On another board I participate in someone mentioned it was possible to be a 57-year-old Specialist (E4). I called foul on his assertion stating that when I served, one had only a certain number of years (10? 12?) in which they had to at least reach the rank of Sergeant (E5). If they were still a Specialist after 10 or 12 years they would be administratively discharged.
Am I right? Not only is 57 an absurdly advanced age for one to be in the enlisted ranks (I’m sure it has fluked out and happened, but not often, not nowadays, anyway), but if my assertion is correct, even assuming the guy enlisted at age 34 (about the top limit for an initial enlistment in the military), he’d have 23 years of service by the time he was 57, and would have long since been discharged for not progressing.
I served from 82-91 (4 years in the Marines, five in the Army), so things may have changed, but I don’t think they would have changed that much.
My wife’s uncle fell out of the back of a truck when he was 2 years old and suffered severe brain damage. He is obviously mentally retarded to anyone although he did manage to live by himself and dress himself.
We have never figured out how, but he got enlisted in the Air Force right out of high school and stayed there until he retired at about age 55 (5 years ago). He was some type of file clerk the whole time but you really can’t have enough of a legitimate conversation with him to find out much about it. I don’t know his final rank but family says he never really got promoted to anything and he was content with that. At most, he would have been an E4.
He delivers pizzas for a living now and is thrilled with the job. I wouldn’t have known otherwise, but I assume the military does has some special needs type jobs that certain people do.
A guy in my unit was coming up on ten years and wanted to stay in. He was E-4 and while he was pretty much useless except as a supply guy they decided he was good enough to keep so they helped him get enough points to get his Sgt and after his 10 years rolled by, gave him a pretty much bogus Article 15 and he got dropped back down to E-4. It was a scam he was a willing participant in.
When I was serving in Europe, back in 1968, our base was visited by a retired Specialist Four, who had served there a few years before. Although I don’t know the details of his service, I know that after twenty minutes of conversation, I would never have promoted him. But, I might never have tried to get him out of the service, either. He was slow, and he obviously had nothing in the way initiative, but the army has lots of jobs that you can do with those characteristics.
Strange that this should come up because I had a really weird dream about this. I dreamed I was a soldier only not in the modern army- might have been the British colonial forces, but the dream wasn’t that clear. Anyway I (my character?) gets called in by some senior officer:
“Twenty-five years in uniform, and still a private!?”
“Private First Class sir. And I was a brevet Corporal for three months.”
“You’ve never merited promotion?”
“You’d have to ask my commanding officers about that, sir.”
“You never sought promotion?”
“No sir. My bunk, the messhall and my pay are adequate sir. It’s preferable to begging.”
“Don’t you have any ambition Private? Any goals? Any dreams? Any self-esteem? Any PRIDE??”
“No sir. None whatsoever sir.”
(I think my subconcious is trying to tell me something.)