It's not over yet.

Well, today made things even worse. He had been told by his CO AND his Chief that his re-enlistment had been approved and sent up. He was called into his CO's office today where he was presented a special eval revoking his prior eval from Promotable to Not Recommended for Promotion. We expected this. His CO had told him he would approve him for re-enlistment, but not advancement. Kinda goes with the NJP. Okay.

But THEN he told him he was denying his re-enlistment. HUH? He had already told him it was approved!! Dh basically begged him and told him he'd already approved his re-enlistment! So, finally the CO said he'd approve him for TWO years. He has another inspection in 18 months, and if he passes that inspection, he'll approve him for 4 more years. Dh JUST passed a "surprise" inspection (which his Chief set up the day after the NJP).

So, now we've got his entire then-16-year career hanging on ONE inspection. I don't know if dh is going to last til this Chief leaves. I'm hoping a new Chief will come in, and dh will impress him and maybe the CO will see things differently without this Chief constantly talking in his ear.

SO, we decided that once dh has been at this command for 18 months (about October), he's going to call his detailer and request to end shore duty and get a special transfer and go back to the Marines. We believe this will get him away from this command, and then the decision to allow his re-enlistment will depend on his new CO, not this one, and hopefully won't teeter on a single inspection. It doesn't matter now if he spends the rest of his career with the Marines...there's no need for a variety of positions because he's never going to make Chief now anyway.

We obviously don't know if we'll be able to do that, so of course dh is doing everything he can to make sure EVERYTHING is in order for his next inspection. He passed this last one with flying colors basically. The only thing he got dinged on was the "condition of the records"...they told him to replace the jackets of the folders.

I just cannot understand how the CO can give him his sentence in NJP and then ADD punishment several days later (the denial of 4-year re-enlistment). As such, dh is going to go ahead and talk to legal now as I think there's a case that the 5-day statute to appeal an NJP should start over since a NEW punishment was handed down days later. We're just going to talk to legal and see if there's a chance, and what the chances are, that we can do something about it. If we can't, we can't. We aren't holding our breath. But that's what we plan to do at this time.

IF he is not allowed re-enlistment in 2 years, I'm thinking at least he should not get an RE4 code since it won't be in response to the NJP, but will just be based on the CO's decision. So, then we would probably go straight to the Army, whose recruiter has told dh if he doesn't have an RE4, he probably would get in. He would have 16 years in at that time. Frustrating!!