BF2S Forums To those in the British Military...

Looked like a mirror image to us......except the Royal Marines seemed much older.

An SF SGM told me this


In the British military,  the NCO is no where nearly as important to unit cohesion as they are over here.  Tasks that are usually performed by an NCO over here are duties of an officer with the brits.  You and I know that the NCO runs this shit in our military. Im interested to know what they teach our allies and how they function on a regular basis.  If what that SGM told me was true.

Basically, from what i understand, NCO's provide the interim between the soldiers, and officers.I could be wrong however

USMCkilla wrote:

I have several Royal Marines at my base right now doing a exchange program in several of the Infantry training battalions. I will ask tomorrow just to make sure but in all my dealings with the Royal Marines (mainly Afghanistan) they appeared to operate much the same as the USMC with the NCO's in charge or most of the work. I will say this though. While they are not lacking in discipline they are more relaxed when it comes to dealing with different ranks. Many of their officers call their men by their first names etc. This would never stand in the US Marines but the Royal Marines make it work and still maintain a high level of discipline in the process.

its like that in the Army Reserve, which threw me off coming from active duty infantry.  Everybody is really informal.  If I were an E-6 or E-7, id be scuffing shit up left and right.


just to throw in a bit of historical perspective.  One of the problems that the Italian army had in ww2 was that they had more officers than NCOS.

Last edited by GunSlinger OIF II (2007-08-07 16:53:38)

Meh... Doesn't matter which one you go for, you'll still be starting at the bottom.  If you go with the officer option, you won't really have responsibility until your 2nd year. 
What you do want to do, if you go officer, is make damn sure you don't get on the wrong side of your Sargent; since he's the man with at least 10 years of experience that he's got to pass onto you in a very short period of time.  Plus you'll have senior officers mentoring you as well...
If you go for the digger option, be aware that promotion isn't always guaranteed.  If you don't fit your troop/platoon hierachy's idea of a NCO then your name wont get nominated for promotional courses.
The big thing that you should be thinking about, is what will you be doing in 4 years time.  Especially if you find that you don't like the Army.  At the end of your 4 years as a digger,  if you join an arms corp (Infantry or Armoured), you're probablly not going to have any qualifications that are overly relevant to a civilian employer.  If you join up as an officer, at the 4 year mark you'll still have another 2 years, but after that's over you'll get a diploma in management as a minimum (if after 6 years you haven't made Captain, you're doing something wrong).
As for what life's like in the Australian Army, it tends to vary from unit to unit.  At the section level it's reasonably relaxed.  Unless your hierachy are a total bunch of flogbags, the only times you'll be calling your Cpl by rank are when you march in, you've f*cked up or when the brass is around.

You're welcome to PM me.  I'd be more than happy to offer any advice from my 7 years of service that can help you with your decision

*edit* Thank you for the warm welcome and the karma

Last edited by Evangium (2007-08-07 22:50:58)

I'm currently serving in the British Army as a JNCO (LCpl).  To break it down simply, the chain of command exists in such a way that some General will have a stupid idea at a dinner party, tell his Brigadiers, who form a slightly more detailed plan at Brigade level.  The the Colonels and Lt Cols will form a crazy idea based on this for thier respective regiments.

Then, the Major in charge of a company/Squadron will go to the bar to think of a very detailed plan over a few gins, before all the junior officers fuck it up with their lack of experience...

When it comes to initiating the plan, NCO's will conduct the actual work, interpretting the orders into a viable battle plan that isn't as retarded as what the General thougt of at step one.  At this point, all the officers take a step back, head back to the mess for pimms and oranges.  It becomes the job of the NCO (at all levels) to formulate on the fly decisions and assessments, and explain it in very short words to the now confused officer.

In a day to day regiment not deployed on operations, there are far too many officers sticking their noses in and fucking shit up.  When it comes to actually doing our job, NCO's rule the forces.

mcminty wrote:

I'm also sorry for the slight derail:

Little BaBy JESUS wrote:

Im looking to take all the tests and interviews etc. for RAAF pilot later this year... if all goes to plan im heading to the top. career soldier
last year my friend did the same as me but he flunked out in the actuall flying. lol
i just gotta make sure i pass the maths tests

Good luck with that. Earlier this year, my recruiting officer said he would not hesitate in reccomending me (blah, blah), except that I am red-green colourblind. As a result, I couldn't do pilot, engineering, etc (anything that interested me). Bloody shame considering my friend won the ADFA education award (as a RAAF candidate) and has gotten a letter of offer.

Hmm... If the ADF is serious about getting recruitment up, they should think about loosening some of these medical criteria...

Well hopefully in a years time well just slight over a year I'm planning on joing the AAC better than infantry unless you like being cannon fodder.

I go for my barb test in march next year to see if I can get into AFC harrogate whioch i should easily pass as its just upper and lower body strength exercises and a 1.5 mile run to be done in under 11:30(its longer due to my age at that period in time.)

Then all being well i go for my Phase 1 training. I'll let you know how I get on in coming months.

wensleydale8 wrote:

Well hopefully in a years time well just slight over a year I'm planning on joing the AAC better than infantry unless you like being cannon fodder.

Nothing wrong with being a Ground pounder lad!

wensleydale8 wrote:

I go for my barb test in march next year to see if I can get into AFC harrogate whioch i should easily pass as its just upper and lower body strength exercises and a 1.5 mile run to be done in under 11:30(its longer due to my age at that period in time.) .

The Army are screaming out for bods. More blokes are getting out than joining so l think if you do the run in about half an hour they will still take you! Good luck though mate.

Well GunSlinger OIF II  some one has posted the same question on the ARRSE website.

ARRSE

So which one of you chaps is TheIan?

Last edited by The_Guardsman (2007-08-08 03:55:00)

The_Guardsman wrote:

wensleydale8 wrote:

Well hopefully in a years time well just slight over a year I'm planning on joing the AAC better than infantry unless you like being cannon fodder.

Nothing wrong with being a Ground pounder lad!

wensleydale8 wrote:

I go for my barb test in march next year to see if I can get into AFC harrogate whioch i should easily pass as its just upper and lower body strength exercises and a 1.5 mile run to be done in under 11:30(its longer due to my age at that period in time.) .

The Army are screaming out for bods. More blokes are getting out than joining so l think if you do the run in about half an hour they will still take you! Good luck though mate.

Yeah, and 1/2 of them come straight to the Australian Army, the rest go to the Kiwis...groan...  So save ya-self the trouble and become an Australian and enlist in our army.  I was told by an ex-pommy that he was getting paid more as an Aussie Cpl than as a Brit Sgt, even with the exchange rate  

Just kidding.  Good luck to both of you, wenslydale8 for your achieving your aspirations, and the Guardsman for eating all the Cav guys' jack rations, rifling through (and stealing) our porn and generally leaving an unpleasent mess in the back of our nice, clean AFV's, then having the hide to bitch about the ride