Note: For those of you confused by ranks in modern military organizations, it helps to know that they evolved out of pecking orders based primarily upon who was bigger than whom, and who could afford his own horse. With the parallel (but horribly out-of-sync) evolution of military technology and language, we find oxymorons like "general quarters" which is NOT where a general would be quartered, and "privates" who have so little personal privacy that their rank is an exercise in humorous irony. Fortunately, their pay is similarly humorous, so the joke works on multiple levels.