The Purge

I alluded to the story I am about to relate nearly two years ago, when I discussed selection boards.

The surface Navy's Department Head School, commonly referred to as the Destroyer School, was located on Coasters Harbor Island, Newport, RI. The school consisted of two parts. First there was the general curriculum, including the Tactical Action Officers segment, and then the students split into groups for the job-specific portion (Weapons, Operations or Engineering). Each class in the 1980s had 100 officers, usually 95% lieutenants in two sections of 50. The course was 20 weeks long and there were two full classes in session at any one time.

This is no shit:

In one of the classes that was in session when the LCDR Selection Board reported out, there was a LT who failed to select. They brought him back to the school in the middle of the night to inventory the classified material in his desk, then they gave him orders to somewhere else. As far as his classmates knew, he was there in class one day and gone the next. Nobody would tell them where he was sent to.

He was a popular young man and his classmates were not happy.

Two days later, they took the class photo, which was on the back cover of the graduation program for each class. The photo was a group photo of everyone standing on the steps in front of the Destroyer School building, three deep. The class left a one-man gap in the front rank and they put a combination cover on the ground in the gap.

The photographer didn't notice or didn't give a shit. The people who put together the graduation program didn't notice. The XO of the Destroyer School did notice on the day before the graduation, when it was too late to change the programs. The CO of the Destroyer School had to settle for a mass chewing out of the entire class at a special assembly.

Which, as is typical for such events, accomplished nothing.