Soldiers wearing civilian clothes for daily duty

Factual Questions
21

One time when I was stationed on Governor’s Island, NY, my Warrant Officer told me to change into civvies (the uniform of the day was Undress Blues) and go pick up something for him at some shop near Central Park. The command discouraged folks from hitting the city in uniform. This was common in the post-Vietnam era.

Uniforms were okay for folks getting off the Governor’s Island ferry just to get on the Staten Island ferry, though. Or vice versa.

22

Any particular reason why military attaches don’t wear uniforms?

23

Always picking people up at the airport and driving them around; meeting with officials all over the country and stuff like that. And they often work in cities with no major US military presence, so it would be odd for the public to see an American soldier running around. It makes sense for them to wear business suits instead. There job isn’t really military during that assignment anyway, it’s more of just being a liaison and office person. It’s a coat and tie assignment.

24

Thanks.

25

McDonald’s opened their first drive through window in Sierra Vista, Arizona in 1975 to accommodate soldiers from nearby Fort Huachuca, who weren’t allowed to get out of their vehicles while wearing their fatigues.

26

Two examples I’ve run in to:

  • An EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) troop who was assigned duties in the DC area. Uniform allowance was provided to buy appropriate clothes so he fit in with most of his civilian three letter agency co-workers.
  • One of my troops in the Guard long ago spent the end of his term of active duty assigned as a life guard at the post pool. Today, I’d be surprised if that wasn’t a civilian.

More limited uniform of the day is civilian clothes type exemptions I’ve been a part of:

  • “Mandatory fun” - family day, unit day, and team building type events where you are under orders to be there but civilian clothes is the ordered uniform
  • Role-playing a civilian in a training event
  • Travel - that loosened post 9-11 but there’s still some good security reasons to not just hop a plane in a uniform.
  • An accountability formation at the end of a unit pass (where the guidance required being back the evening before the next real day of performing duty).
27

A high school friend was a Naval Officer working at Naval Reactors HQ in the Finance arena, mixed civvies and squids. Once he got to that office, he did not wear uniforms to work at the Crystal City, VA office, and they called one another by their first names. 1990 to 1994 time frame.

28

At the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, the officer/students are only required to wear their uniforms one day a week (I can’t recall if it’s Monday or Tuesday). The Plan of the Week, of course, had the uniform of the day listed as Winter Dress/Summer Dress/Class A (or whatever the officer’s service’s equivalent was) for every day of the week; however, for the days that the officers were not required to actually wear said military uniform, the PoW explicitly stated that the officer could wear civilian clothes. Many of the officers would get bent out of shape when they decided on a day other than “uniform day” that they needed to renew their military identification card because they didn’t want to wear the uniform. The problem with that is the regulation requires the service member getting the identification card to appear in the uniform of the day. This was back in the latter half of the 1990s.

29

Since 9-11, it’s probably a security issue too. A lone individual wearing U.S. military uniform on the crowded streets of a Third World city could be at serious risk.

30

Also US Navy Seabees attached to the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Department. I wore civvies for the last four years of my career. In some parts of the world, a uniform is like wearing a target. Rather than try to figure out who should be in civilian attire and who shouldn’t, everybody on State Department duty wears mufti. During my first year there I traveled to Warsaw, Tunisia and Egypt, then was posted to Frankfurt, traveling throughout eastern and western Europe, often with a civilian counterpart.