Gentlemen and others

Gentlemen and others
I arrived at Tyersall as a Signalman – a private soldier, bottom of the heap (or salt of the earth, whatever your point of view). I left proudly bearing the same rank.
There’s a particular, maybe perverse pride for me in having done the whole of my National Service as one of the Her Majesty’s privates (as it were). I didn’t even make “Lance-jack” – the one stripe lance-corporal that was just one step up the ladder and was, actually, well within reach of any competent soldier within two years. That I couldn’t manage even that says a lot about my soldierly qualities.
So I stayed at the foot of the ladder, and compensated by being an inverted snob about it in the years immediately afterwards. In the post-National Service days, when people were still talking about their service, I often mixed with people who had been officers, and I never failed to let them know that I hadn’t lived a life of luxury in the officers’ mess. (Usually, interestingly enough, it was their wives and girl friends who were most impressed by this, because suddenly they had living proof that their husbands hadn’t been nearly as badly done by in the forces as they claimed.)
This preoccupation simply reflects life in the services, where your rank is what really matters. (Arguably, the same applies in civilian life, though not as much as it once did.) In the services, you wear your badges of rank, and when you meet someone else in uniform you know instantly whether they can give you orders or whether it’s the other way round. It all has to do, of course, with quick decision making under pressure, in battle.
To describe all of the ranks would probably be boring. There’s one dividing line, though – more of a gulf really – in the rank structure that you need to understand. It’s there in the each of the Services -- Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines -- and it’s that between commissioned officers and “other ranks.” It’s important in this story, because some National Servicemen were the one thing, and some (most, in fact) were the other. I harboured dreams of being one, but inevitably ended up as the other.
Of course, had I been offered the Queen’s commission when I went in, I’d have accepted it like a shot. I fancied the better uniform, the swagger stick, the nice peaked cap, being called “Sir” and the chance of being saluted in the street. In fact when I first went in I asked about it. After all, with three A Levels I was better qualified on paper than most recruits – than most officers in fact. But the officer interviewing me took one look, shook his head and said, “Maybe after three months you could apply.”
I guess he knew that it wouldn’t take me three months to realise that I was more likely to become Pope than receive the Queen’s commission.
It was all, you see, a matter of class. Up to then I’d had quite a sheltered upbringing as an only child in a mining family. I’d been to grammar school and passed a few exams, and been readily accepted by the middle class families of my friends -- suburban accountants, middle managers. To me, they were genuine posh people, the real thing. They lived in semi-detached houses with bay windows and had fitted carpets.
They were, I thought, the ones at the top. I simply hadn’t met the people further up the ladder, from whom most of the officer corps was drawn. Their children didn’t go to the schools we went to, and they certainly weren’t to be found doing the Veleta in a Church hall to a Dansette record player, which was our idea of a good night out. Those were the people who automatically assumed that they would become officers. Even the way they put it spoke volumes. They didn’t say, “I became an officer,” they said, “I took a commission.” It wasn’t an achievement you see, it was a right.