the Yeoman First Class who is the administrative support for Intelligence Assignments. He is a nice fellow, and he told me that the Recorders who screen the records had determined that my package was incomplete for review by the Flag Selection Board which would convene on Monday. My official picture was out of date, and showed me as a Commander. I blinked. I had a couple of official pictures taken as a Captain, the ones with the white hat and scrambled eggs and the four stripes showing on the sleeve and a stern look and the Flag over your right shoulder. That wasn’t the kind the Yeoman was talking about. The Yeoman said it was the full-length picture in khakis, with the date on it, so they could tell at a glance if you made height-and-weight standards.

This kind of portrait is a left-over from the years of down-sizing, when the Navy decided that it had the luxury to get rid of people and fat ones were a good place to start. Those days are long gone, and even with the Global War on Terrorism they are barely making the numbers to keep lurching along. But that is the nature of an institution almost as old as the Republic itself.

“So” I said. “If I don’t have an updated picture taken today I will not make Flag on Monday?”

“I suppose so, Sir.” We both laughed at the improbability, the career enlisted man and the aging Captain. Then the Yeoman said “But if you don’t have one, Sir, the Board will assume that you don’t care.”

I pondered that for a moment. I had cared an awful lot for a long time. But the odds of finding a Navy photo studio with an open appointment on the day before a weekend after a snow day seemed wildly improbable. Plus, I was observing casual Friday dress rules, and I was wearing jeans with the assumption that I might very well be pushing my car out of a ditch on the way to work.

“If I was able to get one,” I said “would I have to FEDEX it to the Board?”

“You can just e-mail it to me.”

“Ah, the wonders of modern technology.” I hung up and walked across the hall to tell the two retired Navy Captains who work for me about the odd conversation, laughing at the surreal nature of it. Roc looked at me with his lean angular face and, smiling,  said I would regret it if I didn’t make the effort. I realized he was right. I walked back into my office and picked up the DoD phone book. I looked in the Navy section, which comes not alphabetically but in order of seniority behind the Secretary of Defense, the Defense Agencies, The Joint Staff and the Army, since it was not disestablished after the Revolution the way we were. The Marines are actually the oldest Service, since a small platoon maintained continuity even without the Navy of which they were a part. But that is too complex, and that is nothing compared to the complexity of the Navy listings in the Phone book. There is no rhyme or reason to the order, or better said there is one that is discernable only to the student of history.

I eventually found Mr. Olson at the Navy Media Center who allowed as how he could take my picture in Anacostia, if I was there in thirty-five minutes. Otherwise Flag Officers had him booked all day. I asked him if he had any flexibility, due to the unique circumstances of who I was working for and the urgency of the impending Board. Mr. Olson is a good Navy civilian. He said I was out-ranked and there was nothing he could do about it. I asked if there was anyone else in this Imperial City who did Navy pictures. He said, absently, that he had heard that someone in the Personnel Support Activity at Bethesda Naval Hospital did it, but he didn’t have a number.

I thanked him for his interest in National Defense and wished him a good day. I thumbed through the phone book for the Bethesda Naval Hospital, which is listed under the term “National Naval Medical Center (NNMC),” logically placed under the N’s. With everything else. I talked to the Master Chief there and he crisply produced a phone number, and Physician’s Mate 2nd Class Royal answered when I called it. I asked him about a picture and he said they did them on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. I knew then it was impossible, but I told him my problem anyway, waiting for a variation of Mr. Olson’s answer. Instead, he said, “Come on up, Sir. We’ll take care of you.” I smiled. Sometimes the people help you remember why you love the Service. I slid down the hall and explained the reason for my departure to my supervisor and then slid down the parkway to my apartment and then slid north to Bethesda. The main roads were clear, but the side streets were still a mess.

An hour later I found myself under bright lights in a room under the tall art-deco tower of the NMCC that SecDef Forrestal threw himself out of all those years ago. I was wearing the only clean set of khakis I had that fit and I was parked in the slush in a vacant slot that I realized was clearly labeled “Seaman of the Quarter” only as I walked away from it. I arranged plastic letters on a pegboard that spelled my name, rank, designator, social security number and date. I hoped my car wouldn’t be towed. I was tugged and prodded by Petty Officer Royal into a thoroughly artificial three-quarter pose, shoulder back, stomach sucked in, uniform shirt carefully tucked under my arm to eliminate wrinkles. I looked halfway squared-away in shiny black shoes I hadn’t worn in years, or at least as squared away as a fifty-one year old can be. The lights flashed and Petty Officer Royal downloaded the picture to a diskette and handed it to me. After one interminable traffic jam on the outer loop of the Beltway I was jamming the floppy into my unclassified machine and uploading the JPEG file and mashing the button that sent the file in digital packets across the fiber to Tennessee.

I gave it five minutes and called the Yeoman, and he told me I must be psychic, he just printed the picture and sent it to the Board.

The miracles of technology. They are talking about another snow-storm here next week. Maybe coming in Tuesday, the same day they are going to pick the Flag in Tennessee.

It won’t be me, but my record at least shows that I still care. Thanks to the Yeoman and Petty Officer Royal.

Copyright 2002 Vic Socotra