On the Lesson of a Lifetime - 14 Years in the Making

Topic: Perspective

14 years ago today, I received my first promotion in the Army after having commissioned on May 9, 2008, as a Second Lieutenant.  This promotion was to the rank of First Lieutenant, and it didn’t change much.  While that rank is one grade more senior than Second Lieutenant, there is little change to pay, status, or overall responsibilities.  All First Lieutenants continue to serve in either staff or platoon leader positions and may be called upon to serve as a company Executive Officer to be groomed for future company command.

Obtaining those silver bars (or black on the subdued field uniform variant) does provide the welcomed service of making it appear that the wearer is no longer fresh out of college, and if combined with a combat patch, provides a striking contrast in appearance to a “butter bar.”  Still, the cynical military culture has a way of blurring the lines between Second and First Lieutenants:

Rank among lieutenants is like virtue among whores.

Crass.  That’s the military way for you.  For officers, obtaining the rank of First Lieutenant is very straightforward – meet physical fitness standards and don’t drink and drive or commit acts of domestic violence, and you will get your silver bars.  The nearly automatic nature of that promotion has led to most young officers considering that rank-pinning ceremony just another day at the office.

Such was my attitude in November 2009.  I came out early that month on the promotion list, effective date of rank 30 November 2009.  I let my Dad, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel of Infantry with three tours in Vietnam under his belt, know about the promotion, and he immediately made plans to drive from Mississippi to Fort Hood, Texas, where I was stationed, to see me pin on the new insignia.  I shrugged the promotion off as trivial so as not to inconvenience him by obligating a 16-hour round trip, but he insisted on making the trip.

Promotion day came, and both Dad and my brother David, a now-retired Army Chief Warrant Officer 5, came to see the ceremony.  David, 17 years my senior, was on temporary duty from Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and our paths crossed at an opportune time.  My brigade commander, Colonel Dan Williams, who had flown combat missions with my brother in Iraq, did the honors for me and two peers receiving the same promotion.  After the ceremony, Dad congratulated me, and I continued the routine, saying something along the lines of how the promotion is all but guaranteed, and not worth making a big deal over.

What Dad said next is a lesson I will always remember.

Son, I served with a lot of Second Lieutenants in Vietnam who didn’t live long enough to make First Lieutenant.

I would go on to Afghanistan the next summer and earn my combat patch, and while I was deployed, I came out on the promotion list to Captain, which was my terminal rank and the one by which I am associated with – “Captain K.”  What I didn’t know when I pinned on the insignia of a First Lieutenant was that before I would become a Captain (1 July 2011), Dad would be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, suffer terribly, and die when I was 8,000 miles from home.  I said goodbye to him when he had three months left to live, and both of us knew we would never see one another on this Earth again once I pulled out of that driveway in Terry, Mississippi.  It was the shared bond and knowing agreement of two military officers that day that gave me the courage to put that truck in reverse and fulfill that which I was being called to do in a faraway land – not for sake of the misleading mission upon which we were being sent to pursue, but for those who relied upon my service, just as he had done decades before in support of another unwinnable conflict.

The lesson was simple and is applicable in what we who love freedom pursue today.  Celebrate the victories, no matter how small they may seem at that moment.  Just as aspiring officers in their early to mid-twenties have no guarantee of future promotion, we humans here have no guarantee of greener pastures, greater victories, or paths of little to no resistance standing between us and our goals. We take each day, each challenge, as it comes and give our best, trusting God for results.

I am glad Dad showed up for that “automatic” promotion.  This photo, taken after the ceremony, and all of those memories, remain dear to me today.

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