A Captain's Reflection on His Commissioning - 15 Years Later

Topic: Perspective

It was a perfect Friday morning in Oxford.  65 degrees as the sun came up, a light breeze that gave way to a low 80s, clear-as-a-bell afternoon on campus at Ole Miss, the beloved nickname for the University of Mississippi.  The baseball Rebels, the team I was proud to work with for three full seasons, were at home to host the Auburn Tigers and were gunning for a seat at the NCAA postseason table.  Seniors would walk the stage the next day and receive a diploma in what was admittedly an anti-climactic moment, five seconds in full view of a ten-percent full auditorium and then, poof, off to the rest of your professional career, spanning from one’s twenties to sixties.

A standard annual occurrence, some might say, for a few thousand prospective graduates and their families.  Hotels, of course, were in short supply from Oxford to New Albany to Batesville, Tupelo, and beyond.  I lived in a condo my dad bought, which sat only a couple miles south of campus on Old Taylor Road.  The Keshels visiting that weekend stayed there, spread out on couches and spare living space.

For the dozen or so cadets from the Ole Miss Army ROTC Rebel Battalion, and the cadets of other service ROTCs, the weekend, or that Friday specifically, represented both the end of an era and the culmination of a dream that once seemed so distant, and the beginning of a new journey and return to “low man on the totem pole” status, and a harsh dose of reality ahead for everyone who would raise his or her right hand that day.

Friday, May 9, 2008, fifteen years ago today, where in the hell has the time gone?  The day we became Second Lieutenants, officers in the nation’s oldest service branch.

After all this time, I recognize that I had skills and a commitment to excellence that had been dormant for many years that made me a good officer candidate and potential ROTC cadet; however, my confidence had been destroyed as a young man who struggled to accept his gifting, appearance, and capabilities, both lacking and not.  Still, I can’t help but think I walked into Barnard Hall and decided to serve in the Army just so I could please my Dad.

Barnard Hall – Ole Miss ROTC Building

Dad was often very harsh.  An infantry officer scarred from three tours in Vietnam, he did what many officers and NCOs did in those days to cope – he turned to vice, especially the drinking.  While I served, seeking mental care was no longer taboo – it was encouraged.  In his day, it was a sign that you were crazy and needed to be halted from future promotion and leadership opportunities.  He expected the best of me but didn’t encourage it in a way a young kid could benefit from.  I was made fun of for my appearance (fat when I was in middle school) and lack of athletic success, and ridden hard to make straight As, even when my grades were plenty good.

Dad

He seemed to change his view of me in his last four years here on Earth, right around the time I joined ROTC and set about on a path to commission.  I had tried the Air Force ROTC route briefly the semester prior to contracting with the Army, but the Air Force’s Reduction in Force and my issues with my right ear led me to look for a fit elsewhere in just a few months.

One day, in summer 2006, Dad asked me if I had written off the possibility of serving in the military.  With the Air Force not working out as a possibility, it was unappealing to me to think of getting stuck in the Army as an infantryman, standing 6’9” plus when wearing a full kit and lugging all that shit around.  As summer wore on, a baseball scout who had been looking to plug me into his organization, the Kansas City Royals, ghosted me.  I realized I had very little future ahead of me in pro baseball without a strong playing background.  Accounting and Economics were kicking my ass.  I didn’t want to push paper.

I wanted to live an adventure.  So into Barnard Hall I went, one face-melting day in August 2006.

You need a waiver for that bad ear?  You got a waiver.  We need warm bodies to go to Iraq and Afghanistan.  By the way, here’s a scholarship, so now your old man won’t be breathing down your neck about needing a fifth year to get through Ole Miss, which of course, happens to many people.

I went from knowing nothing and barely passing the two-mile run to knowing doctrine inside and out, land navigating like an Apache warrior, doing more push-ups and sit-ups than are needed to receive a maximum score, and ranking fourth of more than 15 cadets in my year group, all in the span of nine months.  Our group had some greats:

McElhaney – my roommate, a real-life Tom Cruise in Top Gun kind of guy who worked hard with me on physical fitness.  We would serve together in Afghanistan.  He didn’t commission with me on stage that day because he got his lieutenant bars the December prior and became an Army aviator.

Greer – a real stickler for rules and tactics, and very disciplined.  Not easy to get along with at times, but if you got to know him, he’d crack from that demeanor and be one of the guys.  He had a mishap on night land navigation and hit some thorns once and let out a howl that could be heard for miles.  Later an Army Ranger of Infantry and veteran of two theaters.

Wade – a prior service NCO who didn’t like to memorize things.  One time, Sergeant First Class Bell, our lead training NCO, caught him reading the back of the ROTC textbook when he was asked to recite the Soldier’s Creed – Wade, are you reading!?

Blackburn – perhaps the best athlete and most physically gifted cadet we had, who never saw a party he didn’t like.  His dad commanded the ROTC Battalion when he signed up, and that alone brings many of the best stories I can recall of Blackburn outside of the hilarious cadences he would make up whilst partying.  He took another path after that first year together in ROTC and wound-up enlisting in the Army instead.

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I crashed through the curriculum and received a waiver to attend Advanced Camp at Fort Lewis, Washington, in Summer 2007, less than a year after walking into the ROTC Battalion and seeking a path to commission.  I hated the camp, thought it was fake and artificial, but made it through with a “satisfactory” rating, and returned for my last year of school, the final road to receiving those coveted gold bars.  I got my grades up ever so slightly after letting off the gas for a few semesters before joining and was assessed somewhere in the middle of the pack relative to my peers.  I requested Military Intelligence as my primary branch, and received it, kind of.  The Army has what is calls branch detail, in which branches like Military Intelligence, Signal, or Adjutant General, which don’t need as many lieutenants, rent theirs out to the branches that need plenty of them, like Infantry, Armor, or Field Artillery.  When those lieutenants grow up and become captains, they are brought over to their basic branch.

Below, you’ll see yours truly on Commissioning Day, May 9, 2008, with the scarlet band of the Field Artillery on my service cap, and the crossed cannons of that branch on my lapels.  Within months, I would face a medical board for my hearing loss, be retained, and switched straight over to Military Intelligence branch - but that story must wait for another time.

2LT Keshel, Field Artillery

I struggled through some periods of low motivation just months before commissioning but made it to the big day.  My parents were there, of course, as were a few friends and mentors, and my brother David.  David retired from the Army in 2018 after 31 years of service and is one of the most famous and deadly attack pilots in Army history, highly decorated for valor in Iraq and celebrated for outstanding achievement in the aviation field.  He achieved the rank of Chief Warrant Officer 5, one of the rarest ranks in the Army, and a highly respected one at that.  I once received an epic ass-chewing over the phone from him one night when he was in Korea and reminded him to call me sir.  All hell broke loose after that.

The Gertrude Ford Center for the Performing Arts, on campus, held our commissioning ceremony.  Lieutenant Colonel Shaver, our battalion commander, was there in all his decorated glory.  We went through the required ceremonies, like the benediction and national anthem, and it all seemed surreal.  It was as if an imaginary boundary had been crossed, pushing us from being kids in a cadet battalion to full-fledged military officers, with potentially less than a year to stare down a combat deployment. It took me two years to get to mine.

Then came my turn.  I was introduced and came to the center of the stage.  Six and a half feet tall, and 205 lean, but not skinny, pounds.  My parents and brother David came up on stage, with mom carrying my shoulder boards bearing the rank insignia of Second Lieutenant, and again, the scarlet coloring signifying the branch of Field Artillery.  Mom and Dad took a shoulder board each.  Mom came to my left shoulder, Dad to my right, to affix those boards to their fasteners.  When we had practiced back at the condo, Dad told Mom, who had a hard time getting it to latch while practicing, not to f*** it up during the presentation.

Only at the presentation – it was Dad who couldn’t get the board on the uniform.  Mom got hers on right away.  I had to bite my lip up there on that stage, under the spotlight, as I heard the Vietnam veteran come out in full force – I can’t get this mother****er on, you gotta be s***ing me!” After what seemed like hours, but was probably minutes, that board went on.

I executed a right face and turned to my brother, 17 years my senior.  A second lieutenant technically ranks ahead of a Chief Warrant Officer 5, but in practice, would never assert or pull rank on one.  If he did that, he’d be summarily executed by a colonel and never rise to any position of importance or prominence.  Still, David was gracious enough to render me my “first salute,” a military custom one never forgets.  That photo is captured in time below:

Brother David with my First Salute

I reached into my pocket, pulled out a coin, and shook David’s hand, leaving the coin with him as “payment” for my first salute, as is customary in such ceremonies.

As with all ceremonies, ours came to a close, and off to dinner we went to celebrate.  I walked the stage in my graduation gown the next day, but as I wrote earlier, it was extremely anti-climactic.  For the day prior, now fifteen years in my rear-view mirror, I became an Army officer.  In doing so, I felt a great sense of accomplishment, though still naïve to the missions our military would be forced to carry out, and felt I had finally made my old man proud.

He wrote to me until the day he died while I was deployed.

Author’s Note: Thank you for reading this personal reflection. I try to contribute personal pieces like these because our world is lacking in authenticity and vulnerability, and real perspective that makes up our life experiences. I am grateful for your readership and would also be thankful if you upgraded to a paid membership, so I may remain independent in this fight to restore freedom in America.