History Main / TheMenFirst

* In ''SchlockMercenary'', when the mercenaries don't have enough money to pay everyone, [[TheCaptain Tagon]] suggests that the officers take pay cuts so all the grunts could get payed. Nobody objects even though they are mercenaries.

-> ''"There are three things to remember about being a Starship Captain. Keep your shirt tucked in, go down with the ship, and '''never abandon a member of your crew.'''"''
--> -- '''[[StarTrekVoyager Captain Janeway]]'''

[[AC;WebComics]]

** Amberly's footnotes also point out that he follows this trope without even noticing. For example, one time a group of men swarm a tank ([[WhatAnIdiot yes, like into melee range]]) and instead of using the anti-tank weapon he has a and killing some of them, Cain runs off to save the tank's target directly.

* In [=~George MacDonald Fraser~=]'s ''The General Danced At Dawn'', when the title general insisted on inspecting the men's quarters first, because of their priority, the whole inspection went somewhat awry from there. (Something had gotten spilled, and they couldn't clean it up in time.)

* TheMenFirst: Colonel Craig Harriman might be a [[TheStoic stoic commanding officer]]--but after Army PR Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Derringer accuses him of caring only for results and not the crews, he finally [[NotSoStoic loses his temper]], then has Derringer read from a box of letters ... responses to letters that Harriman personally wrote to the family of men who died under his command.

** General Grant's reputation for having a WeHaveReserves mindset is mostly based on the Wilderness Campaign and is not entirely deserved. Grant was quite careful with his men, as the earlier western campaigns showed. In the Wilderness he was trying for a war of maneuver but General Lee wouldn't let him and is the one who turned it into a meat grinder.

-> ''"There are three things to remember about being a Starship Captain. Keep your shirt tucked in, go down with the ship, and '''[[TheMenFirst never abandon a member of your crew]].'''"''
--> -- '''[[StarTrekVoyager Captain Kathryn Janeway]]'''

-> ''"There are three things to remember about being a Starship Captain. Keep your shirt tucked in, go down with the ship, and [[TheMenFirst never abandon a member of your crew]]."''

** Another episode centered around Major Weems and his visit to the camp to visit his wounded men. He always visited his engineers after getting clobbered in combat and tried to work deals with doctors to get some of them sent home out. [[spoiler: Inverted in that Weems was a closet racist, and 90% of his casualties were African Americans that he sent into harms way just so he could get them out of his outfit.]]

Compare GreaterNeedThanMine. Contrast MoralMyopia; officers who do not fall under this often fall under that.

** Of course, the armies had very high death rates when they ''weren't'' fighting, owing to disease. Ending the war quickly saved lives that way.

* The motto of the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst is 'Serve to Lead', or, as this Troper's CO once put it: 'Be first in line for the bad stuff and last for the good stuff'.

* In the Air Force Cadets, you line up for food in rank order, lower ranks eat first, higher ranks eat last.
** Actually this is the case in all types of cadets, not just Air.

** He actually does this ''again'' at the end, when he is[[spoiler:rendered blind through no fault of his own, but offered the use of a philosopher's stone to heal his eyes]]. Mustang still insists that [[spoiler:the now crippled subordinate Havoc is treated first.]]

* In George [=MacDonald=] Fraser's ''The General Danced At Dawn'', when the title general insisted on inspecting the men's quarters first, because of their priority, the whole inspection went somewhat awry from there. (Something had gotten spilled, and they couldn't clean it up in time.)

* In JamesSwallow's {{Warhammer 40000}} HorusHeresy novel ''The Flight of the Eisenstein'', Temeter, seeing Horus's treacherous attack on the Space Marines on planet, refuses to get into the bunkers: "My men first." Since not all of them can make it, he dies with them.
* In JamesSwallow's {{Warhammer 40000}} BloodAngels novel ''Red Fury'', the sergeants Rafen and Noxx are the last men to get on the shuttle to escape a fortress about to fall apart.