#platoons

I ran across this series of videos and thought your followers might find it useful.

Thanks for the submission! This is a good video to watch, especially if you’re looking for information on British military.  Since a lot of my followers are American though, here’s a few notes worth keeping in mind: • Lindy (the narrator) calls the smaller units inside platoons “sections.” He does annotate this change in text, but in the U.S. the smaller unit within a platoon is called a “squad,” and then the smallest unit inside a squad is called a “team.”

• The only branch that still uses Lance Corporal in the U.S. is Marines. As far as I can tell the Lance Corporal rank is equivalent to E-3, and to be very blunt I’d be a little impressed if an E-3 were the one leading a team to emplace a machine gun. 

• Lindy keeps referring to the NCO of a platoon as a “Sergeant Major.” Sergeants Major are definitely not in any way platoon sergeants; they work at battalion and up. The NCO usually acting as platoon sergeant and working with a lieutenant (platoon leader) would be either a staff sergeant or a sergeant first class. I’m afraid I don’t know whether this is a British vs America thing or if he’s just mistaken.

• British people pronounce lieutenant “left-tenant.” He acknowledges this in the video as well. He also gives us two handy mneumonics for remembering the role of a lieutenant/platoon leader.  1) The left-tenant is the left-hand man of the commander, or is the only officer left in charge. Platoons have one platoon leader, but often have only one officer, thus he is the only one “left.” 2) For lieu-tenant, the officer is in charge in lieu of the tenant, or commander, the officer commanding all troops.