Today we talked about our experiences, and the topic of "Battle Captain" came up. The Battle Captain is the guy in the tactical environment who runs the Tactical Operations Center. You usually split up the shift into a day shift and a night shift. I always got the night shift. You can read about some of the night shift misadventures here and about a few other really funny ones in my book.

At first I thought that it was my chain of command's opportunity to allow me to carry out techno dance parties at night, but actually, I came to find out that the rationale behind this.

Most units put their strongest captains on the night shift, with the reasoning that a.) most aviation operations occur at night and b.) that battle captain operated largely with no supervision (Ergo dance party. But we did other things too. Naked, I might add*.) So, I felt a little sense of pride at being a stronger officer.

Then I realized that my competition consisted of, in one instance, an officer who got two Letters of Reprimand in the span of a month**. I guess when you swim with guppies, you can't help but be the big fish.


*=Not really.

**=One for going 95 mph in a 55 mph zone on post. The other was for losing the classified material he was working on...and not marking it as secret...and not having a secret clearance in the first place...