Even number 2? Are well-intentioned fuckups by boots treated more leniently than fuckups by professionals? I was thinking more of deliberate transgressions. But yeah, good suggestion. Military society's an interesting one, in that people don't join it at birth, but it definitely has its own cultural norms and rituals.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I spent most of my childhood around military types: my parents and two of my grandparents were RAF officers, and I grew up on a succession of RAF bases. With my parents' blessing, I eventually decided that the personal qualities that the military required were not ones I possessed, and the ones I possessed were not ones that they required, but there's always been a lingering sense of failure. We all have our crosses to bear, I suppose.