Definition of "NCO"

There was for some reason a shortage not only of regular private soldiers but of officers and NCOs.

1989, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by H. T. Willetts, August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 109

For Sgt Kudrya, an NCO who has found himself commanding a company because of a lack of officers, this low-level war means a constant struggle with the elements, paper work (he is under constant pressure from above to account for each litre of petrol and round of ammunition), and the erosion of discipline born of boredom.

2017 January 14, Roland Oliphant, “Special report: Loose cannons at the frontline of Ukraine's forgotten war”, in The Telegraph‎