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[[Conductors]] were eligible for promotion to Departmental Officer, ie Deputy Assistant Commissary, Assistant Commissary etc, and these grades were eventually given complementary honorary officer ranks ranging from Honorary Lieutenant to Honorary Major."
'''''Contributed to India list by Michael Quin-Conroy, Nov. 11 2003''''' == The Honourable and Ancient Appointment of Conductor - Royal Army Ordnace Corps == The appointment of Conductor is said to be the highest non-commissioned in the British Army other than the Accadany Sergeant Major at Sandhurst. Thus Conductors and ex-conductors guard the history, facts and figues with regard to it very closely. I put the passage about conductors in the Honorable East India Compoany on the Royal Army Ordnance Corps website, and expected a wave, if not an explosion of replies. But I was disappointed. A gentleman, an ex-conductor, wrote in, partly in reply to a gentleman who said his own father was a conductor in the Indian Army c World War One. This was his reply: The history of the Indian Army Ordnance Corps can be traced back to the ‘Military Trains and Magazine Establishment”, in the East India Company’s Artillery. On 8th April 1885 a ‘Board of Ordnance’, was constituted in Bengal presidency, which for the first time created an organisation that could effectively control all the stores of the Company’s Army. The official history of the Army Ordnance Corps can thus be said to begin from this date. As a consequence of the ‘Special Ordnance Commission - 1885’ and ‘Army in India Commission – 1879’ set up post the First War Of Independence in 1857, on 1st Apr 1884 the Ordnance establishments in the three Presidencies ([[Bengal]], [[Madras]] and [[Bombay]]) were amalgamated into one department called the ‘Ordnance Department in India’. 4 VC's were awarded during the Indian Mutiny to East India Company Ordnance Department or the Bengal Ordnance Department 18th June 1858 *Lieutanant (Assistant Commissary of Ordnance) Goarge FORREST VC of the East India Company*Lieutenant (Assistant Commissary of Ordnance) William RAYNOR VC of the East India Company*Conductor (later Assistant Commissary of Ordnance) John BUCKLEY VC of the Bengal Ordnance Department 25 February 1862 Conductor James MILLER VC of the Bengal Ordnance Department(For saving an Officer on the 28th October 1857) These Conductors pre-date the Warrant Officer's appointed by Queen Victoria, and were considered to be Assistants to the Commissary of Stores It was not until 11 January 1879, that a Royal Warrant established Conductors of Supplies (in the Army Service Corps) and Conductors of Stores (in the Ordnance Store Branch) as Warrant Officers, ranking above all non-commissioned officers. In 1892, Conductors of Supplies were renamed Staff Sergeant Majors 1st Class, but Conductors of Stores remained in what in 1896 became the Army Ordnance Corps. Even in the [[British Army]] in the Field Train Department (1792-1859) the Departmental Ranks were the same. Nothing 'Honorary' about them: For history links see http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mike.comerford/ORDNANCE/05.htm *Conductor (acting in the role of Subaltern)*Deputy Assistant Commissary - Subaltern or Lieutenant*Assistant Commissary - Captain*Commissary - Major*Chief Commissary - Lt Colonel Conductors could indeed be commissioned and promoted on merit. The appountments were still in use when Acting Assistant Commissary James Langley DALTON VC of the Commissariat and Transport Department when he was awarded the VC for action on 22 January 1879, at Rorke's Drift during the Zulu War. As he was a Commissary of Supplies, his VC should also have come over the the RAOC in 1965! '''''Contributed by Jim Parker from and added with permission from Mike Comerford'''''
