I’ve seen some videos on You Tube about USMC and USAF Basic Training and the troops, when responding to their DI’s now say “Yes Sir” or “No Sir” instead of “Sir Yes Sir” or “Sir No Sir”.
When did that change?
“Don’t call me Sir! You will address me as Sergeant. I work for a living!"
Do they actually say that? It sems like teaching soldiers to disrespect officers.
When I was in boot camp we addressed the instructors as, “Sir,” for the practice, real officers being quite scarce. After arriving from the AFEES center where we were sworn in I saw only one lieutenant the whole time I was there.
Are you saying that this is good or bad?
I didn’t mind.
It’s a line I first heard when it was uttered by Sergeant Hulka in the 1981 movie Stripes. I just learned it’s also been featured in G.I. Jane (1997) and Hollywood Homicide (2003).
I know it’s a cliche - I just wondered whether it was based on fact.
“I work for a living” is kind of a cliché in military representations, really, but like its converse it is sort of derivative from service culture. “Sir Yes Sir” is something of a (most often) Marine DI trope in media and IRL, “while in this training every time you are to speak, the first and the last word out of you will be ‘sir’”. But in contrast the Army’s Drill Sergeants will very much emphasize addressing them as “Drill Sergeant” and not “sir”.
May some NCOs have thrown about the “I work for a living” before it became trite? Probably. Part of the old class distinction legacy of officers vs. enlisted.
Same for Navy boot camp. There were no officers. Most of the CCs were first class petty officers. But they were always addressed as “sir”, both at the beginning and end of a sentence. It’s part of the discipline. Like a lot of newly minted E-2s, the habit carried over to my first duty station, where I had to be told not to address petty officers as “sir”.
it’s also a line in Good Morning, Vietnam
Marine Corps recruits respond to their Drill Instructors differently depending on if the response is to a question or a command. If given a command, instruction, or piece of knowledge, the recruit responds with “Aye, Sir”. If it’s a question, then the response is “Yes, Sir” or “No, Sir”. 60 years ago, it would have been “Sir, yes, Sir” but that’s changed for brevity over the last 2-3 decades. Not sure exactly when.
In the Army, recruits respond to their Drill Sergeants with “Roger, Drill Sergeant” or “Yes/No, Drill Sergeant”. Never “sir”. The response “Don’t call me sir, I work for a living” and “Don’t thank me, thank your recruiter” are common, boiler plate responses to recruits saying, “Sir” or “Thank you, Drill Sergeant”.
Yes. It’s something a noncommissioned officer would say–not a commissioned officer. NCOs are not addressed as “Sir”. Corporals are addressed as “Corporal”; Sergeant through Master Sergeant are addressed as “Sergeant”; First Sergeants as “First Sergeant”; Sergeant Major and Command Sergeant Major are “Sergeant Major”. Never “Sir” for any of them. Outside of boot camp, I don’t believe the Marines refer to any NCOs as “Sir”, either. In fact, I think they refer to NCOs by their exact rank. For example, for an E-6 it’s “Aye, Staff Sergeant!” in the Marines, but “Roger, Sergeant” in the Army.
I believe Fredric March as Sgt/Mr Stephenson also delivered the line in “The Best Years of Our Lives” 1946.
Is it still true that marine recruits aren’t supposed to say “I”? When my cousin graduated Paris Island back around 1990, it was “this recruit”.
As I understand it, this was to remove the focus on the self and instead think in terms of the group
Mine was navy, yes, and it was just the ones in charge of the companies, mine and the others running in parallel, that were addressed as sir, not the other ones we might run into. This was in 1972 at Great Lakes.
I am pretty sure I’ve heard Chief O’Brien use it on Star Trek TNG or DS9 more than once.
It was an old cliche when I joined over 30 years ago.
I imagine it also prevents confusion between “I” and “Aye.”
OK. It just seems strange to me that a sergeant is teaching recruits how to follow orders, while at the same time implying that the people who will be giving the orders are a bunch of lazy bums.