TWO RANKS HELD BY CITY SEA CADET OFFICER

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29114, 28 January 1960, Page 13

TWO RANKS HELD BY CITY SEA CADET OFFICER

Two ranks are at present held by a naval officer in Christchurch but he will soon be “sacked” from one of them. The officer is Lieutenant (and also Lieutenant-Commander) L. F. (Pat) Luxton. He joined the Canterbury division of the R.N.Z.N.V.R. in 1934. A long-service and popular officer of the sea cadet corps, “Mr” Luxton now finds himself in the peculiar position of being the commanding officer of two separate units in the same corps; and each unit carries a different rank.

As Lieutenant Luxton he is commanding officer of the Redcliffs sub-unit. But as a master in charge of commercial subjects at Christchurch Technical College he commands the closed sea cadet unit there, and his appointment to command the whole college cadet corps has resulted in his promotion to lieutenant-commander.

The Navy has already decided that things have gone far enough and so Lieutenant-Commander Luxton will relinquish his subunit post at Redcliffs. But officialdom has relaxed to the extent that it will perrnii the dual rank for a little longer —to Saturday, February 11, to be exact.

At 11 a.m. on this day “Lieutenant” Luxton will be present when the Chief of Naval Staffdesignate (Rear-Admiral Peter Phipps) officially declares open the new sub-unit headquarters building—a project that both men have taken a keen interest in. “Lieutenant Luxton” has been the leading figure of the unit in pushing the project ahead, and Admiral Phipps’s interest stems from his boyhood when he was one of the original Sumner sea cadets, and knew and used the area often. Next Wednesday, however, Lieutenant-Commander Luxton will be superintending his college barracks week for the first time in his new rank. He will not be the only “one of his species” doing this. At St. Andrew’s College at the same time Lieutenant-Comman-der E. H. Blair will also be conducting a school barracks week. Commander Blair is the sea cadet officer at the school which has about 30 cadets, the same as each of the other closed units in the city.