Army s t e p p i sn
1878 1890 90
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... from General John Larsson*
THE DAY THE MAYOR CAME IN M May 1966, when whe I was a ssingle captain, cap Iw was appointed ap to Hillingdon Corps in C the t then West W ll a of the h London pening o e th t ngdon a Division. Shortly afterwards a r of Hilli o y a m The we held the official opening of a new hall ha on Uxbridge the U b id Road R d att which hi h Councillor C ill T Cluny, Cl th mayor of the London borough of Hillingdon, was the special guest. Some weeks before the event the mayor’s secretary had phoned to say that the mayor would like me to write his speech for the occasion. When I began drafting what I thought might be suitable words, I included some modest words of appreciation for the Army’s work. When the mayor unfolded his script at the event I could see that it was the very paper I had typed. And when he reached the paragraph of appreciation for the Army’s work he read it out with all appropriate feeling. But, having read my words, he put the paper down and started ad-libbing. In words far more effusive than I had dared to give him, he thanked the Army for its magnificent work. ‘I sometimes wonder,’ his speech climaxed, ‘how we would ever cope with our work for the needy in the London borough of
Hillingdon without the help of The Salvation Army.’ He e then continued with the prepared script. Those ad-libbed words of his were to haunt me, for I knew that they were not true of our corps. Hillingdon had everything – except for any expression of community service. In those days community service by corps was far less developed than it is today, so the absence of community service at Hillingdon was not unusual. But in the light of the mayor’s comments, I saw with fresh eyes that the impact of the corps on the community around it was virtually nil. The mayor had thanked us for the Army’s well-deserved national reputation to care for the poor, feed the hungry and comfort the lonely. But we weren’t doing that on a local level. It weighed on me, so I gathered Hillingdon’s soldiers and shared my unease with them. Putting it dramatically, I reminded them of the mayor’s comments and then said: ‘The truth is that if, by some misfortune, Hillingdon Corps were to disappear off the face of the Earth overnight, only we Salvationists would notice.’ We determined together that we must become more outward looking, and I am pleased to say that it began to happen and has continued ever since. It was only later that General John Gowans gave us his famous trilogy: ‘The Army exists to save souls, grow saints and serve suffering humanity.’ Having watched him at work as a corps officer, I know he held that to be true not only for the Army as a whole but also for corps individually. He would have been the first to say: ‘Army corps exist to save souls, grow saints and serve suffering humanity.’
OFFICER RANKS GO FULL CIRCLE OFFICER ranks in the early Army began simply: lieutenant, captain, major, colonel, commissioner, General. Then over the years followed a long process of additions and deletions. A watershed year in this process was 1948. By that time a number of ranks had at some point been added, with some lasting only a few years. These were: probationarylieutenant, ensign, staff-captain, commandant, adjutant, field-major, brigadier, lieut-colonel, lieut-commissioner. Of the above additions, the only four that were still retained in 1948 were probationary-lieutenant, brigadier,
lieut-colonel and lieut-commissioner. But a number of new ranks were added: second-lieutenant, first-lieutenant, senior-captain, senior-major. These new ranks lasted only 11 years and were discontinued in 1959. Promotions to the ranks of probationary-lieutenant, brigadier and lieut-commissioner were ended in 1973. The rank of cadet-lieutenant was later introduced and discontinued in 2008. So, except for the addition of lieut-colonel in 1896, the ranks today are the same as in those earliest times. The Army has gone full circle and is back to the simplicity of where it began.
*Published with the kind permission of Commissioner Freda Larsson following the General’s promotion to Glory Salvationist Salvationist Day Month 7 May 2020 2022
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