Scratch One Career
The armed services have been trying to discourage alcohol use for at least the past 20 years, if not longer. In truth, sometimes I think they go to far in that respect.
Regardless, it’s policy – and excessive alcohol consumption isn’t generally a behavior that should be encouraged. But there are still people out there who don’t seem to “get the word”.
Unfortunately, sometimes those folks are relatively senior. Like the former 20th Air Force Commander, for example.
And, it turns out, like the Director for Strategy, Policy, Capabilities, and Logistics at TRANSCOM – RADM David Baucom. Apparently he was removed from his position in October for what amounts to “drunk and disorderly” while TDY on the night of 7-8 April of this year.
I’m not going to go into the details of the “drunk and disorderly” here. This Navy Times article on the subject does so; read it if you’re interested. Suffice it to say that the details are rather . . . unusual.
RADM Baucom has issued a statement blaming his conduct on a medical condition occurring on “the evening of April 8th which caused lightheadedness, disorientation, dizziness and confusion.” Other indications are he may have mixed prescription medicine with drinking.
However, a Navy investigation found that RADM Baucom had consumed all or part of at least 8 drinks that evening. It seems to me that, according to this blood alcohol concentration (BAC) chart, that would yield a BAC of 0.11 in a 180-lb man four hours after he’d begun drinking (0.17 – 6 x 0.01). If he drank more than 8 drinks, that would have yielded an even higher BAC.
Sorry, RADM; I can’t say I have very much sympathy. A drink or 3 at an official function or conference is one thing; eight or more seems rather excessive. Someone of your seniority should know that. Ditto for knowing that mixing prescription drugs and alcohol is a fool’s game. Either way, you should damn well have known better.
At least you’ll get to keep your retirement. It could have been worse.
Category: "Teh Stoopid", Military issues, Navy
Then there’s this guy, a colonel I knew when I was at ARCENT: http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/driver-suspected-of-killing-colorado-state-patrol-trooper-on-i-25-identified-as-retired-army-colonel
That old “lead by example” thing go’s out the window after certain pay grades are achieved I guess.
Do the crime, do the time, that sounds like something that could snuff out any NCO or Junior Officer’s career, so…
Oh come on, don’t judge, he just likes to have a nice time! You gotta let loose and sometimes let that Python out.
If he was an Infantryman they shoulda promoted him.
Might want to ask a certain former Army Infantry MG about that “let that Python out” stuff. He had a “zipper control problem” and ended up retiring as a COL.
Great guy, and a great leader – but couldn’t control himself particularly well.
Most of that was in jest. I don’t see booting someone for AN incident, meaning I bet he had a reputation. Zigging instead of zagging in unfamiliar terrain ain’t uncommon.
I had a CSM, old scroll from Grenada, used to tell us, “Men, if it tastes good, spit it out. If it feels good, don’t do it. And Goddamnit, if you need to think about it IT’S not a good plan.”
Admiral Half-Shaft shoulda had a safety brief by CSM Taylor…
I always heard “If it smells like chicken it’s kickin’, if it smells like trout stay the hell out!”. 😀
Funny, I had an old CSM I met back in the 90s when I was a lowly E5.
He was in Bosnia and showed us some film of him out and about. He had a smokin’ hot Interpreter, she was Serb.
We asked him jokingly if he messed around with her. He immediately says, “Hell no. You get in deep shit for that. And I’ll tell you what, I’ve been in for 30 years. Ain’t no Pussy in the world worth 30 years.”
I remembered that as an AIT instructor when I had attractive female students. I’d been in about 10 years and figured I’d get 20 for messing around with them. So I too could say, “Ain’t no pussy in the world worth 30 years.”
Was that CSM Jerry Taylor by any chance?
Alcohol makes me better looking. Just ask any trucker at my local truckstop men’s room (or so I’m told)
sincerely
John “Faker 6” Giduck
Talk about getting caught with your “pants down”.
Correction: “pants, underwear and everything else off”.
I guess that counts as really “letting it all hang out”, MCPO. (smile)
Oh, come on. He’s going through male menopause and had hot flashes. Have some sympathy. It’ll happen to you, too.
Works the opposite for men, Ex-PH2. Men seem to feel the cold more as they age vice get hot flashes.
That’s why men tend to add weight as they age. They’re just trying to stay warm.
(Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it! [smile])
The Admiral showed his rear.
Literally.
Well, he is a Rear Admiral, no?
So basically just about any Friday or Saturday late night at most OCONUS locations and many CONUS bases?
Yeah, I ran naked, drunk through my co-ed dorm with my underwear on my head for a $20 bet in Okinawa.
Good thing there weren’t many folks with cameras and the Internet was at least a decade away to the general population.
Yeah, the stories I have heard about RON aircrews at Manas seem to be right in line.
Yeah, the place where “two beers max” is supposedly a rule.
I hope you laundered the undies first, Chip.
That was the bet, I was also carrying a whole basket of hot fresh laundry right out of the dryer. We had been in the dorm for most of 3 or 4 days straight in a Typhoon Evac Alert status and we were getting cabin fever and overall days of drunken shenanigans.
I haven’t touched peppermint schnapps much since.
But, if any of your people from those days read this, you know that they’re going through every album, footlocker and box marked with their time in service, looking for negatives and/or pics.
Maybe he and Bergdahl can make a documentary.
“Bullshit Excuses of the Not So Rich and Not So Famous”
I read what the guy did. Sounded like an average night in Olongapo. If what the RADM did can ruin careers, I OWN a few senior officers!
Seriously, as a recovering drunk who used every excuse in the book, I can only say, “Fuck you, Admiral, you bullshitter!” Maybe he’ll get sober because of this.
Another example of the big brass’s “Do as I say, not as I do” leadership.
Well, I won’t pretend I never imbibed. Hell, no. I could drink subsailors under the table. Doesn’t mean it’s something to be proud of, or that I do that any more.
The point is, the two dumbest things I ever did were agree to a drinking contest at Great Leaks, and go to a Star Trek Convention and close the bar down, while insisting that I was a member of United Space Fleet and proving it with my realdeal ID that the print shop made for me. In both cases, my breath could have melted the hull of a battleship the next morning.
It’s a boring and silly hobby, you know.
The Admiral’s rights under the 1st amendment are being violated! This wasn’t drunk and disorderly, it was performance art, his interpretation of the dance of the flaming asshole!
/sarc?
Thank God Almighty that cell phone cameras and the internet were not around when I was young and stupid…
DITTO that!!!
Same here. But the key word there is “young”.
A RADM ain’t young – generally late 40s to early 50s. This guy had 34 years of service. Stuff that can be a “learning experience” for someone with 2 or 3 years TIS is often a career-killer for someone with 20+ years and high rank or position.
With age and experience comes better judgement. Or should, anyhow.
I want to say that back in the late 70s early 80s I seem to recall PBR selling for like $5 a case on base…cheap alcohol and a teenage brain often don’t mix well saw lots of young men, and some not so young, fuck up what could have been a decent career path over some drinks and the resulting “good” time…
I’ve never much cared for the altered reality feelings associated with alcohol or other mood altering drugs. Consequently I’ve been lucky to avoid these issues while in the military and as a civilian.
I’m with you Hondo, a decided lack of sympathy for the RADM…if it will end an enlisted career with a loss of benefits it should do the same for the ranks of the officer corps who should be held to a higher or at least the same standard as those they command.
I remember $9 cases of Budweiser at the PX when I was part of 2ID in my “Joe” days, I’m still thankful that digital cameras and the Internet were still unknown back then!
It’s a wholly different culture from the Army of the 1960’s when there were beer clubs in the brigade areas and the NCO clubs were the rockingest places for miles around Ft. Campbell. The Jinmachi club, right across the street from our 101st MP barracks had rock bands and 50 cent drinks on Fridays and Saturdays that drew women from Evansville, IN to Jackson, TN. It was next door to Command and Control Battalion HQ and just a few blocks from post and division HQ, located where Blanchfield Hospital is now. At closing time there was always a column of drunks driving off down Indiana Avenue headed off post with the ladies. No one even gave it a second thought that they might pose a risk.
The 101st MP’s were a hard-drinking bar-brawling bunch themselves, whose unofficial policy towards drunks was to get ’em off the street and back to the barracks. The only ones who were written up were the ones who fought our efforts to protect their asses.
On town patrol, we cruised the streets of Clarksville and Hopkinsville after closing time loading the drunks into the backs of our pickups to drive them back to post to keep them out of the hands of the civilian cops.
For NCO’s, beers and shots were not uncommon accompaniments with a lunchtime cheeseburger at the club.
It was indeed, a different time and a different world.
Typhoon parties in the barracks on Okinawa were always interesting.
As someone who is a victim of a drunk driver (Fort Knox, KY 1996),people should think twice before drinking in excess. Four months in the hospital, learning how to walk again was not fun. The drunk driver? No injuries.
http://www.jvolstad.com
Unfortunately that’s how it usually goes in drunk driving wrecks, the drunk that caused it usually suffers the least. Sorry to hear about what you had to go through, and I hope that drunk got the book thrown at him for it!
That sucks to hear.
And my last experience drinking and then driving, I was out with a buddy, he let me borrow his car from there to drive to a chick’s house. I went to her house, then ended up at home, woke up about noon and only remember flashes of what happened before I got home from when I left the bar.
After that, I decided very quickly I was a dumbass and glad I didn’t hurt anyone else or my buddy’s car, let alone end up in the drunk tank. So, either I take a cab, or I milk two beers for the night and that’s all. (I’m 6’3″ over 250, so two beers is well under the BAC for me.) And I told my Soldiers that same thing constantly. All it takes is one time for shit to go wrong.
Only eight dinks?
Dude definitely is not Infantry.
Ha! That goes without saying.
The B’s on Friday is dangerous place for liver cells. As a Private my working theory was I had to drink enough to be come as, um, ‘smart’ as my Team Leader.
Gotta get shitfaced, make some inappropriate remarks, hit on old ladies, break some shit and then punch someone.
This dude is an amateur.
Roget that.
thank you, after reading all the holiness above, I figgered I was the only one thinking ‘this pussy wouldn’t have lasted 5 minutes as an NCO’. Too, I have been out a few decades and times are definitely different now.
David: seniors sometimes still do “let their hair down”. But ever since Tailhook, doing so in public (and getting caught) has been a career-killer. They have to be far more discrete today than before.
I frankly have to question the judgement of anyone serving today who has attained O4 or E7 or above and hasn’t figured that out by now. Much of what was once acceptable “back in the day” simply isn’t tolerated any more.
Not saying that is “the way it should be”. But it’s the way it IS today.
Hondo, see my post above.
For the one instance we know about, there are probably 100 we don’t know about.
I’m not just talking about this RADM. I’m talking about all all the flag officers and senior leaders out there.
I recently had a “mixed medication event”
that while it was funny in retrospect, and hurt absolutely no one, scared the bejesus out of me after the fact.
I’m a night owl and take a prescribed sleeping aid. I also have recently been prescribed a muscle relaxer to deal with pain issues. I know that combination of the two makes me wonky as hell so I tend to take my sleeping pill and after about 15 minutes ( which is abput the time it will start working) I would take my Flexoral and go straight to bed.
Well I guess My timing was off this one night. The next evening I logged onto the online game I play (World of Tanks) and was in Teamspeak with some of my friends.
Apparently AFTER I took my Flexoral I logged in and attempted to play a game or two. They said I was completely snockered and they couldn’t understand a word I said. I thought they were pulling my leg, but I looked at my game log and sure enough I had been there.
I had compltetely blacked out. It was actually a shock to me and I luckily have changed meds since then.
It could have been extremely embarassing, because one of my friends on the game is a SMOKING hot female who is the epitome of sweetness and class (even though she can cuss like a sailor in game). If i would have said something inappropriate to her I would have died of embarassment.
When you lose a loved one to a drunk driver even one drink is excessive if you jump behind the wheel. ..
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/12/07/admiral-reprimanded-for-drunken-naked-escapade-at-florida-hotel/?postshare=9381449525130572&tid=ss_tw
“Although Baucom said there was much he didn’t remember about his actions that night, he clearly recalled why he wasn’t wearing any clothes.
He had failed to pack his pajamas because he was concerned about the weight of his luggage and “did not want to pay the extra $25 for a 2nd bag,” according to an email he sent a colleague a few days later.”
“Lesson learned,” he concluded. “I’ll pack my PJs next time.”
Apparently he grasped what the true issue was.
All of this could have been avoided if he had only stayed at a nudist colony.
Excessive alcohol consumption leads to public humiation and termination from a high paying job. I guess the only option that he has is to remove the door to his mailbox, and start selling software to the federal government.
Read about his drunken debauchery on militarycorruption.com; dude can definitely not hold his liquor.