I’ve been spending the last week at a customer site, surrounded by soldiers of various nationalities in their versions of BDUs. The American soldiers have the flag on the right shoulder (reversed so that the flag is hoist-forwards), and all the other soldiers have the flag on the left shoulder.
Why does the American combat uniform have the flag on the right shoulder?
I’ve been wondering this for a long time. I wonder if it has something to do with it being war time?
Not all uniforms have the flag on the right shoulder. My flight suit has it on the left shoulder. In the Air Force, the flight suit is the only uniform with the flag on it at all, although I haven’t seen enough people wearing the new ABUs to notice whether that has a flag on it.
As far as the location being due to “wartime”, that is not correct. We do not get issued new uniforms for war, we go with what we are issued, or in the case of the Active Duty, purchased (they get a uniform allowance).
Because their unit patch is on their left shoulder?
Apparently the Army changed the Flag On Uniform policy in 2003:
My father & several uncles had Air Force careers (beginning back in the days of the USAAF.) But they never needed flags on their uniforms to remind themselves which side they were on! (I’ve got the flag my father wore to his wake.)
The other nations’ uniforms have the unit patch on the right shoulder. It’s pretty much flag on one side, unit on the other.
(I took a double take when I saw Swiss Air Force unit patches.)
The Army is different from the Air Force. It used to be that when you got deployed, the Army sewed a flag on your right shoulder; then after six months, you earned a ‘combat patch’, which also went on your right shoulder. When you came home, the flag came off but the combat patch stayed. Nowadays, since we’re “fighting a world-wide War on Terror”, the flag is there all the time, deployed or not. I’m not sure what the official explanation is, but I was in the Army then and now, and the impression was always that it signified a wartime uniform.
And I see plenty of airmen in ABUs around here, and there is no flag on that uniform either.
I ought to add that the flag patch is pretty much an Army thing. I’ve seen sailors, marines, airmen, and – believe it or not – Coast Guard folks here in their everyday walking-around-Iraq uniforms, and the Army has the only uniform with a flag on it.
I guess we’re just more patriotic than everybody else.
Could someone explain the terms “ABU” and “BDU”? Not having any military knowledge, I’ve never heard them before. Obviously they refer to some type of uniform, but what do the letters stand for?
Old:
DCU: Desert Camouflage Uniform
BDU: Battle Dress Uniform
The BDU is the Battle Dress Uniform, the woodland-green camouflage uniform that replaced the old-style OD (Olive Drab) Green uniforms that you might remember from Vietnam/Korea-era movies. Its desert equivalent is called the DCU, the Desert Camouflage Uniform, also referred to as the chocolate chip uniform because of its appearance. This uniform was made famous during Desert Storm, and is being phased out.
The ABU is the Airman Battle Uniform, the Air Force’s one-size-fits-all replacement for both the BDU and the DCU. The ACU is the Army Combat Uniform, which is their one-size-fits-all uniform, specific to the Army. The Marines have yet another type of uniform, called the CUU, Combat Utility Uniform, and of course they have to be different and have both a woodland and a desert design in addition to a randomly generated pixellated color scheme that they patented and refuse to share.
What this all means to you is that instead of all the services having a minor variation of one or two uniforms like it was before, everybody has gone their own way, partially out of the desire to highlight their own service, partially out of competition among the services, and the rest out of spite.
I’ll stick with my flight suit, thanks. That, at least, is not expected to change any time soon.
Thanks to DrCube and Airman Doors.
Don’t have a cite handy, but an explanation I’ve read for the field of stars being reversed when worn on the right sleeve is that it is to give the impression of moving forward, as a flag on a staff would appear if carried on a “charge” manouver. It was felt that having the flag appear with the field on the left may give the impression of retreating. Not sure if anyone actually pays as much attention to that as Public Relations folks would like us to believe, however.
The OP wants to know why the flag is worn on the right shoulder. Not why a flag worn on the right shoulder looks the way it does.
I’m ten years late to the party, but the flag is always positioned to its own right. i.e. when the flag is placed behind a public figure, it should always be to the its own right (thus appearing on the left of the person). The same goes for soldiers wearing the flag on their uniform, it is placed to its own right (i.e. the right shoulder)
However, the stars should also be to the flag’s own right. As pointed out earlier, the flag was reversed to give the impression of following the flag into battle instead of retreating with it.
Hope this helps anyone else that stumbles upon this thread.