Although the ranks worn by cadets and their instructors have no weight outside the structure of the cadets themselves, they do help create the martial atmosphere within the cadet unit that aids in its role as being a taster of real military life. For the most part regular forces do afford adult cadet officers and senior NCOs the respect they would to military officers within the forces, often many of the instructors come from a military background to start with. Like the regular forces, the cadets and their instructors use slip on rank slides with the rank insignia embroidered on and the letters of their respective cadet branch. There are a number of different cadet types and these can be seen on this extensive selection of rank slides that I was generously given by John Bodsworth.

The Army Cadet Force is the first of these organisations and exists in many towns and villages across the country. Here we can see a range of ranks embroidered on DPM slides.

L to R rear row: cadet, staff sergeant, warrant officer (Class 1), second lieutenant.

L to R front row: lieutenant, captain, major

These rank slides were also embroidered onto plain olive green slides and more recently onto MTP. Here we see an example in the olive-green:

The second type of unit that can be found is the Combined Cadet Force. These cadets are organised around individual schools and offer pupils the chance to train as an army cadet, sea cadet or an air cadet and their members wear rank slides marked ‘CCF’ rather than ‘ACF’:

Finally a third type of rank slide can be found, worn by the cadets themselves and marked with the word ‘cadet’ in red so it is very clear that they are not part of the regular army:

This pair of slides are for a cadet corporal and his or her responsibilities include taking on more responsibilities such as leading parades and instructing junior cadets.