Army uniforms in public?

Sorry, quote malfunction. I’m sure if you look at it, you can see what happened.

As a sidenote, enlisted personnel are expected to treat officers with the proper respect even if in civvies (and even if the officer is in civvies as well).

I will never forget the time in Okinawa when my buddies and I were in civvies, and our battalion commander was walking towards us (in civvies as well—we were expected to know our own battalion commander by sight after all); we did not greet him with a “good afternoon sir” and got chewed out for it. We never again failed to greet an officer or say “by your leave, sir” when we wished to pass him.

Certainly not the Bravo (long-sleeved shirt w/o sevice jacket)? It wasn’t allowed when I was in, or has it changed?

And I’m sure, being a career military man, you can understand my taking exception to the error.

An argument about this came up in my family a couple of years ago when my wife and I attended a high school graduation. A speaker (not a graduate) who was in the service wore what I would have called fatigues, but now apparently are called BDU’s. My wife was outraged. Her father, who admitted to needing Patton’s help to win World War II, but who otherwise did it single handedly, would have risen from his grave and bitch slapped any soldier who wore fatigues to an occasion when a dress uniform would have been more appropriate.

I never served, and I’m not that knowledgeable about uniform regulations, but I had to say that I really didn’t perceive a problem, at which point I had the problem explained to me at great length.

I never took the trouble to learn whether or not the fatigues were allowed during an occasion like that, because it wouldn’t have done me any good to say “I told you so!”, and who wants to admit they’re wrong, but I’m following the discussion with great interest. It’s obviously a good deal more complicated than I had assumed.

The community college I go to enrolls a fair number of soldiers from the nearby Army base, and many of them get time off during their workday to attend classes by their commanding officers. As a matter of expediency, most of them show up in their ACUs, though some would change into civies if they had time that day. I’d occasionally see a guy in a service dress uniform, but not terribly often.

As for the Air Force side, which I’m slightly more in tune with, when I did Air Force JROTC, we were told not to bother with the flight caps except for things like yearbook pictures and parades (too easy to loose, and we couldn’t wear them in school anyways, making bringing them for our 30 minutes of drill somewhat inconvenient and greatly increasing our chances of loosing the things). This was likely a unit-specific order from our Senior Aersospace Science Instructor (a retired Colonel), but it could have been a larger JROTC policy.

And in case anyone wonders if I knew anything about the REAL Air Force, my recruiter, a Technical Sergeant, usually is wearing the long-sleeved service dress uniform, sans jacket, when he is wearing a uniform in his office. More often, he’ll be in t-shirt and jeans in the office, and mostly seems to have the uniform on when my mom is most likely to be present (ie: when she was dropping me off so he could drive me to the MEPS station in Phoenix). When I visited a couple of AF recruiting offices in Tucson on the way to Phoenix (to pick up more recruits going to MEPS), they were all in the blue short-sleeves dress uniforms, so it might in his case just be that there’s nobody else in the office to require him to dress up. As a side note, there are a LOT of Security Forces guys doing recruiting in Tucson, easily identified by their blue berets.

He says that he hates the new ACUs that the Army wears, because when he needs to go visit the Army base for whatever reason, he can’t figure out if he’s walking up to an officer or not until the last second, since the rank is now displayed on a little patch on the chest. I’m thinking the point of that was to make it harder for bad guys to figure out who to shoot first in a firefight.

Also, IIRC, I recall seeing a fairly recent notice that Air Force personel aren’t allowed to smoke in uniform, on-or-off duty. No idea if this affects their ability to buy cigarettes in uniform if they felt inclined.

Sure, if a soldier in civvies was given an order by a lieutenant in uniform and they didn’t know each other, the proper response would still be “¡si, my teniente!”, which told the lieutenant “hey, this one ain’t a civilian.” Often a guy who wasn’t in the service any more but who had been until recently would give that answer (instinctively or on purpose). One of my friends spent several years in special forces; when he got married he got a civilian job but discovered how badly he missed the army after being drafter by an officer to help in an emergency situation. Now he’s one of the trainers at the air force’s officer’s school. The job is stable enough for his wife and includes enough adrenaline for him :slight_smile:

When my brother was in his military service, non volunteer enlisted didn’t live on base. His unit (all the soldiers and cabos were non-vol, cabos primeros and sergeants had to be professional or at least volunteer… sorry but I’m not sure which cabo is Cpl and which LCpl). The town where he was has a pretty large military contingent but they’re spread over several locations; he rarely worked with people from other units.

  1. In the military, there are two different kinds of authority: General Military Authority and Positional Authority. If the officer issues an order that is of a GMO nature to the enlisted person, then the EP must follow it. If the officer issues an order that is of a PA nature and that order is outside of the officer’s position, then the officer is not issuing a lawful order and the enlisted person is required to disregard that order.

  2. The employers in the US who require uniforms are also required to provide either a uniform or a uniform allowance to the employee. Most places I’ve lived, the police have been required to change into their duty clothes at the police station.

In his book Washington Goes to War, about Washington D.C. just before and during WW2, David Brinkley wrote that military officers were discouraged from wearing their uniforms around the capital. FDR apparently didn’t want Congress to get antsy by seeing so many soldiers about as he began quietly mobilizing before Pearl Harbor. Eisenhower, IIRC, had to carry his uniform in a suitcase to and from the office (I believe this was before the Pentagon was built).

Canada calling:

As far as I know, they have relaxed a lot, I can wear my uniform almost anywhere as long as it’s not going to embarass the military to see me there (for example if I am going to get drunk off my ass I had better change to civvies), also it has to be worn correctly (headress on or off where appropriate). I have worn it to shoot pool after work with some superior officers and there were no issues (we were not drinking heavily).

Back in 93 they were really strict about it, uniform was for working only and maybe if you had to stop for gas or bread on the way home. I remember one feamle was brought up on charges because she got drunk and entered an amateur stripping contest - in uniform.

That is still generally frowned upon. :smiley:
BTW our “fatigues” used to be called combats, and are now referred to as “CAD-PAT”

Service Bravo’s are authorized for leave and liberty.