Word: martinet
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...days' confinement for the pilot of his plane, because the pilot had neglected to put the new commander's insignia on the fuselage. To a bearded copilot, De Lattre snapped: "And you've got five minutes to shave yourself clean!" Later, to an aide, the martinet confided: "I have terrible obligations. I have to abuse those I like the best. These air force men are genuine heroes, but they behave too badly...
...Philip Queeg of the U.S.S. Caine, a four-piper destroyer converted to minesweeping, was a phony and misfit skipper. A pallid little man turning to fat, one of the low men in his Annapolis class, he could handle neither his ship, his officers nor his men. He was a martinet, a liar, a petty tyrant, and, when the chips were down in combat, a coward. On escort duty in the Pacific, all this became painfully obvious, even to a raw ensign like Willie Keith. When a typhoon hit the fleet in the Philippine Sea in December 1944, it became plain...
...Decisions. He was old and he looked feeble, and gossip spread that he couldn't handle his work. His aides knew better: the spare, grey-thatched, droop-mustached old man was a stern and shrewd martinet, who could lay about him with a shaking crooked finger and a devastating logic. George Catlett Marshall, who inspired some of the same kind of respect, jumped when Stimson beckoned...
Whip-Cracker. Almond (pronounced All-mond) is a whip-cracking officer. He never compromises with discipline, drives himself hard and his subordinates only a shade less hard. To some he seems an insufferable martinet. Those who know him best say his professional manner, at times as tough as armor plate, is only the protective covering for a courtly, convivial, even sentimental off-duty personality...
...flying general's mission: rebuilding a bomber group whose shattered morale under heavy losses threatens to 1) discredit precision daylight bombing, and 2) undermine the whole aerial offensive against German-held Europe. Brigadier General Frank Savage-(Gregory Peck) goes at the job with the cold passion of a martinet and the inner torment of a man of good will. He breaks subordinates, cancels privileges, harangues his crews ("Consider yourselves dead"), disgraces misfits, puts the outfit through elementary training paces and woos such resentment that every pilot accepts his blanket invitation to apply for transfer...