Careful who you call “Skipper.” Airdales and Bubbleheads call their COs “Skipper,” Blackshoes do not. However, the CO of a carrier is always an aviator and a Captain, so he is usually called Captain by the shoes on the boat and Skipper by the aircrews.
Wow, that’s a complicated bunch of regulations. We had similar rules in the books ourselves, but no-one expected us to follow them. Sometimes we’d read them out loud for laughs.
Why didn’t you sic your own captain on him? After all, it’s a commander’s job to make sure his troops don’t take any shit from officers outside their chain of command. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen one of my company commanders go postal on some jobnik shmuck who gave his boys a hard time.
He didn’t go postal, or do anything anyone else would have even noticed. I was in an Army area basically by myself doing communication liaison with the Tiger Brigade, and when in Rome… I did tell my boss (I was the Battery XO, he was the Battery CO) and we had a good laugh.
Saluting is NOT something to get worked up about.
Hey, you were the one saying that it put you at risk.
I admit, I exagerated a bit with the “postal” comment. Saluting is probably not a big deal, if it’s what you’re used to, and the most your CO should have done is pulled that captain aside for a short, friendly chat. I know what it’s like to be seperated from your unit, and serving alongside people who do thing a little bit differently. You have to make some compromises. Still, what bothered me was that he insisted on you saluting - what’s that all about? You’re a professional, he’s a professional, as long as you both do yout jobs everybody should be happy. The fact that he wasted his no-doubt valuable time on something as petty as demanding an empty show of respect does not bode well for his leadership style.
This guy was a well known twit, I found out later. And the “sniper check” was semi tongue-in-cheek, we were in the middle of the freaking desert. But Marines treat any field exercise or even “safe” operational atmospheres the same as if they were in the front lines; Don’t ID the Boss any more than necessary.
As F14Scott noted, this most definitely does not apply to captains of surface ships. What I’ve seen is that while on board their own ship, or being addressed by members of their own crew regardless of location, they’ll be called “Captain” regardless of their actual rank (just “captain” not “Captain Jones.”) If being introduced or addressed with their name, it would include their actual rank (e.g. “Commander Jones”). I’ve spent time on an aviation detachment on board small navy surface ships and seen this get ugly. Some CO’s kind of think it’s cool to get called “skipper” by the aviators on board, but some just go ballistic.
This varies a lot I think depending on the Navy community and coast (West coast is perhaps not surprisingly more relaxed). In helo aviation, there are two officer pilots and 1 or 2 enlisted crewmen who operate the sensor systems and work as rescue crewmen. Generally in the air things are quite relaxed, to include pretty open conversation about just about anything (gotta keep everyone awake and interested on those long middle of the night missions), but not to the point of first names. Typically, the enlisted folks will be addressed by last name or nickname, and the O’s will be addressed as “Mr. Jones.” During a tactical mission, it’s also common to address people solely by their position in the crew (Senso, ATO, etc.) When not on a ship and away from home base, the crew will pretty much always hang together because it’s such a small group. Everyone is treated more or less equally with the exception of name usage, which typically stays at the “in aircraft” level of formality.
To be frank, it’s pretty easy to ID the commander anyway - he’s the guy next to the guy with the antenna.
BTW, do Marine NCOs take off their stripes in the field?
Not normally, no. Marines in the field (when I was in) wear rank insignia. They do not have the “subdued” officer insignia like the Navy, Army, and Air Force do, it is all shiny. The Enlisted insignia is matte black. Marines do not wear it on the helmet, nor generally on the outside of the flak jacket, but on the collar, which is often covered up by other equipment.
Now a group going snooping and pooping (covert mission where discovery and capture is real possibility) may strip their insignia off, I don’t know for sure.
There’s the story of Mark Clark inspecting a camp of New Zealanders in Italy. Clark wasn’t a prima donna on the level of MacAurthur or Patton, just a basic jerk. “Don’t these solders know how to salute?” he asked his host. “No, but I’ve found that if you wave hello to them, they usually wave back.”
On the other extreme, there was the Austrians. An elisted man had to stay at least six feet away from an officer, preface every remark with “beg to report, sir,” and conclude with “by your leave, sir.”
Perhaps a matter of taste of which looks snazzier: the American palm-down salute or the British palm-out (which the Americans themselves used until around 100 years ago.)
Then there’s all the salutes involving your rifle: with the toe of the butt against your little toe and your hand palm down in front of the stacking swivel. or the sentry salute at shoulder arms, with the hand palm-dowm saluting across your chest (which the Americans also no longer do.)
Probably the silliest salute was used by the Spanish loyalists - a fist held against the temple, which inspired the salute of the Judean Peoples Liberation Front (or was that the Judean Liberation Peoples Front? Splitters!)
Really? I was unaware of this, but I have not been a position to do it in about 12 years.
The current Marine Corps Drill Manual still has the “Rifle Salute at Right Shoulder Arms” in this PDF, Page 21.
Perhaps this is only a carrier thing, because the ship I was on (a destroyer tender), we called the CO Skipper, and so did folks on other ships I was familiar with.
Thank you for the correction (and a gentle one at that, given the meaning of “correction” used in Marines basic training in regards to rifle handling).
Interesting. I suppose the customs for individual ships and COs flex with era, coast, and even ship type.
I spent the night on an Aegis Cruiser, the Vella Gulf, as a JO and called the CO “Skipper” during dinner in the wardroom. It was like a needle slid across a record; everybody stopped talking and stared at me. D’oh. The Captian waited a couple of potatoes and then answered my question. Didn’t make that mistake again. But, the helo bubbas aboard loved it!
Here’s another bit of trivia. The CO of a carrier air wing (all the squadrons embarked on a carrier), also always a Captain, is called CAG, after the old name for that group of squadrons: Carrier Air Group.