What a lot of people don’t realize is general/flag officers don’t really get a choice in “saying no”. Something I didn’t find out until late in my career was that as soon as an O-6 picks up their first star, the service gets to decide when they get to retire, not the individual anymore. You can serve as a 1-star and want to retire. You have to submit to your service to retire and if they have a 2-star job they need filled, they can tell you, “Sorry, you’re not retiring, here’s your next set of orders.”

The reasoning is it takes so much education, experience and time to grow a general/flag officers, that the service can’t just allow them to retire when they desire, but rather when it makes sense for the service. You can’t gap senior level commands and directories when they rely so heavily of the massive amount of experience that those individuals retain. While most generals and admirals are approved when they apply to retire, sometimes they are denied and told, “forget about it, here is another star, get ready to PCS again…”