Good-conduct Pay is an addition to ordinary pay, granted to privates, lance-corporals, and acting bombardiers of the British army. To earn one penny a day the soldier must have served two years without his name having appeared in the regimental defaulters' book, in which serious crimes are recorded. For a second penny six years' service is requisite, and the soldier must have held the first penny for two years without an entry in the regimental defaulters' book—called a 'term of good conduct.' A third penny can similarly be earned after twelve years' service, a fourth after eighteen, and others after periods of five years. Each penny carries with it a badge or Chevron (q.v.) to be worn on the left sleeve. A special rule enables a man who has served without an entry for 14 years continuously to obtain his fourth and succeeding badges and good-conduct pay two years sooner than he otherwise would do. One badge and the pay attached to it is forfeited for every entry in the regimental defaulters' book, but may be regained by a 'half-term of good conduct' (one year) for each badge lost. A soldier who deserts, or is sentenced by court-martial to penal servitude or to be discharged, or by a civil court to imprisonment exceeding six months, forfeits, as a result of the sentence, all his badges and good-conduct pay; and a court-martial may specially sentence him to this forfeiture for any offence. Sergeants and full corporals or bombardiers when reduced to the ranks are allotted the good-conduct pay and badges, less one, which their service would have entitled them to if they had not been promoted, though none is granted to them while non-commissioned officers. Sergeants of distinguished or meritorious service, however, are granted annuities, not over £20 each, receivable during active service, and also on retirement, together with a silver medal inscribed 'for meritorious service,' or 'for distinguished conduct in the field.'—In the navy very similar rules govern the issue of good-conduct pay, but its amount is limited to threepence a day, and petty officers may hold it.
In the United States the pay of private soldiers increases from 13 to 18 per month according to length of service; and the pay of officers in active service, from chaplain to colonel, increases by 10 per cent. for every five years' service till the completion of twenty years' service.