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Doodads and Army Duds [Updated with a fun puzzle!]
I had long thought the doodads festooning veteran organizational caps to be a bit silly and something of the past. This Veterans Day, I took another look and came to a different conclusion. Looking at veterans’ uniforms in a parade and watching the pudgy weasel almost popping out of his blue Army Service Uniform in Congress, I discovered two things.
The first realization was of a linkage between military and veteran customs. Look at any military member’s uniform and you will see a shorthand career biography. If you take the time to look up the various ribbons, badges, insignia, patches, crests and whatnot, you get a glimpse into where they served and some tokens of what they did.*
It should be no surprise that veterans would carry over the military habit of visible tokens on their uniform. On closer examination, those “funny” caps have been serving the same function as a uniform jacket. Since the cap is the whole of a veterans organization uniform, that is where various tokens of a veteran’s service are displayed.
The VFW caps you see above were being auctioned off. You can see the former wearer had led a post in Iowa back in the late 1960s. He was a life member, and was involved in a number of recruiting drives for the organization, as well as other efforts to sustain and improve the organization. So the various badges seem to say. This was almost certainly a World War II veteran, a Korean War veteran, or both.
The second realization was that time quickly separates us from the current generation. I realized that this Wednesday in digging up an official link to current Army uniforms. I was surprised, although not greatly, to find that the uniform was changing again.
I was an Army brat in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, before joining and serving from 1986 through 2006. The Army started with olive drab fatigues (pickle suit), khakis, green Class A (business suit), and dress blues. They transitioned in the 1980s to Battle Dress Uniform (BDU), eliminated khakis, and defined a “Class B” (take off the jacket and add a black windbreaker or sweater as needed outdours) out of the Class A. Then, in the last 15 years, we saw the supposed simplification of the supply chain and soldiers’ closets by eliminating the Class A (green) uniform and making the basic design of the dress blues much more durable. This became the Army Service Uniform, and served as both business and formal attire (add straight black bow tie for the evening).
As you can see from LTC V’s appearance, if you will, this is really a bit much for regular business attire. Besides, A new crop of Command Sergeants Major need to make their own mark. The Army is going old school, bringing back the classic World War II Army Greens, with some updates, in 2020!
Ladies and gentlemen, back to the future, I give you the 2020 Army Greens!
Wait a minute! This really is big: brown shoes. The Army hasn’t worn brown shoes since before Vietnam. But don’t go re-dyeing your low quarters, you still need the black shoes for the ASU, for formal events.
What do you think? I’m kind of liking this look, especially if we get some old fashioned military discipline and values back in the headquarters where these snazzy duds will be mostly worn. Hooah?
* Here is a decoder key, following AR-600-8-22, for the “fruit salad” on soldiers’ chests:
For extra fun, here is a practical exercise in ribbon and badge reading. Can anyone spot the puzzling part?
So do you know what he’s getting at?
The ribbon rack reads, in ascending order, starting at the bottom right:
Overseas Service Ribbon
Army Service Ribbon
Armed Forces Service Medal
Global War on Terrorism Service Medal
Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal
[those were all relatively standard issue participation ribbon for the relevant time period, the AFSM being the least common. Look it up if you care. Now we start to see individual achievement awards.]
Army Achievement Medal (awarded twice) This is the lowest award, the first one you get, normally. Non-combat only
Army Commendation Medal (awarded 4 times) This is the second level award, and usually comes at the end of your first tour as a lieutenant, followed by subsequent awards through your captaincy. This is the lowest award you can get in a combat theater.
Meritorious Service Medal (first award) This matches Major/LTC level, especially with the preceding base of awards. Not a combat award.
Joint Meritorious Service Medal (awarded twice) Spent more time at the Major/LTC level in a “joint” (multi-U.S. services) environment. Not a combat award.
Purple Heart. Combat injury/wound.
Plus nothing…
Now, read the collar: U.S. (Army) Infantry. That matches with the Combat Infantryman’s badge above the award rack, and with the tab under the ribbons showing he graduated Ranger School “tab Ranger,” not “scroll (units) Ranger.” Plus the basic 5 jumps in jump school that every Infantry officer takes, especially if they don’t want Ranger School to be extra miserable. So, everything is pretty generic, nothing sketchy there.
So, why is there not a …….?
The Iraq Campaign ribbon? I give up
Well, there certainly is not a Bronze Star or above, anything showing real gallantry or heroism. Looks like a ticket puncher. But we knew that. What else are we missing?
The LtCol reminds me of an officer in our chain who was widely loathed. Weirdly insistent on annoying things and deference. Virtually anything that hit his desk was handled to maximize his presumed importance and inconvenience someone.
Because of him, new security measures for medical records were implemented. Not because he thought of it but because somebody removed and incinerated his shot records and he was ordered to get all shots over again. The lab officer said he heard there was an auction for the right to do the shots so he stepped forward and did it himself ostensibly to preclude mischief (he did a really bad job, by the way, we were proud of him—he would probably have outbid us anyway).
Well, they are very nice. But so are these:
Big stink in the UK because the Royal Marines are set to lose their rank structures and insignias (insigniae?) and have them folded into the Royal Navy. I think the Commandos get to keep their berets, though.
RHIP.
Since it doesn’t effect me, I don’t really care. But you’re right. The peaks on those caps look ridiculous. More like how I remember the East German field police. I think I paid $30 of my $300 uniform allowance for a nice Flight Ace branded service cap. I couldn’t justify spending $70 for the sharper looking Norry Luxenburg. The Luxenburg had a bit of a peak and looked way cooler.
I think maybe I wore that service cap half dozen times. I wore my garrison cap, or what my former Marine dad insisted on calling a pi$$ cutter, many many times. I always thought eliminating the khakis was a mistake.
I’m also proud to say that for six months I wore the back cavalry beret. That is until Bernie Rogers decided to end the post Vietnam Army’s flirtation with locally authorized unique headgear. Such classics as the teal beret of the 101st, the red baseball caps of various engineer units, the maroon airborne beret and of course the black beret of armored cavalry units.
The airborne beret was revived because those poor paratroopers needed another piece of unique gear to complement the bloused jump boots and the glider patch on their garrison caps.
I still have my black leather cavalry belt with the large US buckle, my beret and the tanker jacket which offended General Rogers so much.
I’m all for the return of the Eisenhower jacket. What I am not in favor of? Women wearing the same covers as men. And Navy recruits getting a ribbon for boot camp.
He does have a CIB. I’m not sure of all of the requirements, but service as an infantryman in an infantry unit in a combat zone is required.
I believe I discovered the main difference. The Marine uniforms are well-tailored.
When I got commissioned in 1985 we had our uniforms fitted and inspected quite thoroughly. It was common for us to bring the uniform back to the tailor to have breast pockets removed and replaced in a different position so that they would sit straight when worn by the specific individual. The vent in the back had to lie perfectly straight, and not cant to the side because the wearer had a butt of a different size. Marine uniforms are tailored to a very exact degree.
I left the active duty Marines in 1993 and then completely in 1996. In 2004 I was reappointed as an officer and, as you might expect, I needed new uniforms. I drove down to San Antonio to get my uniforms tailored because I expected that the huge army and Air Force bases there would have large PX/BX with tailors accustomed to military uniforms.
I was shocked to learn that the only alterations they would make, or were even able to make, were to hem the sleeves and trousers. That’s it. Forget about the collar, or the vent, or putting the breast pockets on straight. They had no clue.
Back in the late 1990’s, the Air Force dabbled with the idea of adopting uniforms with a choker collar and pretty much copying the style of the Marine uniforms. The chief of staff and other high ranking officer and enlisted modeled the uniforms and looked like a bunch of slobs. The waist belt wasn’t the right length, the collars not fitted, vents crooked, the jackets were bunching up under the belts. They looked like hobos in a Marine’s eyes.
Marine uniforms are so good looking, not entirely because of the design, but because of the execution: Because of the tailoring. It’s an attitude that pervades everything the Marines do.
Brig. Gen. Robert Allardice and Senior Master Sgt. Dana Athnos show off prototypes of the Billy Mitchell heritage coat in the Pentagon on Monday, May 15, 2006.. General Allardice is director of Airmen development and sustainment and Sergeant Athnos is a member of the Air Force uniform board. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. C. Todd Lopez)
I know it’s probably a bit loud, but I really, really love my jacket and days below 70˚ when I can justify wearing it.
Right sleeve: 1st and 3d Marine Aircraft Wings
Left sleeve: 1st, 2d, and 4th Marine Divisions
Front: 3d Battalion, 25th Marines and VMA(AW)-242 (A-6 squadron)
Back: Marine Aircraft Groups 11, 12, 13, and 70
2d Marines, 23d Marines, 24th Marines, and 25th Marines
Headquarters and Maintenance Squadrons 11 and 13, 4th Recon Battalion, and 1st Battalion, 23d Marines
You know what people love about the military? Traditions, cred, and lookin’ sharp.
None of these cost the military much money; you’d think they’d work a little harder to pump them up.
It is true. And I am told Marines get their uniforms meticulously tailored, paying for seam work other service members aren’t even aware exists.
Edit: Basically, what @skyler said.
All of the services turn a jaundiced eye towards being overweight but I suspect Marines are more rigorous in policing fat as a group and as individuals. In a sense, tailoring begins at home.
You bumped right into it. How do you get a Purple Heart but not a Bronze Star as an officer? The answer turns out to be that he deployed once to Iraq, back in 2004-5. So, that is 15 years ago. He would have been a captain. So, he almost certainly got the basic award that all officers would expect for any successful tour anywhere in the world: the Army Commendation Medal.
Somehow, despite being infantry qualified, he never was sent back to either Iraq or Afghanistan. Where it otherwise, we would see it on his ribbon rack.
1. That’s a pathetic commentary on the state of military awards, especially regarding the commendation medal and the bronze star. You would think that one should need to have done something exceptional.
2. The man deserves ridicule, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with having been a linguist and area specialist. I mean, it’s conceivable that a body could be on a linguist career track and not simultaneously be a traitorous weasel. I think we might focus on those latter qualities rather than be critical of otherwise honorable type of service.
Concur. Vindman was a Foreign Area Officer (FAO). You cannot track FAO until you’re a Major (maybe–maybe you can get into the program as a senior Captain). It takes 10-12 years to make Major. If we split the difference, let’s say he made rank at 11 years. He was commissioned in ’98. Let’s take off three years for pre-9/11. That still leaves 8 years of full blown GWOT (remember that?) and he only had one tour in a combat theater of operations. Please file this under “things that make you say hmmm.”
Frankly, he reminds me of Kevin Costner in “No Way Out.” We should start referring to him as the real Yuri.
We had a supply sergeant in my first assignment who was famous as “Taylor the Tailor.” He had professional training in the craft and if your sergeant sent you to him after hours he would make that sloppy set of Army Greens or BDUs fit just right and look sharp. I think it kept him in beer money. That was the exception to the Army rule, in my experience.
Yes. Reading the ribbon rack and badges points us back into his actual service. Contrary to a Twitter partisan, the lack of BSM does not signal ticking off a commander, in this particular case. The BSM, taking awards policy as it is, has been a field grade service award and a company grade very exceptional action award. The Purple Heart goes with one of his four Army Commendation Medals, back when he was a captain.
The lack of BSM signals FAO track with no call ever for any of his skills in a combat area. The GWOT Expeditionary Medal says he went to the war zone once, as most Army Infantry officers have both Iraq and Afghanistan Campaign Medals. I tracked Reserve and Guard logistics specialty “spin rates” through the relevant period. Multiple tours were the norm, unless you were very senior or had some specialty of no use to the theater. V has had a charmed career, it seems.
Officers don’t usually wear marksmanship badges, as a cultural matter (, at least in the last 30+ years. Yes, there is an enormous amount of boilerplate, despite repeated efforts to tighten it up. The NCO evaluation system struck me as superior, forcing facts.
Interesting. In the Marines, that isn’t true. It’s considered embarrassing, or a point of ridicule, if an officer doesn’t qualify as an expert on his rifle and pistol. If you screw up, you have to wait a year before you can erase that mark. It’s not uncommon for an officer to have the second level sharpshooter badge, rather than the expert badge, and people will usually not talk about as much, but if you have the lowest level, the marksman level, then you can be sure that every private will be sniffing in derision. Officers are expected to be masters of our primary weapons.
Concur. The uninitiated could read the evals of the best (LT, CPT, MAJ, your choice) and the worst in a given unit (Company, Battalion, Brigade, Group) and walk away thinking they were both studs.
On the other hand, I had to write a relief-for-cause on a NCOER (circa 2009-2010), and I could not cite any of the specifics of his misconduct or integrity violations. Very frustrating. Basically wound up saying “I am relieving this NCO because he sucks.” With no supporting evidence.
I’ve found that when a Marine was really top 1% it was really easy to write the evaluation. When they were so bad to have been fired, it was likewise easy to write the evaluation. It was the people in the middle where it was so hard because if you told the truth, that they were good, solid performers and reliable, then they’d never get promoted. You had to say they were wonderful, superlative people that would win WWIII all by themselves.
A-yup.
The Army assumption is that officers maintain proficiency in -10 level (E-1 to E-4) common skills, like marksmanship, so what is the officer doing to add value at his or her pay grade? It is known in the units which officers qualified expert and who barely qualified with their pistol. Much bigger force, so different culture.
Marines have a culture of making marksmanship our most important skill for every Marine.
Typically, officers qualified in handgun and fielded that and enlisted qualified in M-16. Smith and Wesson was my first handgun. Later, it was replaced with the Berreta 9mm. I earned the marksmanship ribbon on the .38 and the first device on the ribbon on the M-16. I only fielded the handgun once and decided that was silly. Told them to issue me an M-16 from then on.
I did foxhole duty one night for a shift to know what my guys were experiencing. It is hard to be still in the cold but the “aggressors” looked for movement so you must. We had an attack about 2AM with flares and GBS rounds. Was better than the 4th of July. I had a front row seat and no aggressor attacked my position. It was better than cowboys and Indians when I was a kid. I rarely fired my rifle but took my ration of ammo (blanks) and gave them to a deserving airman who was running low. We weren’t the Army or Marines but we could provide ourselves a serviceable self defense. We all knew we (our radar) would be target #1 of an enemy ARM (anti radiation missile) if a real war popped up. We had a defense against that, too. We were the MASH of air defense radars. No regrets.