A private is a soldier, usually with the lowest rank in many armies. Soldiers with the rank of private may be conscripts or they may be professional (career) soldiers.
The term derives from the term "private soldier". "Private" comes from the Latin word privus or perhaps privo that meant an individual person and later an individual without an office.
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The Royal Hungarian Honvéd (Hungarian: Magyar Királyi Honvédség) or Royal Hungarian Landwehr (German: königlich ungarische Landwehr), commonly known as the Honvéd (lit. 'Defender of the Homeland'; collectively, the Honvédség), was one of the four armed forces (German: Bewaffnete Macht or Wehrmacht) of Austria-Hungary from 1867 to 1918, along with the Austrian Landwehr, the Common Army and the Imperial and Royal Navy. The term honvéd was used to refer to all members of the Hungarian land forces in 1848-49, but it was also used to refer to enlisted private soldiers without a rank.
Brigadier General Charles Elwood Yeager (/ˈjeɪɡər/ YAY-gər, February 13, 1923 – December 7, 2020) was a United States Air Force officer, flying ace, and record-setting test pilot who in October 1947 became the first pilot in history confirmed to have exceeded the speed of sound in level flight.
Yeager was raised in Hamlin, West Virginia. His career began in World War II as a private in the United States Army, assigned to the Army Air Forces in 1941. After serving as an aircraft mechanic, in September 1942, he entered enlisted pilot training and upon graduation was promoted to the rank of flight officer (the World War II Army Air Force version of the Army's warrant officer), later achieving most of his aerial victories as a P-51 Mustang fighter pilot on the Western Front, where he was credited with shooting down 11.5 enemy aircraft. The half credit is from a second pilot assisting him in a single shootdown. On October 12, 1944, he attained "ace in a day" status, shooting down five enemy aircraft in one mission.
Ahmet Kenan Evren (17 July 1917 – 9 May 2015) was a Turkish military officer who served as the president of Turkey from 1982 to 1989. He assumed the post by leading the 1980 military coup.
On 18 June 2014, a Turkish court sentenced him to life imprisonment and demotion of his military rank, (down to private from army general) for leading the military coup in 1980. He was found guilty of obstructing democracy by deposing the prime minister Süleyman Demirel and of abolishing the parliament, senate and the constitution. This sentence was under appeal at the time of his death.
Trooper (abbr. Tpr) from the French "troupier" is the equivalent rank to private in a regiment with a cavalry tradition in the British Army and many other Commonwealth armies, including those of Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand; it is also used by the Irish Army.
In the British Army the Royal Tank Regiment, although not a former cavalry unit also uses the term Trooper as do the Special Air Service and Honourable Artillery Company. Airtrooper (Atpr) is used in the Army Air Corps.
Sharpe is a series of historical fiction stories by Bernard Cornwell centred on the character of English soldier Richard Sharpe. The stories formed the basis for an ITV television series featuring Sean Bean in the title role.
Cornwell's series is composed of many novels and several short stories, and charts Sharpe's progress in the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars, though the novels were published in non-chronological order. He begins in Sharpe's Tiger as a private in the 33rd Regiment of Foot who is continually promoted, finally rising to lieutenant colonel in Sharpe's Waterloo. His military career ends with the final defeat of Napoleon, but he has more adventures as a civilian.
General Walter Bedell "Beetle" Smith (5 October 1895 – 9 August 1961) was a senior officer of the United States Army who served as General Dwight D. Eisenhower's chief of staff at Allied Forces Headquarters (AFHQ) during the Tunisia Campaign and the Allied invasion of Italy in 1943, during World War II. He was Eisenhower's chief of staff at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in the campaign in Western Europe from 1944 to 1945.
Smith enlisted as a private in the Indiana Army National Guard in 1911. During World War I, he served with the American Expeditionary Forces and was commissioned to second lieutenant in 1917. He was wounded in the Aisne-Marne Offensive in 1918. After the war, he was a staff officer and instructor at the U.S. Army Infantry School. In 1941, he became secretary of the General Staff, and in 1942 he became the secretary to the Combined Chiefs of Staff. His duties involved taking part in discussions of war plans at the highest level, and Smith often briefed President Franklin D. Roosevelt on strategic matters.
The rank of airtrooper (abbreviated AirTpr) is a private rank, the first rank awarded to a soldier of the British Army Air Corps.