The Wife’s sister is getting pinned by the United States Navy with her Chief Petty Officer insignia this afternoon along with 14 or so other people.
While do not wish to denigrate her accomplishment, I do wonder why there is to be an elaborate dinner, ceremony and ball dance to upgrade an E-6 to an E-7? Does the Navy just like to show off their dress whites after Labor Day or something?
Any Shellbacks, Sons of Neptune or Pollywogs care to enlighten me?
The Ball-Dance and such is actually an elaborate hazing ceremony. Part of it is for the families to celebrate, then traditionally the Chiefs being promoted spend a certain percentage of their paychecks to host a “wet-down”, which involves getting hammered and soaking down your certificate of promotion to CPO with booze, beer & spew.
This age old tradition has been downsized frequently to allow non-drinkers and sea-wenches to participate. So now we have dinners & balls to allow families to get involved and meet other members of the Chief’s association. This also allows for the traditional “Child-support payment increase” aka the Chief Petty Officers Sea-Curse to be observed in ceremony. The highest ranked Chief hands a ceremonial anchor and goat-skull to the newly promoted CPOs, which symbolizes the exchange of their incomes for the honor being a CPO “Goat”.
I’m not a wog, but some things are pretty universal in the military.
E-6 to E-7 is a big deal because it is a “bulletproof” rank. It takes a General Court Martial or act of Congress to reduce an E-7 or higher in rank.
Also in the Navy the Chief’s have their own mess and living quarters similar to commissioned officers in order to maintain proper separation so that familiarity doesn’t breed contempt.
The promotion to the Senior NCO ranks really is a big deal no matter the service.
Repeating James’s comment basically, but yeah E-7 is a big deal, in any service.
In each service, E7 is the backbone of enlisted leadership.
It’s E7’s that basically run the service, be it Navy or Coast Guard(Chiefs), Marine Corps (Gunnery Sergeant), Air Force (Master Sergeant), or Army (Sergeant First Class).
Expanding on the note about Chiefs having their own mess: not only do they have their own mess, they purchase their food separately from the Enlisted Mess and Officer’s Mess. The Officers and Chiefs pay a monthly fee to eat at their respective messes aboard ship while the junior Enlisted get their food “free” while aboard. Officer mess food comes from the same basic source as Enlisted, they usually get a bit nicer prep however. Chiefs’ food is the best in the Navy, bar none.
Many years ago my entire work center missed Christmas dinner due to a propulsion plant emergency while deployed to somewhere hot and unfriendly. Our Chief, who was an awesome, stand-up guy, got a boxed dinner for each of us from the Chief’s mess, and it was the best holiday meal I ever ate while serving aboard ship.
(Also after Labor Day it’s Dress Blues)
Thank you, thank you.
First off, that the Navy recognizes a dress change after Labor Day is pretty fuckin’ “Queer Eye for the Enlisted Guy”. Wow, they need to knock that shit off if they want to start to lose the label of “Rum, Sodomy and the Lash good-time boys”.
Second, the whole family is Army USMC and neither they nor I can remember anyone at anytime in any of the other services I’ve associated myself with stating anything about getting such an elaborate shindig until the Warrant grades begin. Most of them that I’ve talked to recently agree with getting the “Hey you, congrats. -stab- Now get back to work.” line during their various enlistments/commissions.
OCS is a push-up academy so, while laudable, doesn’t compare.
Wow. Lots of free time at sea, I guess.
I don’t know that the change-over actually occurs on Labor day, but it’s sometime about Fall… Fall and winter standard dress is blue, Spring and Summer it’s generally Whites. We always figured it was some scam because way back when some Admiral’s cousin owned a company with a uniform contract or something.
Congrats to the new Chief. Thats a huge promotion in the Navy. Chiefs and Lt.s make the Navy go. I never had a bad Chief.
Chiefs may make the Navy go; *bad* Chiefs, of which I had a few, make sailors go… away.
I was there for the ceremony. It was indeed a big deal. There was the rather solemn pinning ceremony, the dedications, the rememberance of the MIA’s and a whole lot of light hearted good humor and “entertainment”. The food wasn’t great. All in all quite an experience for somebody like me who’d never had the pleasure. It kind of reminded me of some of the rites my uncle used to be involved in at the Masonic Temple – lots of tradition and approved rituals.
By all accounts each and every one of the candidates earned their promotion and should be very proud of their accomplishments …….. but to clarify, there was neither dress white nor dress blue ….. the uniform of the night was a sea of dress khaki. And all looked very sharp.
+1
It’s not the promotion to a higher pay grade, but induction to the ranks of Senior NCOs that makes the big deal. I never got into the USN Chief’s
HazingInitiation (it was offered to me by my Squidly Co-Workers, but I demurred). There’s a bigger gulf between PO1s and Chiefs in the Navy than there is between Techs and Master Sergeants in my beloved USAF, though. The Navy sure knows how to pamper its CPOs.That being said, if I could have served 30 years as a Technical Sergeant, I would have retired happily this month instead of with gritted teeth 7 years ago.
Wow, they did re-introduce a dress khaki uniform in 2006; that kind of weirds me out.