Tex Thornton was commissioned at a fairly high rank during WWII though it is unclear how high to start, I know he ultimately achieved the rank of Colonel.
He recruited and commanded a group of academics that later came to be known as the Whiz Kids, also all directly commissioned. They were responsible for bringing rationality to the chaos that was the Army’s logistics at the time, determining the effectiveness of bombing campaigns, etc., using statistical controls, something the Army had not yet embraced.
After the war Thornton offered his entire group of Whiz Kids to Ford, which was in utter chaos and on the brink of collapse. They essentially saved the company and many stayed with Ford well into the 1970s while others went on to other things. The most famous among them was Robert McNamara, president of Ford for a very short period and Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson.
Both of these stories sound…suspect. There is a common tendency to exaggerate the absurdity and officious bureaucracy of the military to make for a good story, even though there is enough actual absurdity that you wouldn’t think this to be necessary. In the case of the first story, the commander of the facility or detachment could simply issue a general standing order, or even better commission the creation of an instruction or process order which delineates hygiene procedures for all food preparation workers. Assigning a brevet rank to general officer to issue a single order defies not only logic but the effort involved in getting that approved though the layers of command.
In the second, while it is certainly possible that a non-classified document could be retroactively classified based upon some reinterpretation of security classification guidance, the original author of the report could be allowed to read the report under supervision of the classification authority or given a version of the report with specific elements redacted to an unclass level sufficient to make reference to the original report without unintentionally including classified information. This is done routinely because of what an enormous pain in the ass it is to get ‘read in’ to some program specific guidance and conveying non-classified conclusions based upon classified information or data to a broad audience is logistically difficult even if everyone involved has a clearance. Keeping “illicit carbons” (copies) containing classified information in an unsecured container or open locations is illegal and subject to severe discipline potentially including administrative or other-than-honorable discharge, court martial, and even potentially time in stockade/brig depending on severity of offense.
Notice this: Commission first, course later. It has been already determined they will give you that job, now they teach you some minimal military ways.
@Czarcasm
Not really. Nor were my 2 years of ROTC, and 6 weeks of “sorta boot camp lite”.
But for the folks who get the “easy” way in, it is little more than civilian onboarding. With essentially no way to flunk out.
In the “real” military for both officers and enlisted it’s more a process of 1) remake the person, 2) hire them if that’s successful or release them if it’s not, 3) teach them from absolute scratch to do some particular job, 4) put them to work doing that job.
A very different process from the civil world which skips 1, does 2 based on hunches and guesswork, largely skips 3 by assuming / believing you already fully know how to do the work or else they would not have hired you, then jumps you right into 4. Followed by 5) Good luck; we’ll fire you if you fail.
The various forms of DoD’s DCO far more resemble civil than military practice.
It was the rough equivalent of the weeks or months long training many civilian jobs* have.
“Civilian “ from the military point of view - police and fire departments might distinguish themselves from “civilians” but as far as I know, to the military any one who is not part of the military is a civilian.
So the reason I’m asking is (sigh) a fantasy novel I’m working on. The military in question is a burgeoning revolutionary one, not totally comparable to the US. But in effect, the protagonist is a secret rebel from the oppressing state working under her revolutionary mentor, the mentor ends up at the head of the revolution, and once she flees from her home country, they want to use her, because of her status, as part of their public relations strategy. They want her to be a mouthpiece for the Front. She has no military background. A friend told me she could be a commissioned officer, but that… complicates things. She’d be disobeying a lot of orders. I’m trying to figure out what the leader would most likely end up doing with her. Is it conceivable they wouldn’t commission her and just work with her as an ally?
I have a friend in my writers group who is a Marine and he goes twitchy over my portrayal of military operations, so I’m trying to do better.
You could make her a Darth Vader kind of thing. “Lord Vader” isn’t any kind of military rank, but everyone knew he was the right hand of the Emperor, and so did whatever he told them to do.
Fantasy worlds, by definition, play by a different set of rules, and revolutionaries, by definition, don’t care much about playing by whatever rules there are. Almost anything could be the right answer for your book.
But an unofficial right-hand figure who’s just sort of looming ominously over the whole org chart while not actually occupying a specific place on it probably does work best.
There you have your out: it’s not the modern US so it doesn’t need to exactly match it.
Make it so that your revolutionary forces have a body of “auxiliaries” who are not quite a part of the fighting force but are there with them and have an official role in support roles. In many instances in Our Real Timeline if your regime is ideologically driven you’ll have paramilitary Party Organizations that can work side by side with the forces but are under a different structure. Or have it be that in that revolutionary army you use the original old meaning of “Warrant Officer”, someone recruited to do a specific job but who was not an actual soldier/seafarer. Give her title as some job descriptor rather than use traditional rank structure, e.g. Command Chief Adjutant to the Leader, amorphous enough that she’s “official” but not expected to actually outrank the true commanders except by speaking for the Leader.
Darth Vader was kind of a Dick Cheney (under the GW Bush administration) figure; as “Lord Vader” (in essence, Vice President) he really didn’t have any specific authority not explicitly granted by the President but in reality setting the agenda and taking charge of many aspects of the executive under the guise of “…doing some of the more mundane jobs; overseeing the bureaucracy…”, essentially the de facto commander in chief of the military because the Emperor was too busy designing sleek-loking if totally impractical costumes for his guards and focusing on his elaborate skin care routine.
The military of a “burgeoning revolutionary” government might well award commissions of high rank to totally unqualified people as patronage or because the revolutionary leadership doesn’t trust any existing military structure. That was certainly the case in the post-October Revolution Soviet Union (and a reason why their military still sucks today), and generally true after any non-military coup or civil revolution where the professional military is gutted because the leader or ‘revolutionary council’ where the military leadership is not trusted to follow orders or gives out appointments to high government and military positions as favors or to ensconce their family members as reliable allies (or at least so they think). Your Marine fried is doubtless inculcated in the culture of the professional military of the United States which, for all its faults, is generally meritocratic in promotion (at least in aspiration) and holds NCOs and officers to a standard of conduct and responsibility in not only following orders but being in compliance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice and their oaths to their service and to defend the Constitution. The same is definitely not true for many ‘less professional’ militaries around the world. Tell your friend to imagine what the military of Uganda under Idi Amin or Venezuela under Hugo Chavez would look like.
I was also thinking of something like the “political officers” that the USSR had. They ostensibly had a “military” rank, but they weren’t expected to do any of the actual military stuff like planning or running battles. Their authority was outside of and over the local chain of command, and their main job was evaluating the loyalty of the officers in their units, and punishing those they thought weren’t sufficiently loyal. No one would ever ask them what to do in combat, but if they gave the order, “Execute Comrade Captain Smirnoff”, executions would happen.
An officer is expected to do their job, nothing more, nothing less.
I once spent a few weeks in a small intelligence outpost in southern Lebanon. There were a bunch of intelligence officers there, the highest ranking one being a major, I think, who spent all their time locked away in a bunker full of telescopes and fancy gadgets. Protecting the base was an infantry squad (including yours truly) and an M-60 tank, all under the command of an infantry lieutenant. Our orders were clear: if the base ever came under attack, the guy in charge would be our infantry lieutenant, despite the fact that he was one of the lowest ranking officers there. That’s because he was combat arms, and they weren’t. He wasn’t going to tell them how to spy on the enemy, and they weren’t going to tell him how to fight. And everyone was fine with that.
Subsistence allowance (food) is slightly more generous for any enlisted than any officer. Housing allowance (given the same locality and dependents status) is grade-based, but effectively by seniority – a high-ranking enlisted member will have a slightly higher housing allowance than a junior officer. And the variation from lowest to highest housing allowance is only about $1000 per month.
He may well get an entertaining allowance for dining foreign officers/diplomats/politicians.
Admiral Woodward records in his memoirs being told that his entertaining allowance for the last quarter hadn’t been spent (as he was away fighting a war) it was being cut, because he obviously didn’t need it.
Of course, the flipside of that is that a general is expected to entertain dignitaries. So it’s not like it’s extra pay. Ultimately, that’s no different from an artilleryman not having to pay for his own shells: You’re given the resources you need to do your job.