Second Article 15

The second and third Article 15s from VII Corps were both wholly unjustified. Our barracks were full of junior enlisted folks on permanent active duty, some like me on their first tour of duty, but many more on second/third tours, all adults, no longer in training. Some of the barracks residents had formed romantic relationships, and some couples were practically cohabitating. I got an Article 15 for spending one night in my boyfriend’s room past official 01:00 visitor hours.

To be clear, we were not practically cohabiting. In fact, I had lucked into a much bigger room than his, and his smaller room was already practically cohabitated by his roommate’s girlfriend. We all hung out there, but he and I usually slept in our own rooms (my roommate wasn’t chill, so we didn’t hang out there, and he didn’t spend the night there). There was no complaint or problem with my late visit, this discretion was very commonplace among barracks residents, but it was in fact against the rules.

It was my all white JAG Corps leadership bent on ridding the Army of me for the offense of dating a black guy, that was my “day job” chain of command. Resident in the HHC barracks were a delightfully diverse group of soldiers from elsewhere on base, analysts, security, cooks, mechanics, admin, etc., but also ambitious lily-white JAG SGT Lavonne(?) Settlemire, who monitored my barracks life for infractions, likely at the direction of paper-white JAG MAJ Terry Gendron, and/or pastey-white JAG SGT Art Rousseau(sp?), both of whom lived off-base w/their families.