Wednesday, January 11, 2017

I know an Army Warrant Officer

That has about thirty-two years of service and is still on active duty.

While enlisted men and commissioned officers of colonel and below face mandatory retirement after 30 years of service, this does not apply to Warrant Officer. They do not have a mandatory retirement age. They can continue their careers for as long as they are physically and mentally able to.

He is also a ham operator and when he deploys he brings a portable rig. I have him in my log. He was deployed to Afghanistan when I worked him and. Afghanistan is a rare DX entity so I'm grateful.  

Now one of the things young GIs do to older guys like him is give him an occasional good-natured drubbing for being an unusually old GI. He said that recently one of the young soldiers asked him if he had enlisted during the Spanish-American war.

I pointed out that in the 80s when he began his service that there were still a few Japanese stragglers out there left over from WW2.

He said he never had thought of that.

I bet that he's going to point that out to some new soldier sometime and leave the new guy really wide-eyed.

That's what I would do.



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

1 comment:

  1. Pic there are still limitations on a Warrant.

    What is less a pressure is the "Up or out" rules that apply to Commissioned Officers.

    I all circumstances the Sec of Defense and President have statutory higher ages/length of service allocations they can use, and special cases can be "waived" like everything else in the military.

    For Warrants who have made CW-5 usually up to 35 years is not hard to arrange.

    But it isn't so that they can keep serving at will.

    BTW it is usually total time served that triggers involuntary retirement, rather than age.

    73

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