War Diaries Talk

Granting of commissions and Drill Sergeants

  • brownfox by brownfox

    Two questions on this page:
    http://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/subjects/AWD00012xh
    (hopefully that link works)

    Firstly, the NCOs who have been granted commissions in other regiments. How should this be tagged? I decided to tag each of them twice, once to show that they were being transferred to other units and once for 'promotion'.

    Secondly, there is no rank of Drill Sergeant available on the dropdown - so I have been tagging them as sergeants. Is this ok?

    Thanks
    Steve

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    The way you have tagged the men on promotion sounds fine to me as their new units are mentioned.

    Of course, being a Foot Guards diary there has to be something odd about "Drill Sergeant"! It's not really a rank, it's an appointment, held by someone with the rank of Warrant Officer Second Class (WO2), much as CSM, CQMS, BSM, etc are all really appointments not ranks. The problem is that often the person will be referred to by their appointment rather than the rank - no-one ever calls a CSM anything but that for example! It's impossible (especially with the oddities from the Household Division and the Foot Guards) to have every single variation of rank and appointment in the drop down. I'm sure people have come across this already with FQMS and Corporal Major and all sorts of other examples!

    So that's the long answer! The short one is, no they aren't Sergeants, they are WO2s with the appointment of Drill Sergeant, but I can't imagine most people will know that so I expect they will get tagged as Sergeant!

    Posted