Word: subaltern
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...spite of a flat warning that their showing in battle would determine whether they would be sent home or kept in uniform, many a ranker, many a subaltern flubbed his battle shots. Through the maneuver area ran the rumor that when next week's battle was over the cleanout of substandard officers would be terrific-perhaps as high...
Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell was an empire builder of the Kipling school. All set to enter Oxford at the age of 19, he took a crack at the Army examinations for a lark, finished second out of 700 and wound up as a subaltern in the 13th Hussars in India. An expert at reconnaissance, he served with the 13th in the Afghan War in 1881. On service in Zululand he won the name of Impeesa (The Wolf that Never Sleeps) from the awed natives, moved on to Ashanti and Matabeleland. By the time of the Boer...
Flamboyant, cheeky Son Churchill, an ex-Hearst newsman, now a subaltern with a mechanized unit, had tried three times previously to become an M. P., but the Baldwin-Chamberlain clique, seeing him merely as an uncut, minor edition of Father Churchill, firmly snuffed each attempt. With the "official Conservatives" and competition both out, and his father in at No. 10 Downing Street, it was easy. Adrian Charles Moreing, M. P. for the Lancashire cotton-weaving town of Preston, died and Randolph popped up as unopposed candidate in the by-election, was duly elected...
...honest soldier ever got rich in the U. S. Army. In 1782 George Washington's major generals were entitled by law to $31.60 a month, plus rations; his lowest subaltern, to $3.15. But many a Revolutionary private got more. The Continental States and their impoverished Congress at Philadelphia bid against each other for men, ran prices as high as $86.66 a month (in the Massachusetts and New Hampshire Militias), up to $1,000 cash bounty, 100 to 500 acres in land-bounty a man. Said General Washington, before the war and the bidding were well under way: "Never were...
...gentleman, Windrush represents a tradition which causes the English distinct pride and a certain worry. Author Henriques worries over him like a maiden aunt. What is somewhat less credible, he makes him a subject of tender concern to his major ("Sammy") and to "Daddy" Watson, the hardbitten subaltern of the introductory scene...