Why did I expect that reply… Like I said, an actual military person needs to answer. If they find your question worthy.
You normally don’t salute indoors, but when formally reporting to a superior you do. If the superior wants to chew you out for half an hour while you stand and hold the salute, that’s exactly what happens. Even if the subordinate isn’t holding a salute, if you’re being chewed out, you’re pretty much always going to be standing at attention or parade rest anyway. Military superiors have a lot of power over subordinates. They have to. A superior can order you to take actions which will get you and all your friends killed. In extreme situations, an officer can execute a subordinate (I don’t think that’s actually happened since the Civil War). Making a subordinate hold a salute while being chewed out for half an hour is probably a bit excessive, and I’ve personally never seen it go on for that long, but I’ve personally been chewed out for a minute or two by an irate officer while I held my salute.
A “martinet” has a lot of latitude for petty abuses. On the other hand, they would have their own chain of command, and Officer Efficiency Reports, and any good officer knows that their only as good as the Enlisted under their command allow them to be, and probably most importantly, in the modern U.S. military there’s a very strong institutional culture that emphasizes concern for the wellbeing of subordinates, or at least giving the appearance of doing so. There definitely are martinets in the U.S. military, but they’re not nearly as common as a lot of civilians seem to think.
Kinda figured that. Thank you.
Well, I did say my information was a few decades out of date-- but the point that it might not be intuitive to someone who had not been in the military, I think, still stands.
Yes, any time you had something in your hands, you were released from the obligation of saluting.