MULLINS - It was goodbye to marching, saluting and 4 a.m. wake-up calls, and back to a suit, SLED agents and a state plane Saturday for South Carolina's governor.

1st Lt. Mark Sanford finished his required two weeks of Reserve Commissioned Officers Course at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. Within an hour, he had changed out of his uniform and met his press secretary, Will Folks, for the flight home.

"You've got four more steps as a lieutenant," Folks told the governor.

A state-owned, twin-engine King Air crossed the muddy and swollen Great Pee Dee River and landed at the Marion County Airport at 5:27 p.m. Sanford emerged wearing a white shirt, dark pants, black loafers and a tie, slightly askew.

"It's a culture shock," Sanford said.

After saluting everything but "Coke machines and trees," Sanford was soon greeted by an honor guard of Marine ROTC students at Mullins High School, where he spoke at a fund-raiser for the Marion County NAACP.

Speaking to more than 500 people in one of the state's poorest counties, the Republican governor said government's role should be limited, but it has a responsibility to support affirmative action and help those in need.

"You can have freedom, but if you don't have economic freedom, you still have a problem," he said, drawing applause from the guests attending the dinner supporting the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

He said many of his actions - from opposing a "sweetheart deal" for a developer involved in an automotive-park proposal in Greenville to his support for a cigarette tax to support Medicaid - are drawing opposition mostly from his "Republican brethren."

Sanford received a direct commission in the Air Force Reserve to be a medical administration officer. He is a first lieutenant in the 315th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron at Charleston Air Force Base.

During his training, he said he and the 150 others in his class didn't have to do push-ups, run with a pack or listen to a drill instructor calling them "maggots."

But the governor devoted to less intrusive government did follow orders - down to how many glasses of water to drink each day to how many minutes he could spend eating.

He also had one outdoor leadership exercise, in which he and five others had to figure out how to scale a wall and cross a moat with a 24-foot pole. They draped it from the top of the wall to the moat's far side. Sanford, being the leader, decided to cross first.

"I fell in the water," Sanford said. He said the fall was only 5 feet, "but it makes for a cold morning. The rest of the day, you're wet."

A more typical day started at 4 or 5 a.m., followed by classes and other work that stretched into the evening. "We called it 'death by PowerPoint.' It was very good instruction, but it was very long instruction," he said. "They put enough fear in you that you didn't want to mess up."

Most students were doctors, surgeons, nurses, accountants and other health professionals from their late 20s to late 40s, Sanford said.

Even though many knew South Carolina's governor was among the students, Sanford's identity remained unknown to all but about four people in his group, or "flight," of 12 officers.

One of them looked up the governor's Internet site, saw his photograph and later dropped him a note. At Sanford's request, he kept the information to himself, until Saturday.

Sanford recalled one woman who walked up and said, "So, you were the mystery man."