Recruitment in the British Army from families with a military tradition. (This contrasted with the Navy, whose officers were more often from a middle-class background.) The second son of King George III, Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, did much to improve the standard of officer recruitment from his position as Commander in Chief of the Army (from 1795 to 1809, then from 1811 to 1827). The sale of commissions, finally abolished in the Cardwell reforms in 1868–1874, and the further Childers Reforms. In spite of its abolition, the status of an officer being from a privileged background and that of another rank being
Driver (rank) the Royal Corps of Transport, no matter what their trade. When the RCT amalgamated to form the Royal Logistic Corps in 1993 the rank finally disappeared from the British Army. Driver (rank) Driver (Dvr) was a military rank used in the British Army and the armies of other Commonwealth countries. It was equivalent to the rank of private. The rank was initially used in the Royal Artillery for the men who drove the teams of horses which pulled the guns. It was phased out after the First World War (when all Royal Artillerymen of the lowest rank were redesignated as