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A slight correction (and complication) to the latest episode, "Poet Laureate and Poetry Brothels."
In the episode, Grant said that the sense of troop, meaning an official unit of service members, was not in use in the US military. That's not quite correct. Within the US Army, cavalry units are organized into troops, a troop being the equivalent of a company in other units. Cavalry is alive and well in the military, only they use tanks and helicopters nowadays instead of horses. (Remember the "air cav" led by Robert Duvall's character in the movie Apocalypse Now.) And cavalry soldiers are called troopers.
But Grant's point is generally correct. For most of the military, a troop is not an official type of unit.
The oddity of cavalry nomenclature goes further as troops are organized into larger units called squadrons, the equivalent of a battalion in the rest of the army. And a brigade-sized unit of cavalry is a regiment, while for the rest of the US Army regimental affiliation is in name only; there are no actual regiments that take the field. The air force use of squadron is also a cavalry legacy, as during WWI many cavalry units traded in their horses for airplanes.
On a tangent, I am flabbergasted and amused each time I hear someone say "Calvary" when they mean "cavalry." I've heard it on TV dramas, on newscasts, in academic lectures, and in movies. Even good movies, not just the trashy ones I usually watch. In conversation I expect to hear lots of slips of the tongue, but I hear it in edited entertainment wrong as much as right. After all, it doesn't come up that often. Anyone else notice this?
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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