While all Army officers receive annual evaluations, the senior rater evaluations were limited such that less than 50% of the evaluations could be in the top rating block when I was in the Army. Thus, every annual evaluation resulted in you being either above center of mass, in center of mass, or below center of mass. While you know how you did, you don’t really know how everyone else is doing until it is time for selection to Command and General Staff College.
My memory of the selection process was as follows. The buckets were early select (top 8-10%), first round (next 20%), and second round (next 20%). If you were an early select, you were competitive for everything. If you were in the first round you were competitive for command and possibly promotion to Colonel. If you were in the second round, you were competitive for LT Colonel but not competitive for command. If you were not selected, you may or may not make the next promotion. I was selected in first round and in the next ten years, would be promoted to Colonel.
We were fortunate enough to be assigned to Infantry Barracks for our apartment which was centrally located and my West Point classmate Pete Kilmer and his family was our next door neighbors with children about the same age as our children. Those front doors were never closed as our kids were constantly playing with Pete’s kids and the days were filled with peels of laughter.
Command and General Staff College (CGSC) led to reuniting with classmates and old friends like Kevin Porter, Scott Miller, Jim Drago, Bill Bennett, Chris Larson, Dennis Polaski, Laureen Barone, Jud Cook, Calvin Carlsen, Archie Wilmer, Willie McFadden, Bill Raymond, Tom Riddle, Jim Ficke, and H.R McMaster. I also made some new friends like Pete Kilmer, Barry Hensley and Peri Anest. The course itself was instructive and prepared me to be a field grade officer. We worked in a small group and became adept at the tasks of a command staff. Given its academic nature, CGSC championed academic endeavors and had a best paper competition for all CGSC students. In 1996, I won the best paper competition with a paper entitled, “Information Warfare: Our Next Task Force Smith“. It proved to be as provocative as my work at West Point and generated some interest within the Army. It also proved to be prophetic of the challenges our nation would face over the next 25 years in terms of cyber security attacks from nation states.
After 13 years in the Army, this would be the first (and last) assignment where my previous boss did not engineer my next job. I had been told that I had unique skills and my most likely assignment would be a unit like the 160th Special Forces Night Stalkers in Kentucky reflecting on my time in the 82nd or Communications Command at Fort Huachuca, AZ reflecting my data center work and time at West Point. None of that happened. Instead, I was assigned to 2nd Infantry Division on South Korea. My family would not be able to accompany me and it would be a hardship tour up on the demilitarized zone. I did not react with grace and charm. While I did not recognize it at the time, it would be another transformative assignment. Eileen and I moved the family back to Savannah, GA where our families could help her and I deployed to the 2nd Infantry Division. You can continue the military journey at Korea and fighting wars with software.