I haven't been able to find any good guidance for this question, so I thought I would ask you fine people.

Ordinarily, an honorably discharged enlisted veteran is not permitted to use his or her rank socially or for other purposes. The part I can't find an answer to is if a veteran can (or should) use his or her rank in the course of officially military correspondence.

I am preparing correspondence to the Board for Correction of Military Records in official military memorandum format, and I need to figure out if it would be best to use the standard Air Force signature block with my last rank included.

I recall at some point reading about the use of the qualifier "(sep.)" to indicate a separated status in the same way retirees use the qualifier "(ret.)" but that was many years ago.

Example: RYAN THE TEMP, SrA (sep.), USAF

Do any of you know if this would be acceptable?

Per the ARMY regs, it seems like you'd be committing a military faux paux. If retired personnel aren't doing it, I wouldn't think you would want to.

Per AR 25-50:

6–6. Retired military personnel
Retired military should follow the same rules as active personnel, except that no organization or branch of the Army will be shown. Show retired status after the grade as follows:
a. All Army personnel, active or reserve component, retired for service, age, or physical disability and all personnel
on the Army of the United States Retired List, including regular Army personnel and nonregular Army personnel on
the Temporary Disability Retired List will use “USA Retired” (for example, A. B. Smith, COL (USA Retired)).
b. All personnel on the Officers Honorary Retired List will use “U.S. Army Retired (Hon).”
c. All Army reservists assigned to the U.S. Army Reserve (USAR) Control Group (Retired) will use “USA Retired.”
d. Army retirees serving as DA civilians will not use or refer to their military grade or rank except when referring to
their personal retirement actions

Also, as a civilian you would not do it:

6–8. Civilian personnel and contract surgeons

a. The official signature block for civilians will consist of the name and title.

You are a civilian and are not retired. I'd list it as Mr. RYAN THE TEMP and be done with it.

Agree. Ryan, the content of your letter will identify your status. I agree that it is not appropriate to include that in your signature block.

I work with several retired Engineer officers (O-5s). None of them include their former military ranks in their signature blocks, either external or internal(USACE/USA).

Thanks for the insight, everyone. I don't want to screw this thing up.

USAA still calls me " Lt " !

Ryan - has Corps of Cadets Assoc. increased their contributions to the Corps instead of paying their head an outrageous salary ?

I haven't checked lately, but I did see in their last mailing to me they had a big graph touting that only 20% went to pay for salaries and overhead.

You can check out almost any non-profit at www.guidestar.org

[This message has been edited by Ryan the Temp (edited 4/1/2014 1:12p).]

Looks like the executive director got a raise from $134K to $156K per year in 2012. All said, they pay $253K in salaries on $1.2 million in revenue, or 21 percent.

They gave about $45K to Corps athletic teams, or 3 percent.

Ryan, Thanks . Looks like more of the same . Sad !