Why is there such a pronounced difference in how the military treats officers vs enlisted people? This even extends to how they are treated when a POW, as seen in Bridge Over River Kwai.

Question

I *completely* understand that there needs to be a hierarchy, but there seems to be a big discontinuity between these different classifications. When I was in the Navy, I noticed this extended to eating accommodations, and even how ships were built (different hallways for enlisted and officers to walk down). This may have made sense “back in the day”, but why does this separation continue to exist today?

In: 222

Answer 1

You are right about the Navy being very rank conscious. I was in the Air Force during the Alaskan oil spill and on an AF team writing software to help manage the cleanup. My Colonel, an airman (E-3), and myself (E-6) were visiting on the USN Juneau which was docked in Valdez Alaska.

Our Colonel was invited to dine with the admiral and ship’s captain in the officers mess (fancy officer eating). I was going going to be sent to the petty officer’s mess (middle rank eating), and the airman sent to eat in the seaman’s mess (bottom rank eating). The colonel declined and said he wanted to eat with us to talk work, could all three of us compromise and eat in the petty officer’s mess?

They told him there was no way they could allow a low ranking E-3 to eat in the petty officers mess, so the three of us went down to the seaman’s mess. The navy would rather an Air Force Colonel, equal in rank to the ship’s captain, eat in bottom rank mess, rather than allow a low ranking guy to eat in the middle mess.

So down we went, we ate a decent meal. But the Colonel didn’t scrape his plate right, so the guy on the other side of the window, not knowing he was a full bird colonel, yelled at him to scrape his plate right. The colonel laughed and scraped his plate.

That, BTW, is how that crazy, former F-4 pilot, crazy man Colonel got people so fanatical about doing good software work. He was out-of-control crazy in some of his ideas, but he was very devoted to the people who worked for him and we knew it.

**tl;dr the navy would rather shit on a high ranking officer, than allow a low ranking guy even the slightest perk beyond his rank.**