What always surprised me while I was serving in the military is the strange relationship between the officers and soldiers in the United States Marine Corps.

On one hand, there exists a tremendous amount of respect to the officers. One of the first things that I’ve been taught while in Boot Camp is to ALWAYS, ALWAYS salute an officer when you see one. Furthermore, Marine officers have a different color sticker on their cars, so if a soldier sees a car with the blue sticker, he is supposed to stop and salute no matter who is driving that car. It can easily be an officer’s wife or his teenage kid – still have to stop and salute. Another thing is to address the officer only as “Sir”, not just his rank. Such as “Sir, you have a phone call” and not “Captain Smith, you have a phone call”.

On the other hand, if a soldier mistakenly calls his NCO (corporals and above) “Sir” and if no officers are around, the sergeant will most likely reply: “Sir? Do I look like a “Sir” to you, soldier? I work for a living!” Which would imply that it is the NCOs that do most of the work in the military while officers are getting all the credit.

Yet, the third interesting thing is this: If a soldier becomes an officer later in his career – he gets a special nickname by his subordinates – “Mustang”. Those kinds of officers are respected by soldiers and NCOs like no one else. You can often hear this being said in the soldiers’ barracks: “Don’t you know? He is a Mustang!” This kind of officers can do no wrong, he will always be a part soldier, so other soldiers will always have this special bond to him.

Sometime later, I’ll try to describe this relationship from an officer’s point of view.