Have you ever watched a period drama that takes place in the 18th or 19th century and wonder why so many rich British were Colonels?
After the end of feudalism and the rise of the “modern” military, the officer class still came from and saw themselves as lesser nobility.
That was was separated the officers from NCOs.
NCOs were poor or working-class who enlisted and by effort worked their way up.
Officers were gentlemen of good families and education who joined the service to legitimize themselves. Today we’d call it credentialziing.
Officers (except in the Navy where everyone is on the same boat) didn’t expect to do much fighting. They sat on a horse on a hill overlooking the battle while giving orders by bugle.
Even among enemy armies, it was ungentlemanly to kill another officer. There was also a good chance the other officer was a distant cousin in the lesser nobility bloodline.
So some son of some lesser noble would become an officer, serve some period in the British Army, then upon leaving be given colonial land in Africa or India or somewhere else, enriching the family and increasing their prestige.
We saw some of this during the Civil War. Wealthy and well-connected families would pay or rub elbows and a son would get a commission as a Captain or Colonel, despite having no real military training or experience. They would do their duty far away from the battlefield and still receive honors and prestige.
This changed by the end of the Civil War and was one of the victories of the Confederacy that improved America. The war got to be so bloody with so many casualties that those prestige officers were killed and many of the branches of the well-conected family trees were pruned. This lead to a reordering of post-Civil War society.
This happened similarly to European armies during WWI. Officers were killed in droves. Being an officer on horseback from a good family didn’t protect you from belt-fed machineguns and artillery.
As a result, the officer classes were improved and became more meritocratic. The military gives newly commissioned officers shit, but in reality, it’s far better than it was a century or two ago where most of the officers were there because they came from the right families and got their commissions through nepotism.
It may be a new reordering of society. It may be that war has become too easy with drones and missiles doing a lot of the killing, with very little Iwo Jima and Market Garden type hard fighting for months where whole units are wiped out. But we’re going backward with our officers.
They are now, once again, a noble class.
Let this sink in. Tucker Carlson on live Fox TV called Gen Mark Milley the Chairman of the JCS “Stupid” and a “Pig”. Why hasn’t he been terminated? Who talks like this about a public official? Mark Milley …Princeton and Colombia. Years in combat.
— Barry R McCaffrey (@mccaffreyr3) June 25, 2021
Yes. Our generals are elites with Ivy League educations. They are the new nobility.
How many Leftists have I covered who were officers and then come out into politics using their military service as a credential while simultaneously saying their service is why they know you can’t own certain types of guns.
They were officers and so they are just better than you. They earned their nobility through service the way the knights of old did, and you didn’t, you shitty civilian. Why didn’t you serve, are you a traitor or a coward? Either way, you have no right to question them, no matter how much it seems that they hate America, you are beneath them.
Driving a desk while receiving a DOD paycheck has become one of the tools of credentialism in America, which is why you see Progressives flocking to the military that the Left used to hate.
When the military was a meritocracy that elevated the working classes, they hated it.
Now that getting a commission is like getting an MBA from Harvard and officers get to study the same sorts of pseudo-intellectual bullshit like CRT, the officer class of the military is wonderful and how dare you question it.
Progressives are regressing our military too.
Obama set the time bomb and now it’s going off.
The only good thing about this is that it will make them about as effective as those 18th-century officers.
This has always been the problem with our military. It is a holdover from the days when officers were nobles and enlisted were poor serfs. The only thing separating officers from enlisted is that the officer’s families had enough money to fund a four year beer bash where junior ‘earned’ a degree in appreciation of golf, political science, or African studies and is now considered qualified to lead soldiers into battle.
The Navy is worse. The enlisted eat on plastic trays with dividers while seated at picnic style tables like prisoners in a penitentiary. They sleep 200 to a room in bunks stacked three high, and share bathrooms (heads) with over 100 others.
The officers eat off of real china with real silverware, served on tables with linen tablecloths, where enlisted men serve as waiters while dressed in salt and pepper uniforms, serving them like they are in some kind of fancy restaurant. The lower ranked officers sleep 4 to a room, while O-4 and above get private rooms. The admiral had an actual claw foot tub with gold plated faucets. The captain of the ship had two cabins- one near the bridge, and a second (in port cabin) that contained a “living room” with entertainment center and a private dining room. It was larger than some apartments I have had. I had an officer once tell me that “As far as you, an enlisted man, are concerned, I am God. My word is the Gospel.”
The difference between officer and enlisted is one of the things that I am most bitter about from my days in the Navy, in case you can’t tell. Such difference in treatment does nothing to increase battle readiness and does nothing but pump up the egos and self importance of this exclusive club.
Totally agree with you! I spent 21 years (NCO) in the US Navy and there is a lot of segregation, not based on the color of your skin (well, sometimes, it is, i.e. the Filipino mafia…) but based on your rank. E6 and below eat shit in a crowded room, E7-E9 eat in a different room (mess), with different and better food, and then the officers are in their own restaurant with everything fancy like at a wedding. That’s one thing I also always hated while I was in the Navy.
At least, in the Army, they all eat (E1 to O7) the same thing in the same room (DFAC) – that’s what I saw while being “IA” attached to the Army for 2 years in Iraq.
Moreover, as this article states, “officers would do their duty far away from the battlefield and still receive honors and prestige.” It’s still the same thing, most of the time. E6 and below do most of the hard work, sometimes a chief would help a little bit, but it is rare, and the then the khakis and officers get all the credits and all the medals! They call themselves “leaders”, while they are not! I always said that officers (except a few junior officers in the Army Infantry and in the Navy SpecWar community) aren’t leaders, but managers. And they all get well over-rated and over-paid for what most of them do (i.e. not much)…
On the boats, it was very easy to screwup an officiousass,,, I mean occifers career. And they knew it.
And that is why I was on a boat too! Nothing disuades a butter bar of their power than standing watch in the engine room and telling the EO or RO their job. Also why I got out, loved my job but if I stayed in I would have “progressed” to middle managment, not my thing.
Who is this McCaffrey goon who’s calling for Tucker to be executed for the crime of having an opinion?
A retired general and MSNBC talking head
Now it makes sense. He’s a traitor who went to the sort of place where his kind is welcomed.
I’m so old I remember when the left couldn’t restrain their hatred of the military, especially the officers.
Where did you get your history of British army from? Netflix?
I agree that Obama presided over a bad set of appointments in the US military
Exactly what I was thinking! You beat me to it!
“Being an officer on horseback from a good family didn’t protect you from belt-fed machineguns and artillery.”
Emerson, Lake, & Palmer did a pretty good song on just this subject; Lucky Man.
20 years Navy & both Divemedic & BJN pretty much nailed it. I could add more but there’s not much point. I’ll just say that if you know your rate & are good at teaching the junior sailors how to actually do their job you’ll be punished for your heresy.
Porkypine: I would just had that to advance in the Navy, you have to be black, female (or openly gay these days) or kiss 6s of the chain of command and play along with their stupid politics. If you know your job, work hard, and deploy all the time (i.e. you are away and unknown from the people who can advance you), you will be f#cked!
That was more or less my experience. I rotated off my first shore tour into 6 years at sea on 3 different ships; work ups, mini-pac to South America, extended westpac, decom, transfer to ship #2, westpac, yard period, transfer to ship #3, westpac, yard period, work ups & carrier quals, westpac. During the carrier quals I watched my LCPO take the write up I did for my eval & paste it into the eval of a no-load, openly bisexual female who was married & openly “fraternizing” with our department head. Guess who was the only one in the division to make chief that year? I called the LCPO on his BS in public & got bounced from the department for doing so.
That was the point where I stopped caring about making rank & just focused keeping the junior guys out of trouble & on me making it to 20.
And yes, I realize that that schedule doesn’t add up in a normal sea/shore rotation. There was spouse colo involved for part of it.
Hey Porkypine! Your story is kind of like mine… Your are absolutely right about fraternization. I had one of my CMC sleeping with several cute E3-E4s (the cute girls work in his office, the guys on the field), who all got EPs doing nothing! I also had a CO who was O7, lesbian, who was living with both a Chief and a PO2 from her command, also both lesbians, and both got promoted before anyone else! And by the way, all this happened when it was still the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. They were openly gay but the Navy never did anything about it…
If someone would ask me today if they should join the military, it’d be “hell no”, unless you want some benefits and do only 4 years in the Air Force as an officer in a Staff Corps…
Even under DADT, USS Firstship had a *huge* problem with the lesbians brazenly dyke-ing it up in the female berthing. The MAs found two of them diddling each other in a lounge & sent them to captain’s mast (good order & discipline) but the CO chumped out & dropped all charges. After that it was open season in the female berthing, the buldykes would just wait for a female sailor to get in her rack & then would climb in after her. They knew the old man wouldn’t do jack sh*t to them, & they were right. None of those sexual assaults were ever charged, but woe be unto you if you were a male sailor & hooked up with a female sailor who’d had even 1 drink. That ship sent more than 1 guy to prison for rape. Then again we also had 3 separate prostitution rings run out of the deck department in 4 years. Some people’s kids…
As far as serving right now? I’d recommend the Air Force or maybe Space Force; anything dealing with computers, communicaions, or the medical fields. A big maybe would be the SeaBees, they tend to have a lower threshold for BS than fleet or squadrons do.
Yes indeed, Porkypine, I have seen similar things in my Navy life as well, and more. I was a MA for over a decade, AM and PR for the other half of my Navy career…
The Brits were very different from most continental armies in that they did expect the junior officers to lead by example, and take the same risk in battle as the enlisted. Moreso for the elite units like the cavalry- remember the almost suicidal bravery of Cardigan’s Light Brigade, or the 21st Lancers at Omdurman.
The French and Prussians were just as professional and sometimes stupidly fearless- French officers during early WWI thought ducking machineguns was beneath their dignity. A lot is a holdover from the professionalism instituted by Napoleon and Fredrick the Great.
It’s in the armies of the decaying Austrio-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian empires that we see this kind of foolishness.
Why do I have this unshakable feeling that all this is going to end in a military coup?
Senior officers are not the troops.