Junior officer

“ When an officer, thus admitted, is found deficient in any of the branches of elementary knowlege, which he is expected to have acquired previous to his entrance into the senior department, he may have the advantage of instruction from the professors and masters of the junior department. ”

“ A junior division of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps may be established at any institution to which an army officer has been detailed as the professor of military science and tactics, and which cannot meet the necessary requirements for the senior division. ”

“ The idea of sending three [Pg 44] car-loads of raw recruits with only one officer, and that one old Muffet. It's tempting Providence."
"Why, I thought he had a lieutenant with him. Somebody said so at the office this morning," said the department engineer officer.
"Not even a lieutenant,—a cadet, if you like; graduated not a month ago,—not yet commissioned. Some young cub just out of school, with about as much idea how to handle drunken recruits as I have of dressing a doll. Home on graduating leave and thought it his duty to volunteer is all I can make out of it." ”

“ Of the officers we need only say that the old hands have been a godsend to our young regiment; while the juniors, to quote their own Colonel, have learned as much in six months as the average subaltern learns in three years; and whereas in the old days a young officer could always depend on his platoon sergeant to give him the right word of command or instruct him in company routine, the positions are now in many cases reversed. ”

“ Later I came to know of the difficulty that confronts the young men, raw from the Officers' Training Corps, when they take up their preliminary duties as commanders of trained soldiers. No "rooky" fresh to the ranks is the butt of so many jokes and such biting sarcasm as the young officer is subjected to when he takes his place as a leader of men. ”

“ The private has a possibility of rising to the rank of an officer after twelve years’ probation, and even sooner by some dashing act of bravery; and several even thus have become generals. There are numerous military colleges in which cadets are educated, but a commission may also be obtained by a youth of family by his serving two years in the ranks. ”

“ After having become a commissioned officer in the staff or line, the young officer is promoted gradually from grade to grade, usually according to relative rank, except in time of war, when, for especial reasons, the brighter men are pushed [Pg 841] forward because of their exceptional fitness for command or other important work. The officers remain in the service until they are sixty-two years old, unless they resign before that time, and then are retired under three-quarter pay until they die. ”

“ March thought as he adjusted the nose clips and turned the valve, “this man’s my superior and my teacher. A young officer can learn plenty from these boys who’ve had so much experience, if they give themselves a chance by forgetting for a few minutes that they’re commissioned officers.” ”

“ Yet from among old or young, experienced or inexperienced, it would have been impossible to have selected an officer with higher qualifications for the work in hand than the young man on whom the choice fell. ”

“ The lowest grade of the officers of the industrial army, that of assistant foremen or lieutenants, is appointed out of men who have held their place for two years in the first class of the first grade. Where this leaves too large a range of choice, only the first group of this class are eligible. No one thus comes to the point of commanding men until he is about thirty years old. After a man becomes an officer, his rating of course no longer depends on the efficiency of his own work, but on that of his men. ”

“ He was for a long [Pg 112] time a clerk at General Gregg's Hd. Qurs., and after I was given a Division transferred to my Head Quarters. He is energetic, well educated, and a Gentleman, and possessing as he does a thorough knowledge of all papers, accounts, and reports which pertain to a regiment, brigade, or division, acquired by one or two years' service in the field, he is better qualified to discharge the duties of a subordinate officer than many of our West Point graduates on leaving the Academy. ”

“ Promotion by mere seniority can never result in a thoroughly efficient corps of officers in the higher ranks unless there accompanies it a vigorous weeding-out process. Such a weeding-out process--that is, such a process of selection--is a chief feature of the four years' course of the young officer at West Point. There is no good reason why it should stop immediately upon his graduation. While at West Point he is dropped unless he comes up to a certain standard of excellence, and when he graduates he takes rank in the army according to his rank of graduation. ”

“ A commissioned officer can resign, and quit when he wants to, but an enlisted man, or a non-commissioned officer can not. Commissioned officers are appointed by the President, and the commission carries a certain rank, beginning with second lieutenant. Each step upward means a new commission. The sergeants and corporals are appointed, nominally, by the colonel of their regiment, by warrant.
“Well, then Pug had better look out for himself, if you’re going to have it in for him when you’re made corporal,” went on Jerry. “But say, it must be fun to be an officer—even a non-commissioned one.” ”

“ In turn the commandants of companies, acting as officers of the day, have general charge of the military and police duties. Two of the teachers, also, in turn, act as inspectors of the day, and have the general superintendence of the pupils in study and recreation hours, in the duties of personal police, at meals, and in the dormitories, relieving each other at different parts of the day. They are co-ordinate in authority with the officer of the day, and he is expected to relieve and aid them in the maintenance of order. These officers report immediately to the director. ”

“ I call him Lieutenant, although I have no right to do so, because he has held that rank in the king's service, but when quite a young man was cashiered for fighting a duel with his superior officer.'
'The service has lost a good officer,' said the other.
'It has indeed; a braver man never stepped, nor a better officer; but you see they have certain rules in the service and everything is sacrificed to maintain them. ”

“ Generally these appointments from civil life go to the honor graduates of colleges where military drill is conducted by an officer of the Army detailed as instructor. But, occasionally, [27] there are more vacancies than these honor graduates can or will fill—and then political influence very often plays a part in the appointment of some young men as lieutenants in the Army.
"Tell François where to drive, will you?" begged Lieutenant Ferrers.
"I don't believe, sir, that Colonel North is at his office so late in the forenoon," Corporal Hal replied. ”

“ A professorship of law has also been established, which is held by an officer of the bureau of military justice. The academic staff consist of the superintendent; the commandant of cadets, who is instructor of artillery, cavalry, and infantry tactics, and is charged with the discipline of the cadets, having usually 8 officers detailed from the line of the army as assistants ”

“ It is difficult to say exactly at what stage of a young officer's career the determination to adopt any one of the numerous lines before him should be taken: but there can be little doubt as to the utility of that determination being made early in life. In most cases, it is clearly beyond the reach of artificial systems of discipline, to place, on a pair of young shoulders, the reflecting head-piece of age and experience ”

“ When, on the contrary, one has reached a certain official class, at his own wish or that of his superior he may be transferred with the same rank to an entirely different branch of the service. It is consequently a not infrequent occurrence that a graduated student, after six months of military service at the front, becomes an officer, without further preparation; while an officer, on the other hand, by transfer into the civil grade corresponding with his military rank, may secure a more promising position in the civil service. ”

“ In order to facilitate the instruction of the young officers, I am of opinion that a company, consisting of forty privates, and a proportion of non-commissioned officers, should be formed in every battalion and the command of it given to the "Captain lieutenant." The men should be selected in equal portions from every company, and none but the very best men admitted into it. ”

“ His subsequent success as an officer will depend upon himself. The usual promotion is, as a rule, according to seniority, i. e., the ranking man of one grade goes to the next higher, except in case of war, when the best man is selected to fill a position of higher rank according as he is believed to be fit therefor. Though regular promotion may be slow, an officer has many other channels of success.
The highest cadets in class rank, perhaps four or five, go into the Engineer Corps, where their work is mainly among civilians, and their promotion rapid. ”

“ He added that if two men's work was not enough for him, he might do three men's, and teach some of the classes in the Department of Mathematics. Without changing his stride in the least, the young officer swept these two occupations along with him, bought some civilian clothes and a derby hat, and became both professor and student in the University, where he was also military attaché. ”

“ The head of the department in which the vacancy exists is the proper person to insist, if he thinks proper, on the possession of certain qualifications by the officer who is to be employed as his subordinate. Even graduation at West Point is not insisted on as a necessary qualification for staff employment.
Discipline.
Every young gentleman who passes his probationary examination in the January after his admission, receives his warrant of cadet, and signs an engagement to serve in the military force of the United States during the eight years next ensuing. ”

“ This is hardly promotion from the ranks, however, because it is understood from the first that the young avantageur, as he is called in Germany, is a candidate for officer’s rank, and he is treated accordingly, generally living in the officers’ mess and spending only a brief period in each of the non-commissioned ranks. True promotion from the ranks, won by merit and without any preferential treatment, is practically unknown in Germany. In France, on the other hand, one-third of the officers are promoted non-commissioned officers. ”

“ When an officer gets his commission in either the Artillery or Engineers, his seniors never play tricks on him, or attempt skylarking—all that was done with when the officers were neuxes at the Academy. ”

“ He ought to be sent to an Officer’s Training School soon—I think that will happen. He is the sort of fellow who ought to have a commission. I might possibly be allowed to go to an Officer’s Training School, but I wouldn’t do so, because if I did so I’d be sent—whether or not I got a commission—to some Regiment other than this. And I take no pleasure in the thought of soldiering in a regiment of strangers. I like the crowd in this outfit very much and would rather be a sergeant—as I am—here than be a lieutenant in any other Regiment. ”

“ His tour is regarded with dread especially by the First Classmen detailed that day for guard.
But the influence of either type of Officer in Charge is transient. It passeth from day to day. If the Gloomy One is on duty, there is the consolation that the Cheerful One will succeed him like sunshine after rain. It is the Commandant of Cadets, the chief of all the “Tacs,” who exercises the great permanent influence over the Corps. Ever since the creation of his office in 1825, he has been “the Com” to the embryo officers under him. ”

“ Officers and noncommissioned officers serve voluntarily, and morale is usually satisfactory within those groups. The service experience of the noncommissioned-officer applicants and the long training period required of officer candidates assure that both leadership groups understand and freely accept the conditions of service before they assume their duty responsibilities. ”

“ An officer cannot exercise for three years a command which he is universally admitted to be eminently qualified for, and yet be denied the corresponding rank, while his juniors, notoriously less deserving, are promoted, without feeling such mortification and chagrin as must drive him from the army. ”

“ There are two ways—one is through the Naval Academy at Annapolis, in which the young man becomes in time a commissioned officer; the other is through the Training-School at Newport, in which case the young man becomes a sailor, and in time may become an officer known officially as a warrant-officer. A commissioned officer holds an appointment from the President, and is confirmed by the United States Senate. ”

“ It is true that an officer must now serve a certain time in the various grades before promotion, which time as supposed to be sufficient for him to acquire a knowledge of his profession; but whether that knowledge is obtained, depends, as before, upon the young officer’s prospects in life. ”

“ In the academy itself, every first classman should be required in turn to serve as petty officer and officer; his ability to discharge his duties as such should be a prerequisite to his going into the line, and his success in commanding should largely determine his standing at graduation. ”

“ Persons acquainted with the Academy know that the corps of cadets is divided into four companies for the purpose of military exercises. These companies are officered from the cadets, the superintendent and commandant selecting the officers for their military bearing and qualifications. The adjutant, quartermaster, four captains and twelve lieutenants are taken from the first, or Senior class; the sergeants from the second, or junior class ”