Quartermaster sergeant
a senior rank of noncommissioned officer in the army, above sergeant, employed on administrative duties
Quartermaster sergeant (QMS) is a class of rank or appointment in some armed forces, especially those of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, and formerly also in the United States.
Ireland
Quartermaster sergeant (Irish: ceathrúsháirsint) appointments in the Irish Defence Forces include:
Battalion quartermaster sergeant
Battery quartermaster sergeant
Company quartermaster sergeant
Flight quartermaster sergeant
Regimental quartermaster sergeant
Squadron quartermaster sergeant
United Kingdom
A quartermaster sergeant in the British Army and Royal Marines is traditionally a non-commissioned officer or warrant officer who is responsible for supplies or stores. However, this definition is extended to almost any warrant officer class 2 who does not hold a sergeant major appointment, as well as a number of staff sergeant and colour sergeant appointments. In the British Army, quartermaster sergeants are frequently addressed and referred to as "Q". However, infantry company quartermaster sergeants are always addressed by their rank, as "Colour Sergeant" or "Colour", and not their appointment.
Examples of staff sergeant quartermaster sergeant appointments include:
Battery quartermaster sergeant
Company quartermaster sergeant
Squadron quartermaster sergeant
Examples of warrant officer class 2 quartermaster sergeant appointments include:
Artificer quartermaster sergeant
Orderly room quartermaster sergeant
Quartermaster sergeant instructor
Regimental quartermaster sergeant
Staff quartermaster sergeant
Technical quartermaster sergeant
In the Household Cavalry, which does not use the term "sergeant", the designation is replaced with quartermaster corporal (QMC), as in squadron quartermaster corporal and regimental quartermaster corporal.
In the Royal Marines, quartermaster sergeant was an actual rank between colour sergeant and regimental sergeant major (and equivalent to warrant officer class II in the Army) until the Royal Marines themselves re-adopted the ranks of warrant officer class I and II in 1973 (although the term continued to be used interchangeably for warrant officers class II until at least 1981). Quartermaster sergeants could also hold the appointment of company sergeant major. The equivalent ranks in the Band Service were staff bandmaster and quartermaster sergeant bugler.
United States
Early quartermaster sergeants
In 1776 the Continental Army established the rank of quartermaster sergeant as the second most senior soldier in the non-commissioned headquarters element of an infantry regiment.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Quartermaster sergeant” is a senior rank of noncommissioned officer in the army, above sergeant, employed on administrative duties. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Quartermaster, sergeant and senior, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 14, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7269321. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1973, 1981 and 1776.
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This entry incorporates text from “Quartermaster sergeant” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.