Officer And A Gentleman / Real Life

• Truth in Television: modern-day officer corps are the direct descendants of knights. When warfare became a science instead of an art in the 15th century, most generals noticed that knights - professional soldiers who had trained for fighting, warfare, strategy, and tactics - were far more valuable as officers and commanders of units composed of commoners, rather than privates in elite units.
  • The tradition amongst European noble families is that the eldest son will inherit the estate and the younger sons will select a career, either in military, clergy, academia, or as civil servants. The name cadet for an officer trainee means "younger" in French - cadets were the younger sons of nobility.
  • The best example of this would be the Prussian 'junker' class of middling nobility, who utterly dominated the officer corps of the German army from the 18th century to the end of World War Two.
  • Sons (and, in today's world, daughters) of noble families are even today grossly over-represented in the military academies everywhere in the Western world. Except the United States, for obvious reasons, where they instead tend to be the sons and daughters of the wealthy and well-connected (after all, it's easier to get an appointment to West Point when your dad knows the Congressman making the appointment).
• Real-life subversion in conduct Robert Graves, the author of I, Claudius, describes doing during World War I. He describes an occasion when a German officer was sighted as being within sniping range, and declaring that it would be dishonorable to kill a fellow officer this way, Graves handed his gun to a lower class soldier and ordered him to make the kill.
• After the death of legendary German WW1 Ace Oswald Boelcke (known for writing the first manual of air combat, still relevant today), the English sent a plane to drop a wreath mourning the loss.
  • Just because there's a war on, it doesn't mean you have to be insensitive, dontcherknow.
  • World War I had several of these moments, mainly because the war was mostly political and the soldiers were just fighting because they were obliged to.
    • Henry Tandey, a British soldier, almost shot a wounded and fleeing German infantryman, but decided not to and just waved him on mercifully. Guess who the soldier was? Nice Job Breaking It, Hero indeed.
  • It happened again with Boelcke's student, Mandred von Richthofen, aka the Red Baron. After he was shot down in combat, the Allies organised a full military funeral, and many soldiers placed wreaths on his grave inscribed with such phrases as "To Our Gallant and Worthy Foe".
• Truth in Television, again: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a Union general at the American Civil War battle of Petersburg, received applause and a brief unofficial cease-fire from both sides for bravery. He later returned the favor at Appomattox when he ordered his troops to salute the surrendering Confederate troops as equals. The Confederate general who received the salute later called Chamberlain "one of the knightliest soldiers of the Federal Army."
  • Which is probably about the only way Chamberlain could have possibly topped his previous feats of talking 80 disgruntled deserters into joining his regiment and then using them to save the entire Union Army (with a bayonet charge!) less than 24 hours later at the battle of Gettysburg, earning himself a well-deserved Medal of Honor.
    • And the kicker is that, in peacetime, he was a professor of rhetoric- basically a guy whose day job was studying and explaining Rousing Speeches.
    • He was also wounded 6 times, but still made it home to become the governor of Maine.
• In the War Of 1812 the British navy was demoralized after losing several engagements against the newer and heavier American frigates. Captain Broke of HMS Shannon sent his accompanying frigates away, and then sent the following challenge to the USS Chesapeake, safely docked in Boston Harbor, captained by James Lawrence.
  "As the Chesapeake appears now ready for sea, I request you will do me the favour to meet the Shannon with her, ship to ship, to try the fortune of our respective flags. The Shannon mounts twenty-four guns upon her broadside and one light boat-gun; 18 pounders upon her main deck, and 32-pounder carronades upon her quarter-deck and forecastle; and is manned with a complement of 300 men and boys, beside thirty seamen, boys, and passengers, who were taken out of recaptured vessels lately. I entreat you, sir, not to imagine that I am urged by mere personal vanity to the wish of meeting the Chesapeake, or that I depend only upon your personal ambition for your acceding to this invitation. We have both noble motives. You will feel it as a compliment if I say that the result of our meeting may be the most grateful service I can render to my country; and I doubt not that you, equally confident of success, will feel convinced that it is only by repeated triumphs in even combats that your little navy can now hope to console your country for the loss of that trade it can no longer protect. Favour me with a speedy reply. We are short of provisions and water, and cannot stay long here."
  • The USS Chesapeake then left harbor and sailed for the Shannon, neither ship firing until they were at point-blank range. After the battle, there were more than 200 killed and wounded, one of the bloodiest ship-to-ship battles of the age. Captain Broke was badly wounded and would never command another ship. The American Captain Lawrence was killed in action, and buried with full military honors by his enemies, with 6 Royal Navy officers as his pallbearers.
• Also General Robert E. Lee of the Confederacy, a cultured Southern gentleman who only commanded the Confederacy's army rather than the Union's because his home state of Virginia joined the Confederacy, and Lee believed in My State Right Or Wrong (at the time, most Southerners considered themselves citizens of their home states first and as Americans second^note Northerners tended to have a stronger connection to "American" identity, and it was strongest in the Upper Midwest and newly-settled Great Plains).
  • The fact that Lee clung to his Officer and a Gentleman ideals in the face of crushing defeat, especially his abhorrence of guerilla warfare and "collateral damage" had as much to do with reuniting the Union as anything Lincoln or Grant did.
• Nigerian military officer C. Odumegwu Ojukwu led his homeland of Biafra all throughout the Nigerian Civil War, which seceded from Nigeria due to ethnic tensions. He was a well-educated man who studied at Oxford University in England, and he spoke with a refined English accent.
• Peruvian Admiral Miguel Grau. After sinking the Esmeralda battle boat in 1879, he immediately wrote the Esmeralda captain's widow praising her dead husband's bravery and sent her the guy's personal effects.
  • He also made sure to rescue and shelter the surviving crew of the very enemy ships he fought against and sank, in contrast with other admirals at the time who would take such opportunity to finish them off by shooting them.
  • So well known he was as this, that his nickname, "El Caballero de los Mares" (The Knight of the Seas) was coined by his adversaries, the Chileans.
• Yet another example: Korvettenkapitän (Lieutenant Commander) Karl von Muller, during World War I as the commander of the commerce raider SMS Emden. He often risked his ship and crew in order to be polite and often released his prisoners aboard neutral or civilian ships. Still regarded as an example of a wonderful campaign and Knightly service.
  • That tradition held into the second war with Kapitän zur See Hans Langsdorff, commander of the German "pocket battleship" Admiral Graf Spee. He strictly held himself to "prize rules", stopping and inspecting merchant ships and giving their crews a chance to evacuate before sinking them. Some crews were taken prisoner, but held in humane conditions; at least once, Langsdorff sent a distress call on behalf of his victim so sailors in boats would be picked up. Only when he was attacked by three British cruisers did the Graf Spee actually kill anybody. The ship was damaged, put into port in Montevideo, Uruguay. As a neutral country, they demanded Graf Spee either leave within 72 hours or be interned for the rest of the war. Believing himself trapped by superior forces, Langsdorff wanted to avoid getting any more of his crew killed and scuttled his ship in the harbor, then sent a telegram to Berlin taking full responsibility and shot himself, symbolically Going Down with the Ship.
• George Washington was known for his gentlemanly conduct both on and off the battlefield.
  • During one battle of the Revolutionary War, the dog of British Commander-in-Chief William Howe wandered into the colonial camp. Washington had the dog returned with a friendly letter, and Howe wrote a glowing assessment of Washington's character in his journal.
  • During the winter at Valley Forge, when Washington took up residence in a local farmhouse, he actually paid rent (as opposed to simply occupying the house by force).
• Major John Andre, the British spymaster who assisted Benedict Arnold's treason and was caught and hanged by the Americans, comported himself with such dignity that even his jailers were saddened by the necessity of his sentence. His only complaint was that he would have preferred to face a firing squad (as a soldier, rather than be hanged as a spy). When the time came, he blindfolded himself and put the noose around his own neck.
• "Conduct unbecoming an officer" is still a listed court-martial offence in the British armed forces, the "and a gentleman" part having been removed in letter but enduring in spirit.
  • It's still an offense in the US military as well (and the "gentlemen" bit remains), usually tacked on to any other offense(s) an officer commits.
• Subverted by the Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary during the Irish War of Independence. Composed of veteran WW1 officers, they had a notorious reputation for their lack of discipline, drunkenness, for carrying out murderous atrocities and for burning Cork city center to the ground. They later wore burnt cork in their hats as a symbol.
• Gregorio del Pilar, one of the youngest generals in the Philippine Revolutionary forces, and one of the youngest commanders in the Philippine-American War. After a delaying action to cover Philippine leader Aguinaldo's retreat, the five-hour standoff resulted in Del Pilar's death due to a shot to the neck. Del Pilar's body was later despoiled and looted by the victorious American soldiers and his body lay unburied for days, exposed to the elements. An American officer, Lt. Dennis P. Quinlan, was disturbed by this treatment of what he deemed a Worthy Opponent and gave the body a traditional U.S. military burial. Upon del Pilar's tombstone, Quinlan inscribed, "An Officer and a Gentleman".
• Erwin Rommel was the most chivalrous of the Wehrmacht's frontline Generals and Field Marshals: he committed no War Crimes at all, not even letting POW die of neglect or implementing the standard Retaliation Ratios (50:1 for wounded, 100:1 for dead) in response to partisan attacks! He is one of two Generals of Combat or Security units, of more than five hundred, known not to have done these things. He also embarrassed the Wehrmacht by refusing to execute Jewish POWs, and even demanding that slaves be paid for their labour (when building the 'Atlantic Wall' of anti-amphibious-landing defenses in France using French slaves)!
  • Rommel is also known to have expressed objections when the SiPo sent a survey party to North Africa to "assess the Jewish problem" in Jewish ghettoes in North African cities then under Axis control. Rommel pointedly said that with shipping space so limited and problematical, he would have preferred an equivalent number of fighting soldiers, or their weight in petrol or ammo, rather than a bunch of Useless Mouths (using the rhetoric applied to Germany's disabled, who were being euthanized in Aktion T-4) to feed and house out of his scarce resources. No more SS personnel were dispatched to Africa. However, if he had succeeded in capturing Palestine then, police units would have been sent there to cleanse it. Rommel's reputation as "the Good German" would then have been shot.
  • During the Fall of France, Rommel's division murdered numerous French colored soldiers after they'd been taken prisoners - a few time crushing them under their tanks' tracks. It was not on his orders ( and other divisions did the same ) but he knew of at least some of the murders and did nothing to prevent them.
• General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim was the closest thing the Wehrmacht had to another 'white sheep' among its Generals and Field Marshalls, and one who illustrated the difficulty of not participating or being implicated in War Crimes unless one refused command or was posted to North Africa. Commander of the 17th Panzer Division during Operation Barbarossa, he refused to implement the 'Commissar' Order and is not known to have taken any action against civilians beyond the usual 'foraging'. While the POW he captured and sent to the rear areas did suffer the same fate as the rest, as a mere junior commander he could make a reasonable claim not to have been able to do anything about that. On the 1st of October 1941, he was appointed to command of the XXXIX Panzer Corps, Army Group North, and charged with the maintenance of the Siege of Leningrad. More than 600k dead civilians later, in late November '42 he was transferred to command the 'Fourth Panzer Army' (little more than a Division) under Rommel's North African Front. Appointed to command the Front upon Rommel's recall in February 1943, he surrendered it in May '43.
  • The von Arnim noble family has been mentioned for the first time in 1204, so Hans-Jürgen von Arnim could well be the Trope Codifier.
  • Some Luftwaffe Generals were able to forego committing War Crimes, however, because of their lesser involvement in ground operations. Examples include Adolf Galland, Walter Krupinski, Josef Priller, Johannes Steinhoff, and, last but not least, Erich Hartmann.
• Jimmy Stewart, or rather, Brigadier General James Stewart, often described by his costars as one of the nicest men in Hollywood. And a man who survived the disastrous Schweinfurt raid and many more bomber missions in World War II when he could have asked for, and easily received, a cushy job with the Air Force Motion Pictures Unit.
• Finland's very own Churchill, Field Marshal and later President Mannerheim. Being raised in an upper-class family, serving in the Russian court, and then as Supreme Commander in Finland's four wars did little to prevent him from being a true gentleman. He did, however, subvert it on occasions. His predecessor as president, Risto Ryti, gave a solemn personal pledge that he would continue their strictly-unofficial alliance with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union - including holding up their sector of the Siege of Leningrad (which did not extend to sending raiding parties out to disrupt the food imports across Lake Ladoga). On the 2nd of February 1943, the last survivors of the Stalingrad pocket surrendered. The following day Mannerheim met with the Cabinet, Mannerheim's memoirs claiming they unanimously agreed that Germany was utterly screwed and that they had to find a way to ditch them at the earliest opportunity. The moment came some eighteen months later when the Soviets threw the Germans back from Leningrad and drove them into the Baltic: Ryti resigned, Mannerheim took office, and the new government declared war on Germany. When the Nazis demanded that they explain their 'betrayal', Mannerheim (politely if snarkily) reminded the Germans that A) their countries had never had an official alliance and B) countries are not bound by personal pledges of their leaders (however solemn).
  • Mannerheim also had a great distaste for Hitler, even refusing to shake hands with him without gloves. To most other German officers (those who weren't Nazis) he was most polite.
  • Not that it prevented him from having several thousand POW executed after the Civil War.
    • Mostly because he had several Blood Knight subordinates, who desired more for revenge than justice. The Whites often were absolutely insane in this respect.
  • This trope is somewhat averted in the Finnish armed forces in general. All applicants to the Finnish Military Academy must already have attained the rank of vänrikki (2/Lt in Army) or aliluutnantti (Sub-Lieutenant in Navy) as conscripts and passed the Reserviupseerikoulu (Reserve Officer Academy) curriculum and acted as platoon leaders as conscripts. They have thus already been "pre-selected" and are more Up Through the Ranks officers rather than Officer and a Gentleman type. Note that sons of old nobility are still somewhat over-represented amongst Finnish officers as they are likely to take military career due to family traditions.
• Zig-Zagged with the Soviets. The Red Army amid the Russian Civil War did have a good number of ex-Tsarist officers who made up most of the Red officer corps. A good number of these officers played this trope straight, but many of them such as Semyon Budyonny came from poorer backgrounds and those with a penchant for vulgarity were more favored by the communist ideology to contrast with the White Army's noble officer corps. Once the USSR was established, this trope was generally averted as gentleman officers were portrayed as imperialist class enemies, and the idea was to instead establish that anyone could be an officer. This culminated in the great purge ridding much of the Soviet's old guard officer corps due to the paranoia that they were politically unreliable, even ones who were never Tsarists or nobles, and thus young inexperienced officers who were at least reliably communist took their place. This purge contributed to multiple Soviet setbacks in the early 1940s, but the growing professionalism of the Red Army in World War II brought upon pragmatic forces that embraced professional officers, relented purges, and saw those hastily promoted young officers mature and transform the Red Army onto the most devastating land force on the planet. By the Cold War era, the Soviet Army's officers were "red" gentlemen and nobles that indulged in special privileges but sought to end the "decadent" west as well despite their own vulgarity.
  • Generally, the Warsaw Pact's officers averted this trope due to their poorer backgrounds unless they were Soviet collaborators. They did come close to being part of the closest thing a socialist state had to nobility though and post 1989 central/eastern European armies looked at military officers with suspicion due to their communist ties.
    • NATO's Western European and North American officers similarly by the Cold War were no longer disproportional nobles, but this didn't stop the two sides of the iron curtain from portraying each other's officers as decadent oligarchs. The wealthy and well connected were still over-represented in both sides' officer schools, however, but average Joes commissioned from the ranks were steadily taking over due to the need for military build up.
• The Patron of the Brazilian army, Duke of Caxias. As implacable was he was on the battlefield, he was known for treating all his foes as equals, offering them mercy and being open to diplomacy.
  • A lesser known brazilian military figure of the same age, Lt. General Manuel Marques de Souza, nicknamed The Gloved Centaur for both his exploits as a cavalry commander and his general demeanor as a cultured and compassionate nobleman, being a prominent patron of literature and science, as well as a vocal advocate for abolitionism.
• Field Marshall Sam(ji) Hormus(ji) Jamshed(ji) Fram(ji) Manekshaw of the Indian Army. Each of the "ji"s are honorifics appended to his actual name as a mark of respect from both military and civilian government officials who had the opportunity to work with him. And what did he accomplish militarily? Nothing less than liberating Bangladesh in sixteen days
• Preceding Manekshaw was the only other five star general in the Indian Army - the polyglot Renaissance Man known as Kodadendra Madappa Cariappa.