One thing you get to do over the course of a career in the Navy is travel. A lot of times by ship-and if you are lucky, a lot of times by both military and civilian air travel. One of the things that has amazed me over the recent years is the number of people I see traveling in uniform.
For a guy who came of age when I did-and entered the service when I did, it requires something of a mental adjustment. When I left the US for the first time at the age of 21 flying to Madrid for further transfer down to Rota, it was beat into your head NOT to travel in uniform. For two reasons: 1) because in the US memories of Vietnam were still fresh and people did not say “thank you for your service” as we do now and 2) it was like painting a big bullseye on yourself over seas-a way of saying “shoot me!”.
So whenever I pass through DFW or Denver or even Richmond, it is pretty interesting to see the number of Army people and Air Force people in uniform. ( You don’t see so many Navy people and even in the case of the Air Force-its not nearly as numerous as the Army).
I suppose its a good thing-it allows people to identify our service people and give them the good treatment they deserve-but old habits are hard to shake loose of.
For example in my day-if you were in uniform you were not supposed to accept an upgrade to First Class for reasons I never really understood. And if you did end up in First Class in uniform-God forbid you had anything to drink on the flight. Happily that seems not to be the case today.
I always did my best not to travel in uniform-my goal was always to blend in to a crowd, not to stand out. To that end-I was not averse to going to the gym before leaving the base to change out of my uniform if I was traveling home the same evening as a meeting. Along the same lines-I used to hate it during the early 80’s when under the “Pride and Professionalism” directives we had to wear the uniform ashore the first day in port. I always thought that was silly and counterproductive. After all what do a lot of folks do the first day in port? Never made any sense. Again I just wanted to blend in and not draw attention to myself.
But it seems like that feeling has changed a lot. I kind of feel for the Army guys because their uniforms don’t look comfortable and I would prefer to be comfortable when traveling.
Anybody got any thoughts on why this has changed?