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Comment by andrepd | Hacker News Reader

That's a funny rewriting of history, because we know that the casualty rate among enlisted (i.e. conscripted, in wwi and wwii) was much higher than for officers. The former were servants, factory labourers, peasants, etc, while the latter was a category reserved for the privileged.

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I don't think that's true for the British Army in WW1:

"The casualty rates were highest among the subalterns... estimates for the mortality rates range from 65 to 81%. This was, at its lowest estimate, double the rate for enlisted men."

https://www.arrse.co.uk/community/threads/the-slaughter-of-t...

Why would you assume "subalterns" means officers? It literally means the opposite.

What? No, "subaltern" refers to a junior officer (e.g. lieutenant).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaltern_(military)

Ah sorry, I guess yet another case of English people going like "let's take a latin word and change its meaning LOL" :)

> Literally meaning "subordinate", subaltern is used to describe commissioned officers below the rank of captain and generally comprises the various grades of lieutenant.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaltern_(military)

So since it literally means subordinate, it should not describe commissioned officers, right?

Commissioned officers are still subordinate to those above them. They just outrank NCOs and warrant officers. In theory, the freshest young ROTC grad can order the Command Sergeant Major of the Army (highest NCO in US Army) to do anything that is legal. In practice, nobody is that dumb. Intelligent lieutenants will give the sergeants under their command orders like "Sergeant, I need you and your troops to take out that enemy emplacement". Minor operational details are left up to the NCOs (who generally have much more combat experience) unless there is a specific reason that the lieutenant needs them to do or avoid some action, and generally those orders would just be the lieutenant following his or her own orders.

And generals are subordinate to their government.

But troops are also subordinate and yet aren't called subordinate :D

Almost invariably officers and NCOs sustain higher casualty rates at least in modern wars.

There was a big rural/urban divide in upper classes in WWI. Rural upper class would be officers on the front lines and get slaughtered at unthinkable rates, urban upper classes would do things like logistics and strategy and largely made it out okay.

In the British army in WW1, line-level officers suffered higher casualty rates. You can look up the stats yourself.

If you 'know' that, you're wrong. Frankly, this is a classist prejudice with no basis in fact. My boarding school had 700 names on the memorial to WW1. Mostly junior officers: 200 captains and 340 lieutenants. That's out of a cohort of maybe 3500 old boys who were the right age for the front: 20%. Eton itself says 1200 died and 5600 served. They all volunteered, and the 18 year olds were mostly made second Lieutenants, and the second Lieutenant's job was to climb out of the trench first and shout 'follow me' and to move around the battlefield looking after his men. So they did, and they died in huge numbers. The BBC says 12% of the British army's non-commissioned soldiers were killed during the war, compared with 17% of its officers. The actual Prime Minister during the way, Asquith lost a son. Andrew Bonar Law (PM in the 1920s) lost two. Anthony Eden (PM in the 50s) lost two brothers and another brother was badly wounded.

Maybe take a look at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10334679-six-weeks

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