Change of command

I was taught at the Quantico Marine Officer training facility that a "change of command" was the formal transfer of legal authority and recognized command to orders from an existing commander of troops to a new commander, as directed by published orders. We practiced this and all sorts of close-order drill and ceremony on the sticky black tarmac of Quantico, where majors became light colonels, gunnery sergeants ascended to fearsome sergeants major, while we listened to the padres bless the profession of mass killing in tautologies that convinced me that he, dressed in the OD gabardine of the private Marine, was in another life a Jesuit at Fordham Prep, rousting the usual 16-year-old product of the Bronx underworld.

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