Charm School
I thought I was done with the Army’s educational system once I was promoted to brigadier general. After all, here I am a general, what more could they teach me. Wrong. Before becoming a general little did I know that the rank heavy Pentagon and the worthies wearing two or more stars referred to newly minted brigadiers as “baby generals”.
Yet another example of the military’s tribal code. Much as a newly arrived replacement infantryman in a combat unit is referred to as an “FNG”, short for effing new guy, one must earn one’s spurs before acceptance.
So, the Army being the Army it, of course, has a training system for recently promoted generals. General officer basic course or, as it’s known to those who’ve undergone it, “charm school”. Charm school is designed to polish the rough edges off field commanders. To take soldiers who’ve spent twenty or more years with troops in the swamps, sand and shitholes of the world, not to mention the tatoo-parlored, culture capitals of Fort Riley, Kansas; Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and Fort Benning , Georgia, School for Boys, (School for Boys is another insider term. Fort Benning is where every Army infantryman goes for training), and teach them to interact with diplomats and senior elected officials, all the while not breaking the china.
The week-long, initial course is presented on a suburban Washington DC campus formerly owned by Xerox Corporation and used to train its executives during Xerox’s heydays. Although in the DC area, it is isolated on a wooded campus remote from shopping, mass transit or museums.
Attendance is mandatory for spouses as well as the new generals. The training is held sporadically, whenever the Army has enough new generals to warrant scheduling it. There are strict limitations on the number of generals in the military, so officers are selected for promotion and sit on a waiting list until there is a vacancy. They may then be promoted. Due to this promotion delay and the randomness of the training schedule about two thirds of the class are colonels selected for promotion, while the rest wear the single star of brigadier general. Each class consists of about 120 officers and a like number of spouses. The 120 are roughly evenly divided between active duty, Army Reserve and Army National Guard officers.
My wife, Annette, and I attended the course in the summer of 2008, a year after my pinning on ceremony to the rank of brigadier general. Annette had plans to spend much of the week in downtown Washington DC playing tourist as our younger son Alex, then a college senior, had a summer internship in Senator Dick Durbin’s Capitol office. Annette, a sitting felony trial court judge, in the busiest court system in downstate Illinois, looked forward to a respite from the steady diet of burglars, armed robbers, drug dealers, and murderers occupying her daily docket.
As an Army National Guard spouse she had little knowledge or concern for Army customs. I went off to my weekend duties once a month, leaving the house before dawn on Saturday dressed in combat uniform and returned late Sunday evening tired and grumpy from two days of military duty after a full week of a busy law practice. Other than that, her exposure to the military limited to the occasional military ball with lukewarm chicken and multiple toasts with cheap wine.
Alas, not to be. With our check-in Sunday afternoon came the full packet of information, detailed agenda and map to the dining hall. Her attendance not just encouraged, but mandated. She was, after all, on Army travel orders, right along with “the General”. It appeared the Hertz rental car not likely to make many trips into downtown DC.
But my god, the speakers! Bob Woodward, ambassadors, the Secretary of Defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Tall cotton for the curly-headed girl from Belleville with her part-time soldier.
Sunday evening informal wine and square cheese get together. All dressed in Carlyle casual. Translation: the Army War college, the weeding out ground to become a general officer, is at Carlyle Barracks, Pennsylvania, just a few miles from the Army’s most sacred battleground, Gettysburg. All who attend there soon learn the uniform of the day, after duty hours, is an open necked polo shirt, khakis, penny loafers and blue blazer for male officers, equivalent for women. Running watch de riguer (duh rig-air) for both sexes with jewelry limited to wedding bands, although if a ring knocker, class ring may be worn. Ring knocker, the derisive term used by non-Academy grad officers for West Pointers, who are forever playing with their over-sized class rings. Thus, “Carlyle casual”.
Summer 2007, the war in Iraq raging. Lots of troops in Iraq. Lots of casualties. The Army in its infinite wisdom pulled colonels selected for promotion out of their combat roles in Iraq, put them on a plane, sent them to Washington DC with little or no leave, where their spouses met them to undergo the training. It wasn’t hard to spot the soldiers pulled from a battle zone. The tension between spouse and soldier evident for all to see. A dozen or so couples struggling to keep their composure while meeting the requirements of lecture attendance and dining with the stars, general stars that is, etiquette.
Just as it’s easy to spot the soldiers pulled from battle, it’s easy to spot the active duty Army spouses. They know the drill. They know how important to their spouse’s career it is to make up to the four star’s wife. The Guard and reserve spouses less familiar with the protocols, although I guess the protocol is not a lot different from corporate America.
Agenda shows Monday morning start time 0800 hours, 8 am civilian time, in the lecture hall just large enough for the 240 or so participants and a half dozen extra seats for “echelons above God” observers. Echelons above God meaning VERY high-ranking folks, thus they rank so high they’re “above God”.
0730. I’m locked, cocked and ready to fire. Meaning shaved, dressed and ready to move out. Annette still on her second cup of tea.
“Hon, we need to get moving,” emerges from my mouth. “Oh, just relax. We’ve got plenty of time,” her reply. “I can’t believe they start this so early,” she grumbles. Tick-tock, tick-tock goes my mind, if not the black, sweat stained Timex Expedition running watch set to the 24-hour military time standard. She flips on the white, electric tea pot brought from home expressly to brew the English PG Tips, for her third cup. I know better than to push again too quickly.
0750. “Hon, we HAVE got to go,” comes urgently from my anxious lips. “Oh, all right, but we’ve still got ten minutes,” comes the reply as she pours the balance of her honey-sweetened, goat milk lightened tea into a too small Styrofoam cup.
As we board the elevator for the two-story descent to the main floor she asks, “Now we’ll sit in the back, right?” “Of course,” my response. After twenty-five years of marriage we have our habits well defined, whether Sunday church or a continuing legal education seminar, the preferred seating arrangement the same. Last pew, on the left, close to exits and distant from vigilant speakers.
“Where is everyone,” Annette questions as we walk through the anteroom with coffee urns and half emptied pastry trays. I take her arm to urge a little quicker walk. Into the seminar room we march. Scanning for back row seats. No vacancies. Every seat occupied by straight backed military member next to an immaculately dressed spouse. We sidle up the center aisle. Eyes right. Eyes left. Not a vacancy in sight as we slowly move toward the front.
Four seats remain. Two front-row right side on the center aisle. Two front row left side on the center aisle. The two on the left with a small four-star flag denoting it’s reserved for the Army chief of staff. The last two seats available are directly in front of the speaker’s podium, immediately adjacent, if across the aisle from the Chief of Staff of the Army! My bosses, bosses, bosses boss. “Shit! We’re screwed!” I realize. There’ll be no slipping out early. There’ll be no dozing off. We’re stuck. All 240 pairs of eyes on us as we take the front row seats.
She whispers to me, as we slide the chairs out, “We’ll move to the back after break.” Nope, just as in church, once you’ve taken it, you own the pew. Same seat every time. Don’t even think of trying to sit in someone else’s pew!
Lesson learned for the judge. Court may not start until the bailiff cries, “All rise,” as the black-robe clad figure, known to my crusty old three-war, fighter pilot, law partner as “she who must be obeyed”, opens the door beneath the seal of the State of Illinois, but as for the Army, if you’re on time, you’re late.