Danny:
I might have been Officer i/c Pig Farm somewhere
I think that Mr Barraclough beat you to it!
I believe that formerly there had been an Exam "A" between P/O and F/O
I suppose there must have been. Funny thing but I'd never considered that. All that I remember of the B Exam was trying to understand the tortuous organisation of the Army. Regiments, Brigades, Companies, Battalions, Divisions, even Armies; the whole melange defeated all logic. Mercifully the exam I took didn't inquire too deeply and thus the second stripe and attendant pay hike duly materialised.
Geriaviator:
Our generation does not know how lucky we are.
Indeed, and that is why the posts of Danny and his cohorts are so important. As I am prone to say ad nauseam, it is the brief BTW, the quick throw away line, that so clearly demonstrates the yawning gulf that exists between life now and life then. There is nothing to be envied about facing violent death, of losing loved ones in the same way, of constant privation and suffering, and yet we do envy them. Why? Because what that generation achieved meant that ours grew up in freedom and with hope for the future. That is an enviable epitaph for any generation and the least that ours can do is simply to acknowledge that.