army ranks [was: assorted comments]

[Wilson Gray]

Ah, yes. They were the last remnants of the United States Colored Troops,
originally organized during the Civil War.

Speaking of dialects, as we sometimes do, here ;-), when I was a child in
Texas, I thought that this was the "Silver War," since "silver" and "civil"
fall together in the local version of BE as something like [si at v@], when the
next word doesn't begin with a vowel. I knew what "silver" was, but I didn't
learn "civil" until after I started school.

-Wilson

On 3/30/06, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC <Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> Subject:      Re: army ranks [was: assorted comments]
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> >  And even civilians are
> > aware of the "Screaming Eagle," the "All-American," and the
> > "Big Red One," I think.
> >
> > Let me revise that. Some U.S. Army units *do* have nicknames.
> > Both the "Rock of Chickamauga" and the "Black (actually
> > interracial <har! har!>) Panthers"
> > were sent to Berlin to reinforce the Berlin Brigade after The
> > Wall went up.
>
> And another famous one is the "Buffalo Soldiers", which was stationed
> here in Huntsville during the run-up to the Spanish American war.  The
> neighborhood where
> they and a couple of others bivouacked (?? -- a neat word with all five
> vowels) is now
> called Cavalry Hill.
>
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