So, just as I was planning on adding a section to this manual about promotion, I found myself promoted to the rank of major. Promotion is a strange thing. At the lower ranks it feels wonderful and at the higher ranks, if it doesn't feel at least a bit like an unhappy burden, you probably aren't taking the job seriously enough. I'm still adjusting to the idea that I'm a part of high command. That just seems odd. Only about a year ago I was as green and untried as any serf and spouting high ideals about courage and honor without really knowing what they meant.
So, anyway, there seem to be two kinds of new soldiers. The first is the soldier with no plans of being anything but a soldier. He wants to get physically strong and beat up all his buddies in the arena and get a girl and a cottage and settle down to a nice fun sort of a life. The second envisions himself as the future commander with an entire army jumping to do his bidding at the slightest whim. Both of these are wrong. Both of these are bound to be disappointed in one way or another.
Lets consider the first guy. He's a fun loving sort and happy to help with finding people weapons or panning for ore but isn't interested in trainings, and when his superiors start to harp on him about all those qualifications he isn't getting, he gets mad and sometimes leaves town. Alternatively, he makes a point of sleeping whenever his officers are looking for people to train. Then, when an invasion comes along and he's appointed logistics officer, he has no idea what he's supposed to do and people end up dead because he didn't take his oath seriously.
The second sort of soldier tends to rise in rank fairly quickly if he has even half a brain. He gets all his qualifications and certifications knocked out in no time and finds himself in a position of working very hard all the time. If power is his goal, he probably trains physically very hard too and feels he is better than his superiors because he can beat them in the arena. When he gains rank he sometimes gains an attitude of self importance and forgets to really listen and understand what his fellow soldiers are telling him. He either ends up falling from grace in a fit of pique and poor conduct, or he gets burnt out in short order and sleeps a lot.
Most of the soldiers I meet fall into one of the two categories. I know I have to wait for them to mature into the ideas of rank as responsibility, and duty as work to be done for the greater good of the garrison. If you can manage to adjust to the idea that an officer is on some level a servant of his soldiers and not the other way around, you will have a much more realistic view of promotion.
