Nitpick:
Courts – plural.
Court – singular.
Courts-martial – plural.
Court-martial – singular.
He won’t get demoted, but a Canadian Major-General is facing a court-martial.
Major-General Mike Rouleau, head of the Special Operations Forces, negligently discharged his rifle while loading it in preparation “to go to a forward trench position” in northern Iraq last year.
He’ll probably be fined a week’s pay or something.
Not quite in keeping with the original question but Admiral John Byng was not demoted- he was shot.
I think you may be conflating two different situations. While it’s true that sometimes they retire people at some lesser rank, the whole “permanent rank” thing is something different.
During WWII (and WWI and the Civil War, I think) there was the “Regular Army” meaning the pre-war active soldiers, and there was the “Army of the United States” which was the wartime organization that consisted of all the draftees, etc… It was not at all uncommon for someone to have held a pre-war regular army (“RA”) rank of say… Captain, and a “AUS” rank of Colonel or higher. In practical wartime terms, it meant pay, authority and positions commensurate with being a Colonel, but after the war was over, and the country demobilized, the person in question might or might not revert to their pre-war rank, which is what happened to Gen. Miller- he retired at his Regular Army rank, which wasn’t strictly speaking a demotion in a legal sense, but in practice it was.
Some officers retained their wartime rank after the war, while others did not.
Not demoted in rank but rather demoted to a less prestigious position was Lyman Lemnitzer, after Kennedy refused to act on the last proposal approved by Lemnitzer.
They don’t have that anymore. The expiratuon date and your birthdate are the only two dates on there. They are only good for three years from issue, then you need to get another one.
I suppose a General officer can be reassigned from Corps Commander to Sanitation Officer in Thule, but I suspect someone would force his retirement papers through.
Well, yes, in that case he is neither demoted or fired, and retires at pay grade–which is at the end how I view OP discussion.
See post 18.
I don’t know if that’s really true, considering that Lemnitzer had the longest tenure as a 4 star general in US history, and I’d also say that going from Chairman of the JCS to SACEUR isn’t much of a step down either.
AFAIK, JC chairs always retired from that position. Until Lemnitzer shuffled off to NATO within a year of approving Northwoods.
I don’t think this is correct. He spend some time without command, but he wasn’t demoted (in rank).
Sure, but why didn’t they just put him out to pasture, instead of transferring him to NATO command?
Wait a minute, Jeffrey Sinclair was removed from command of Babylon 5 to become Ambassador to Minbar, not because of a court-martial!
Oh, wait, this isn’t Cafe Society. Carry on.
Actually, let me second-thought that.
Pay-grade/pension calculations only:
If you are fired “for cause” is that–purely bureaucratically–a demotion?
ETA: short of court-martial. I have no idea what happens to pay or pensions then.
For officers, being relieved of their position/command for cause usually involves being shifted over to a staff position while any investigation or process plays itself out. If the misconduct or poor performance does not warrant UCMJ action, then the commander overseeing the officer can still initiate an administrative process to kick the officer out of the service through what is called a “show cause” board (as in, the officer in question must show cause why they should be permitted to remain in the military). Depending on the service, a panel can then be assembled to give the officer a hearing and the panel makes a recommendation to the general court-martial convening authority (usually the ranking general for the installation, who has the authority to separate officers from the service) about whether the officer should be separated and if so, what level of discharge they should receive.
Only officers who retire (and are not dismissed through a court-martial or separated through an administrative show cause board) are subject to a grade determination that could effectively “demote” them to a lower grade for retirement pay purposes.