Baby Soldiers

As I mentioned earlier, Chris, our niece, was visiting over the weekend. She asked a very interesting question and I didn’t know the answer. I figure I owe it to her to satisfy her curiosity and provide her with accurate, well researched information.

The question was: why is the infantry called the infantry? Is it somehow related to babies?

As I said, I didn’t know the answer, but after my extensive research, here’s what I found out.

The word originated in Latin as ‘infans’ – but the modern derivation is from the Italian word fante, which signifies a follower. In warfare years ago, battles were chiefly fought by cavalry, or horsemen, but they were always followed by a certain number of squires or armed men on foot that marched in the rear, and assisted their leaders.

Infantry has become a common English term to apply to troops or soldiers that operate on foot. The infantry component of the army is the biggest, made up of the most people. Infantrymen are often thought to be like infants in that they don’t reply back or refute orders – they are well trained to not answer back at a superior.

An interesting related fact that I uncovered during my extensive research is that ants are the only other species besides humans to use army formations.

So the answer to the question as to whether the infantry is in someway related to infants is not really, but maybe a little bit because often other army units imply that infantry members have intelligence comparable to infants…
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