Watching Patton and he had stripes on the end of his jacket sleeve. Was this for years of service or something else? I assume the movie uniform was based on what he actually wore.
Those are Overseas Service Bars. Here is a picture of General Patton: https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/general-george-s-patton-commander-of-the-3rd-us-army-1945-patton-is-picture-id183096947?s=612x612
The Chevrons are for service in WWI, the horizontal bars are for service in WWII. There’s a formula for x number of months of service and how many you could wear. In those wars I believe it was tied to six month increments.
In the modern day military, enlisted men wear “service stripes” that denote various amounts of time in service. Officers do not wear those. However officers do wear modern day Overseas Service Bars in some of their uniforms (the ASUs), depending on the war and the time they were acquired there are various rules for how many and etc. In the modern uniform they are worn on the right sleeve, during Patton’s time they were worn on the left sleeve (as pictured in the above link.)
Edit: Here is a picture of the (current) Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley, displaying his Overseas Service Bars, for a look at the modern example:
BTW Scott did not want to do the opening speech. They told him it would be at the end of the movie so he did it. He was not happy when it was the first scene.
That’s what happens when you’re just the paid actor and not the director or the producer.
These service stripes are found on the left sleeve of enlisted soldiers (1 for everyone 3 years). Enlisted Soldiers also wear overseas bars on the right sleeve (1 for everyone 6 months).
A tangent, but would one of you Army folks be able to explain what the other bits and bobs on his uniform mean (not down to the individual ribbons, of course, but the big chunks).
One thing I have always been curious about is those ribbons in gold frames on the wearer’s right side. They look special, set apart from the rest on the other side.
I assume you’re asking about Milley and not Patton based on the post you quoted.
Milley has some unique hardware–on his right side, there is a badge on his right breast pocket with a gold emblem in the center and green around it. That is the Joint Chiefs of Staff Identification badge, indicating the wearer is on the Joint Chiefs of Staff–not something you’ll see frequently.
Above that on his right side are two side by side badges:
-The left one is the Joint Meritorious Unit Award
-The right one is the Meritorious Unit Commendation, in Milley’s case with three oak leaf clusters (meaning he was part of units awarded the MUC thrice.)
Above that is a large and unique parachute emblem–this is actually the French Parachutist Badge. There are a number of foreign awards that actually can be worn on the U.S. uniform–I actually looked for, and could not find information on when or under what circumstances Milley won this award. However I will note that badge is the French Brevet parachutiste militaire and given to graduates of the parachute program at the French Special Military School of Saint-Cyr–it is noted as not being unusual for foreign troops to train there. To get the badge Milley has, you have to complete their parachute program and complete six jumps, three standard day time jumps, one daylight jump using the reserve chute, one night jump without equipment and one night jump with full gear and equipment.
For men of MIlley’s rank, you will frequently have gone through a huge number of special training programs both within the U.S. military and with foreign allies, so presumably he acquired it that way.
The badge above that is a Distinctive Unit Insignia for the 506th Infantry Regiment–these are special badges that indicate service with a specific major Army formation.
The “Airborne” badge on his right shoulder is one of the Combat Service Identification Badges, they’re given out for combat service with a particular type of Army formation. Ex. 101st Airborne, 10th Mountain Division (Milley has actually been in both.) There’s some other units like the 82nd Airborne that have shoulder badges like that as well.
To expand on that a bit:
Most of the hardware represent awards, certifications, and suchlike that General Milley received as an individual. Unit awards, commendations, and citations are awarded to an entire unit as a group. Personnel serving with that unit when the receives such an award are authorized to wear the ribbon on their uniforms.
BTW, the oak leaf clusters are for additional awards beyond the first. So he was serving with units that received the Joint Meritorious Service Award twice, and with units that received the Meritorious Unit Commendation four times.
That’s actually the U.S. Army Staff Identification Badge, indicating a current assignment to the Office of the Secretary of the Army or to Headquarters, Department of the Army. His Joint Chiefs of Staff Identification Badge is on his left pocket in that photo.
Also on the wearer’s left, the badge at the top, the rifle on a blue background backed by a wreath, is a Combat Infantryman Badge. It means that he served in ground combat as a member of an Infantry (or Special Forces) unit (before he was a general - only Colonels and below are eligible for the CIB).
The ribbons below that are various individual awards and commendations, and I’m not going to try to catalogue all of those. The bronze bits on some of them are oak leaf clusters - again, they indicate multiple awards.
On the top of his pocket are two skill badges. I can’t quite make them out in that photo from that angle, but in his official photo, he’s wearing a Master Parachutist badge on his right, and an Army Special Operations Diver badge on his left.
And just to be complete, I guess, the stars on his shoulder board are his rank insignia. Four stars for the rank of General (O-10), the highest current rank in the U.S. military.*
The “U.S.” on his lapels indicates that he is in service to the United States. As an officer, he would wear his branch insignia below that, but general officers generally don’t wear branch insignia.
Each of the buttons on his jacket bears the U.S. Army crest.
*In World War II, a “five star” rank was created, General of the Army for the Army and Admiral of the Fleet for the Navy, and when the Air Force was created, it got a General of the Air Force rank. They were basically created because other Allied nations had slightly different rank structures, and had more officer ranks than the U.S. military did, so at the very highest level, a “four star” U.S. officer might be placed in command of a “five star” British officer, and that Would Not Do. Only a handful of individuals were ever awarded the rank, and it was retired in 1981, with the death of the last man who held it, Omar Bradley. In 1976, Congress also created a “six star” rank, General of the Armies, to posthumously award to George Washington. By statute, he permanently outranks all other U.S. military personnel, past, present, or future.
Good catch on the Joint Chiefs badge–I should’ve zoomed in on the linked pic of Milley. It actually looks like from various pictures of Milley he always wears his Joint Chiefs badge on his left, but it varies where he wears the Staff badge, sometimes he wears it on the right as seen in the linked image, but it more frequently is actually on the left beside the Joint Chiefs Badge.
When I was in the service and probably for years after I had a hard copy of the wear and appearance guide for uniforms. It’s crazy to think but there are actually times in your career when as part of what I almost consider ritualized hazing you get kind of grilled on knowledge of that stuff, I don’t retain nearly as much of it via memory as I’d have thought–I had to look up a lot of the stuff for Milley’s uniform.
To give some more context to all the insignia and badges @minor7flat5 all the insignia / badges / “military heraldry” doesn’t necessarily mean what civilians might think. In a lot of portrayals someone with a chest full of this stuff is a bad ass, or a super high ranking individual. The only things really indicating Milley is of very high rank is the “Four Stars” rank insignia on his epaulet, and I guess his special Joint Chiefs badge which obviously is associated intrinsically with high rank. There are Sergeants with a chest full of hardware and Lieutenants and Captains with hardly any, but the Lt and Capts outrank the Sergeant (this isn’t particularly unusual as Lt and Capt rank are fairly junior officer ranks, and some specialty career paths like Chaplains Corps / Medical Doctors / military lawyers are always officers and can get up the rank structure with little to no deployments or special military training completed.)
He also has a 101st airborne patch on left sleeve, does that mean he’s still technically part of the 101st? He was in the 82nd airborne which has a different patch, not the eagle.
He has the 101st Airborne patch on his right sleeve shoulder (his left shoulder isn’t visible in that photo). As @Martin_Hyde explained a few posts up, that’s a Combat Service Identification Badge, indicating he served in a designated Combat Zone with the 101st Airborne Division. The Shoulder Sleeve Insignia of his current unit of assignment would be on his left (viewer’s right) shoulder. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, I don’t think he wears an SSI.
I couldn’t find a pic that shows General Milley’s left shoulder in a format that Discourse could parse, but in the pics I did find, he wasn’t wearing an SSI on his left shoulder, just his Special Forces and Ranger tabs.