Question: What's the difference between an enlisted person and an officer?
M*A*S*H (1970)
1 question
Directed by: Robert Altman
Starring: Donald Sutherland, Robert Duvall, Tom Skerritt, Elliott Gould, Sally Kellerman
Continuity mistake: In one of the early surgery scenes you see Trapper operating, although he arrives only later as the new chest cutter. (00:13:20)
Hawkeye Pierce: It's a good thing you have a nice body, nurse, otherwise they'd get rid of you quick.
Trivia: All of the characters, based on the characters from Richard Hooker's novel, are composites of people Hooker knew, met casually, worked with, or heard about.
Join the mailing list
Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.
Answer: An officer is a person who has had special training (in college ROTC, or in OTS, called 90 days wonders) for command, tactics, military law and the like, after which they are Commissioned. They are basically management. An enlisted person is someone who has gone through basic military training, but does not have command responsibilities or authority. Basically labor. This gets a little confusing when enlisted personnel can rise in rank to become a Non-Commissioned officer, often called the backbone of the Service. But the highest ranked enlisted person does not out-rank, and has to salute, the lowest ranked officer.
Richard Welty