Re: [Service] Ranks and Designations

On Fri, 17 Jan 2003 03:42:07 -0500, Adrian Johnson
<adrian.johnson@sympatico.ca> wrote:

>The country didn't want to lose
>the position (having their nation represented), so by a special act of
>their parliament they temporarily created the rank of Brigadier General
and
>promoted the Colonel, for the duration of his appointment to the UN
>position - at the end of which he would have either been promoted to
Major
>General or reduced to Colonel...  

Sounds sort of like the old brevet system in the US army. I can't
remember
when it began (probably War of 1812, if not before; it was certainly
used in
the Mexican War), but it fell out of use after the Civil War. What
happened
was that instead of giving someone a medal, as there were few medals,
you gave
an officer a brevet promotion for heroism. The officer still maintained
his
old rank for the purposes of pension (maybe even pay, but I'm not
positive)
but he was allowed to wear the insignia of the new rank, and be treated
as
having that rank. The rank was removed when the conflict was over. It
was a
really clumsy way of doing things, especially after the war when all
those
brevet Brigadier and Major Generals dropped back to Colonel status.

To make things even more confusing, there were regular army ranks and
volunteer ranks. A Captain in the regular army may have been given the
command
of a volunteer regiment during the war. He would then get the rank of
Colonel
of Volunteers, but his old regular army rank stuck around with him for
when
the conflict was over and he went back to being in the regular army. A
promotion in the volunteers often, but not always, resulted in a
promotion in
the regular army.

You probably saw this coming... you could be breveted for a regular army
rank
_and_ a volunteer army rank. So, theoretically, you could have at the
end of
the war Brevet Major General of Volunteers with a real rank of Brigadier
General of Volunteers, who was also breveted a full Colonel in the
Regular
Army, but who's actual rank in the Regular Army was Captain.

They ended up doing away with brevets and just handing out medals for
meritorious conduct. By WWII they had done away with the differentiation
between volunteers and regular army, but I'm not sure when that was
actually
done.

Allan Goodall		       agoodall@hyperbear.com
http://www.hyperbear.com

"We come into the world and take our chances
 Fate is just the weight of circumstances
 That's the way that Lady Luck dances
 Roll the bones." - N. Peart