Word: subaltern
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...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...
...hill above England's Salisbury Plain a stuffy general stood at the roadside, watching the 17th Light Battery return from a route march. Mules, guns, gunners. A frail, thoughtful major at the head of the column, a red-faced ungentlemanly subaltern in the rear. The general responded more favorably to the sight of a third officer: a fair young second-lieutenant with the right build for a horseman, a careless, well-bred face. Good stuff, this. "Who's that, Benjamin?" "Windrush, sir, Tubby Windrush." "Windrush . . . Windrush ... I knew his father. Get him here, will...
...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...
...Smith Square he beamed with Alfred Duff Cooper as the crowds, still exuberant over the debate on Lloyd George's speech the day before (see p. 36), howled "Good old Duff! Good old Churchill!" Press photographers had a field day as Randolph, ex-Hearst newspaperman, now a subaltern with a mechanized unit, stood smiling with his blue-frocked bride. The ceremony was followed by a large buffet luncheon party at Admiralty House, complete with dukes and duchesses, where Winston downed two goblets of champagne, munched ice cream, commented lugubriously: "We must eat, we must...
Rejected Guest is at once a cracking, to-hell-with-it summary of Aldington's grievances and a fable which brings the wheel full circle, from war to war. Its hero is a "War baby," the by-blow of a high-minded 1914 romance between an aristocratic infantry subaltern (later killed) and the belle of a small industrial town. Brought up by his maternal grandparents after his shamed mother leaves town, little David finds out what he is when he is knocked down, kicked and called a bastard on his first day at school. When...