----- Original Message ----- From: Nathan Hook nhook@bemail.org
Personally I like Greif over Croucher.
No accounting for taste :).
actor, however, i wonder if the roles had been reversed, would we have
preferred Greif or Croucher?
A question I've often asked myself.
Now somebody mentioned the possibility of men of ordinary rank or
background making the rank of Travis' - an officer. Did travis in other words? It's possible. However, if we look at army culture now and how it works,
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Your assessment of UK army culture is fair, I say as one who has had personal experience thereof. Officers do tend to be drawn from the public schools, where the Other Ranks tend to be working class. But the interesting thing is, you do get cases every so often (usually in wartime) of people starting in the ranks and getting themselves made officers for various reasons (George MacDonald Fraser, author of the Flashman novels, was one, for instance. Or, for a fictional case, read the Sharpe novels). Thing is, when this happens, the new officer traditionally faces the same situation anybody does when the class boundaries are breached, and it's generally not very comfortable for them.
So yes, Travis could have worked his way up from the ranks, esp. if he started out in a wartime situation. But he'd have been a bit of a rare bird-- all the more reason for him to have a chip on his shoulder.
, but you don't find non-commissioned personnel sitting in your military
history papers at university
To be fair, though, you don't find that many officers either-- mainly just the commanders.
Travis himself recognised a clear ranking system. 'I'm a field officer! Not
one of your decorative staff men.'
Actually, this doesn't seem to have so much to do with ranking. Even today, field officers and staff officers have a mutual-dislike thing going, even among equal ranks. Travis also refers to the rest of the tribunal as having all been field officers.
If the rest of Federation society was based on intellectual rank, then the
armed services would most certainly have been.
In the modern examples you've cited, the rank is by birth and not by intellect.
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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