Four years after the promotion took effect, the President got around to printing the paperwork. Constantine’s Presidential commission certificate — appointing him “temporarily Captain, Medical Corps, Army of the United States”, effective December 1, 1943 but signed at Washington D.C. only on June 28, 1947 — was part of the Officer Personnel Act of 1947 clearing the wartime promotions backlog. Issued under the authority of the President of the United States, countersigned by Edward F. Witsell, Major General, The Adjutant General.
The commission
The document is a formal Presidential commission — the wallet-document credential of a US Army officer’s rank, parallel in significance to a medical diploma or naturalization certificate. It memorializes Constantine’s promotion to Captain in the US Army Medical Corps, effective the second month of his European deployment, while attached to Patton’s Third Army medical-dispensary network.
The four-year administrative lag between the effective date (December 1, 1943) and the issuance date (June 28, 1947) is normal for permanent commissions: wartime promotions were initially temporary appointments under emergency authority, and Congress did not regularize them into permanent presidential commissions until the postwar Officer Personnel Act of 1947 cleared the backlog. Constantine received his formal commission certificate in summer 1947 — fifteen months after his March 1946 separation and six months after his Certificate of US Citizenship was issued in January 1947.
The Witsell signature
Edward F. Witsell, Major General, The Adjutant General of the US Army (1947-1951), countersigned the President’s name on this and thousands of other deferred-issuance WWII officer commissions during his term. Witsell’s tenure at the AG bridged the Truman administration’s WWII demobilization and Cold War rearmament; his signature appears on the deferred-issuance commissions of an entire generation of WWII medical and combat officers.
Why the 1947 issuance date matters
The June 28, 1947 date places the commission eight months before Constantine sat the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery examination and during the same week his US citizenship was being finalized. The 1947 cohort of documents — Witsell-signed commission, Certificate of Citizenship A-165551, Bronx County Certificate of Registration as Physician (May 3, 1946; archive item 0003) — all together comprise the definitive American credentialing of Constantine that would carry through the rest of his medical career.
In the documentary chain
| Date | Document |
|---|---|
| 1943-04-07 | Army entry |
| 1943-04-12 to 1943-05-20 | Carlisle Barracks Medical Field Service School |
| 1943-09-02 | US Army Medical Corps acceptance card — 1st Lt |
| 1943-09-04 | Signal Corps ID — 1st Lt, MC |
| 1943-12-01 | Promotion to Captain — effective date of THIS commission |
| 1946-03-20 | Honorable Discharge, Fort Dix |
| 1947-06-28 | Presidential commission certificate issued — THIS DOCUMENT |
| 1947-01-22 | US Certificate of Citizenship A-165551 |
Provenance
Preserved in Constantine’s personal papers and surfaced in the 2010 Peter-Jeannopoulos scan batch (catalog item 0021). The original Presidential commission certificates were printed on heavy bond cardstock with embossed seals; this scan preserves the legible text of the wartime commission text and the Witsell signature block, though seal embossing details are flattened by the digital reproduction.
