Corrected entry: Throughout the whole movie they call Gump Private Gump when it is shown on his military uniform (when speaking at the hippie rally by the Washington monument) a listing of a E-5 - a sergeant. Also he went to college before the army, which means he would have been an officer, not a noncommissioned officer.
kayelbe
27th Aug 2001
Forrest Gump (1994)
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Correction: The last time some one called him Private Gump was the when he got the letter in Vietnam for the Medal of Honor. The next time someone said his rank and name was when he got his discharge papers, and he said SGT. Gump. So I see no mistake. And if you join the military after college doesn't mean your going to be automatically an officer unless you were in ROTC while in college, or you went to a Military Academy. You can be recommended for OCS (officers candidate school) if you have a college degree. Like his drill Sarge in boot camp recommended "if it was not such a waste of a fine enlisted man". So even with a college degree, if you enlist you start from the bottom.
Not true entirely. If you have a degree you start out enlisted as an E-4 SPC.
That may be true now, but probably not in the mid 60s. I knew several people in the US Navy (1990s) that came in with college degrees and weren't advanced past E3. I'd imagine it to be the same in the other branches.
kayelbe
You only start from the bottom if you want to. Or you don't qualify on the AFOQT. But, given his low intelligence score, he probably wouldn't have passed. But he would have still been given higher than an E-1.