The Time Patrol

(Harking back to an earlier discussion, there is alliterative verse in the Aeneid, like:
"prosequitur pavitans et ficto pectore fatur:"
Dig those p's and f's.)

(And, wow, that is some cover of Guardians Of Time!)

Branch offices must manage a lot of the Time Patrol's work. Milieu HQ, existing for only twenty years, surely does not have enough time to oversee the temporal traffic throughout an entire century and a half? (See previous post.)

"Time Patrol" describes Manson Everard's recruitment, training, first case and promotion to Unattached status requiring further training which happens between stories. Everard remains Unattached throughout the rest of the series as he gains in experience and seniority. We see him supervising younger Patrol members and twice rescuing the Danellian timeline - he counteracts Neldorian time bandits but the ultimate enemy is chaos and a personal causal nexus, previously unsuspected, becomes as dangerous as a time criminal.

Everard's class is told:

"Your work will be mostly within your own eras, unless you graduate to unattached status. You will live, on the whole, ordinary lives, family and friends as usual; the secret part of those lives will have the satisfaction of good pay, protection, occasional vacations in some very interesting places, supremely worthwhile work. But you will always be on call. Sometimes you will help time travelers who have gotten into difficulties, one way or another. Sometimes you will work on missions, the apprehension of would-be political or military or economic conquisadors. Sometimes the Patrol will accept damage as done, and work instead to set up counteracting influences in later periods to swing history back to the desired track."
- Time Patrol (New York, 2006), pp. 11-12.

So there is no mention as yet either of the longevity treatment or of the need to move to another milieu after living without aging through a normal lifespan in the home milieu.

What might it mean to accept damage but swing history back? For example, is it possible that time criminals prevented the execution of Socrates or the assassination of Caesar but Patrol members ensured that these events were recorded as having happened in any case? A whole lot of history could be different from what we had thought.

Everard's initial training seems already geared towards Unattached status:

physical and psychological training;
combat with "...the weapons of fifty thousand years..." (p. 12);
how to handle spaceships, taught by a veteran of the Martian war of 3890.

By contrast, the study of history, science, arts, philosophies, dialect and mannerism is limited to his 1850-2000 milieu. But why is Everard given that psycho-physical enhancement and military and astronautical training? And why does his first case, apprehending a marauder in 461 AD, seem more appropriate for an Unattached? He and just one other new recruit must:

"'...extract this character from the middle of a big, tough town where he's the king's right-hand man. And he has a blast ray.'" (p. 34)

Yet they tackle this man with his futuristic armament rather than requesting Unattached intervention. Is all this allowed to happen simply because the Patrol knows that such an unusual sequence of events is necessary if Everard is to become the important and influential Unattached agent that he is later in his career?