It wasn’t that I was avoiding the Pentagon.  I was really trying to avoid Washington D.C.  And that was a financial issue.  Life was expensive in DC and with a wife and three children, I was trying to be assigned to places I could afford.  How’s that for career management?

Well, in my 13th year, as I finished up Command and General Staff College (C&GSC) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, I had run out of options.  I had been told earlier that a three year instructor’s tour at the JAG School in Charlottesville, VA, would be the same as a Pentagon tour.  When I parroted back to the assignment people what I previously had been told, they advised me that it was no longer applicable.  I would have asked what that meant, but I knew.

There were so many C&GSC students being assigned to Washington that the realtors came out to Fort Leavenworth to “help” us.  That worked out well.  We hooked up with Gloria Bothwell who 35 years later is still a dear friend.  Among the three of us, we selected a home in West Springfield that we loved, but could not afford.  $72,500 in 1975 was mountain top for us.  The owners wanted $73,000 and we insisted on a $500 reduction.  Even today, when I think about almost losing that house over $500, I break out in a cold sweat.  What’s $500 over a 30 year loan?

I was to be assigned to the Administrative Law Division of the Office of The Judge Advocate General (OTJAG).  That didn’t mean much to me.  The assignment officer told me that General Williams had selected me for the assignment.  I knew that General Williams was referred to as “Big Daddy”, but none of it meant much to me.  A previous assignment officer had told me that a tour at the JAG School counted for a DC tour.

In my first assignment in the Army, at Fort Hood, Texas, I worked for a Major Bill Neinast.  Now, as I was wrapping up C&GSC, and getting ready to move, I received a phone call from Colonel Neinast advising me that he was taking over the Litigation Division at OTJAG.  He said that he would like me to be one of his branch chiefs.  At that time, there was no branch chief slot available in Admin Law.  Neinast told me to give assignments (PP&TO) a call and tell them I would like to be assigned to the Litigation Division.

Lieutenant Colonel Dave Fontenella had been my boss at the JAG School and he was finishing up three years in the Pentagon as Chief of Labor Law.  I called him to see what he thought.  He told me very firmly and clearly that I was not to fiddle with my assignment.  “Go to Admin Law, do not pass go, and do not call PP&TO.”  It was great advice.  I suspect that one call to PP&TO at that time may not only have been considered stupid, but would have raised questions about whether I was the type of officer they wanted in OTJAG.  If that sounds Byzantine, it is.

So Major Rice started to work in the Admin Law Division at OTJAG.  I was an action officer (worker bee), but there were some clues that might lead one to conclude that I would shortly be the branch chief of the General Law Branch.  For instance, I was sitting at the branch chief’s desk.  There was no Admin Law deputy and Lieutenant Colonel Bill McKay, the General Law Branch chief, was sitting at the deputy’s desk.  All the other action officers were captains and I was a major when I left Germany, when I left Northwestern University, when I left Vietnam, when I left the JAG School and when I left C&GSC.  I had been a major so long I have forgotten my first name.

All of the above signals did not register with a young, tactless captain, also in the General Law Branch.  On a bus trip home, after work, he counseled me on how to get along in the office.  I was listening intently.  I need to explain that Admin Law was, to a great extent, the legal advisor to the Army Staff .  We spend all our waking hours preparing opinions advising them.  My young captain explained to me that if I turned in my draft opinions early, McKay would mark them up and send them back for a rework.  But, if you waited until the last minute and submitted the draft, McKay would have to make the changes himself, because there would not be time for a rework.  I listened to him wide eyed.  He also told me to relax, because I looked a little up tight.  He was right.

When the young naive captain was told he wasn’t working out, he requested an assignment to California.  We found him a post in the desert where they hadn’t had a JAG in two years.  We figured if they had gotten along without a JAG for two years, he would do just fine.

So, I had become a Pentagonian.  I was a branch chief, in a five- man car pool, and just barely making my house payments.

I had not been there too long when Brigadier General Joe Tenhet came across the hall and asked me when I was going to be promoted to lieutenant colonel.  I told him I was in the present zone for consideration, but didn’t know if I would be selected.  He told me that it was a lot more difficult to get my present assignment than to be promoted to lieutenant colonel.  After he left I decided to relax and not be so up tight.