Age 21: Promotion

That's Lt. Colonel Dickson (I think that name's right), my Commanding Offficer for my California stay. I'm getting a promotion; henceforth I'll be a Specialist 4. Fort Baker, California, sometime in 1970.

There's some strange things about this pic. First, there's a light colonel involved; my other promotions were handled by Top Kicks (First Sergeants). Second, you'd have thought the photographer should have shown me with my new rank insignia; nope, Col. Dickson's removing my PFC badges here. Oh, well.

Come to think of it, my Army reporting structures were a little odd. Most G.I.s report to Lieutenants or Captains; I reported to a LTC in California, then to a Warrant Officer in Nam.

Colonel Dickson wore several hats; he directly supervised both the Headquarters and Headquarters Company and the San Francisco CommCenter in our command, and had command responsibilities for CommCenters in L.A. and Seattle. (Actually, the SF Signal Company was run by a Top Kick--but we reported to the colonel, not to one of the HHC lieutenants.) All four (and a half!--shared with AF staff) CommCenters in the command were staffed mainly by folks I'd known in Signal School.

Worked with some of those folks yet again, in Pleiku. The Army's big, but high tech communications isn't.