Whether it's a warrant or a commission doesn't matter nearly as
much as how well you lead...

My company commander in France was a major (well--it was a large
company!).

Like so many company- and field-grade officers in the 1950s, he had
run out his string and was about to be busted back to his top enlisted
rank. Fortunately for him, that had been was a warrant officer.

We also had in that company a sergeant who'd been a chaplain during
WWII, and who found life as an enlisted man preferable to life on the
outside.

Yet another case, a captain at Fort Bragg, was to have been RIFfed a
week or so before he finished the twenty years (whatever) that would
have enabled him to retire (when he did eventually retire) with a
captain's pay and status, rather than the sergeant he was about to
become. The captain checked into the hospital with some mysterious
heart flutter (whatever). He was a very popular man, and several of us
visited him there to wish him well. Of course there was nothing at all
wrong with him. It seems that the army wouldn't bust a hospitalized
man. Once he had passed the magic day, he meant to check out and take
his reduction like a man.

Warrants were very rare in the 1950s. I don't think I ever met a
warrant officer during my two years in the army. (The major of course
was shipped out to serve in another outfit.) Later, in Vietnam, I saw
bunches of them, usually driving helicopters.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email:

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com