Posted on May 5, 2016
CSM David Heidke
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One of my Soldiers asked me for a Letter of Recommendation for an AGR position. Now this guy is great, and I'm sure a letter from his last CSM would go a long way and I am definitely going to do it.

My questions are these?

Should I write the letter on official Army letterhead?

If so, what should I put as the unit? Just the general Army letterhead?

The rub is I retired 5 days ago.
Posted in these groups: Army usa or 09b.svg CSMRetirement logo RetirementNgwastacked AGR
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Responses: 8
COL Jean (John) F. B.
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CSM David Heidke First, congratulations on your retirement. Thank you for your service.

If you write it with the current date, you should not use unit letterhead. Just write it as a normal civilian letter.

The other option, since you are so recently retired, and assuming you would have written it earlier if you could have, is to backdate the letter to a date before you retired. Yes, I know that is technically not correct, but I would have no problem doing it if I had only been out for a few days.
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SFC Retired
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I have written several letters in the last year since I've been retired and I just go back to 5th grade form letter writing style or use a layout in MS Word. It's weird to look at it the first couple of times as it looks jacked up, but the Soldiers I wrote them for got the jobs/promotions they were looking for so I guess I did the right thing.
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CSM David Heidke
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also...

Should I write it in numbered paragraph format? (I hate that).

No matter how, I would still sign it as retired.

I know you guys will have the right information.
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CSM Michael Poll
CSM Michael Poll
8 y
Battle, I wrote one the other day, I just used regular paper and wrote it out like it came from a civilian and signed it CSM (RET). I never lived the numbered format. The Soldier was selected, not sure if my LOR helped or not but they are in the AGR now.
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SGT James Hastings
SGT James Hastings
8 y
Sound advice!
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