Good question, Fox. I spent 9 years "standing in ranks" before I was commissioned. But then hung around long enough to retire as a full bird. A real stroke of luck. I'd only been an LTC for a year when I was selected to command an Army Reserve Military Intelligence Detachment (Strategic). The command slot--of a unit with only 10 soldiers--rated a colonel. So my promotion, as long as I didn't screw up, was pretty much automatic. We MID(S) commanders recognized that we probably had the best job in the Army. No vehicles. Another unit looked after our weapons. We had two 4 draw safes full of classified information and a bunch of office furniture. All the enlisted soldiers were NCOs, plus a warrant officer, a major, an LTC, and a colonel. We did our annual training in places like Washington, DC rather than garden spots like Camp Ripley, MN or Ft McCoy, WI. And eventually went to the UK for our annual training, in support of the US European Command's Joint Analysis Center. Located at RAF Molesworth, an old WWII bomber base. Shortly before I retired, the military started building Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIFs) for us so that we had access to the Top Secret/Special Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) which you probably read about in connection to documents recovered at Mar-a-Lago. And we were provided with secure computers so that we could communicate at a classified level with units we supported all over the world. Shortly after we finally entered the 21st century (although it was a few years before 2000), I retired. It was a very interesting part time job.
