Rank and File Quotes
The only soldier ever so honored. MacArthur had a huge ego, and was a shameless self-promoter. However he was never secure enough to have a personal staff of strong independent thinkers the way Dwight Eisenhower and most other high military officers did. The men who stayed on MacArthur’s personal staff tended to be sycophants and toadies and treated him like royalty, hence the remark by General Marshall.
These three conditions appear in virtually every convention on war and are basic to international law on the subject. For years they stood unquestioned, but in the latter half of the 20th century, guerilla warfare and revolutions began to pressure the definitions which were most strained in the War on Terrorism at the beginning of the 21st century. Starting with the Taliban in Afghanistan and then including Al Quada, the question of who was a combatant was debated anew. Using the classic definitions, the “foreign fighters” were not combatants and the Al Quada cells also met none of the three conditions. They could have been executed as spies as they were not in uniform according to some legal interpretations; others argued that they should be tried by civil courts; others, that they had no legal status offering any protections and it was in the discretion of their captors.
Socioeconomic class was a major factor in the Continental Army just as it was in the British Army. New York, unlike New England, did not have the clear-cut majority in favor of independence. Most of the working class at this stage had no opinion on independence as they did not need to and were not of the social class that had been discussing and arguing about the relationship with England. The upper class had been discussing the issue for some time and were polarized into Patriot and Loyalist sympathies. When the Patriots of New York voted to raise its first Regiment, the first people to volunteer were the men of the upper class who had been debating the question for some time. Because of their social class, they had to be officers. The lower classes got into the intellectual and political debate later, and they too were divided. The Patriots among them then volunteered to provide the privates and other enlisted men to the NY regiment. But the early contingents of New Yorkers were very top heavy with officers. While not as rigid as the Continental Army, the modern American Armed Services are still affected by this tradition. While there are many exceptions, there is still a strong correlation between military rank and socioeconomic family status.
