Gentleman ranker
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Gentleman ranker is an enlisted soldier who may have been a former officer or a gentleman qualified through education and background to be a commissioned officer but elects to remain a common soldier.[1]
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[edit] Explanation
Reasons have been as varied as a previous disgrace, a gentleman adventurer unwilling to accept responsibility, or in the case of the US Army a shorter period of initial enlistment. Some Gentleman rankers may have been officers in one army but who are unable or unwilling to accept a commission in a different nations' army where they serve.
Examples of Gentlemen rankers have been former officers from various nations serving as enlisted soldiers in the French Foreign Legion. Two examples in fiction are David Niven in The Guns of Navarone and Pvt Percival Pinkerton of the American comic book Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos.
The term appears in several Rudyard Kipling stories, and in the poem Gentleman Rankers from the first (1895) series of Barrack Room Ballads. It was rewritten in America in 1908 as The Whiffenpoof Song.
[edit] References
[edit] Notes
- ^ KITCHENER'S NEW ARMY.; Its Personnel, Spirit, and Training Described b... - Article Preview - The New York Times. query.nytimes.com. Retrieved on 2008-06-09.
[edit] Bibliography
- Gentleman Ranker, John Jennings, Reynal & Hitchcock (1942), ASIN B0006APPN6
- The Gentleman Ranker and Other Plays, Leon Gordon, Kessinger Publishing 2007, ISBN 0548400911
