In the film “Coming Home,” the incredible Jon Voight wears an odd jacket throughout the movie. I took some screenshots of it here. There are several bizarre things about it. First of all the fact that it says “WAR HERO” on the front, which seems remarkably out of character for any war veteran and especially one like the guy in the movie who is extremely opposed to the war, and to the idea of war in general, and against the whole American military machine. I don’t get it.
The back of the jacket is emblazoned with the character’s nickname in script (“Duke”) and then “SEMPER-FI” written underneath it. Never in my life have I ever seen this phrase, which is a shortened version of the Marine Corps’ motto, spelled out with a hyphen between the two words. This, too, confuses me.
Also on the back of the jacket is a strange design composed of four colors: green, blue, red, and yellow. I cannot tell what this symbol is supposed to be. Does anyone have any idea?
The jacket has the character’s rank insignia (sergeant) represented on the sleeve with the three chevrons, but then also has two stars on each shoulder, like a general.
Finally, perhaps the strangest thing of all, “Washington” is misspelled on the jacket. One of the sleeves has a series of patches which presumably list the different duty stations that the guy was assigned to (this is just my guess.) Right on the top, and plainly visible in my screenshot, is “WASHINGON.”
I am really befuddled by this piece of wardrobe which Hal Ashby obviously liked enough to have his main character wear through the course of the movie. It’s clearly a custom job for the film, rigged up by the costume department, but what was it trying to imitate? It’s obviously not any kind of military issue jacket. Did veterans at this time wear stuff like this? Could the misspellings be the result of the jacket being made overseas by people who didn’t really understand English? Was this the effect that they were actually deliberately going for when they created this weird jacket?