this morning i'll talk with you for a while about the military customs courtesies and traditions of the service this subject will go with the all the way through your military career bit two years or twenty years because every day when we walk for same way with our uniforms people evaluate us as officers but also can we perform the military courtesy that expected of us enlisted people go through rigorous training basic training for a long time to learn how to salute how to abide by the military courtesies and traditions we get real quick and real short course in it and it's important i think that that we become real proficient in it in a short period time as possible so today we'll talk about primarily saluting but a lot of other things too some of these things are still very pertinent some of them you wonder why we do them but they've just become traditions why do you think in society that we have things called courtesies how do they ever get started in the beginning to ever get started it's just a way of living with each other getting along a little better over the years i think the things developed because people says if we're polanco if we're curtis courteous to each other then then the day to day grind is a little more palatable a little a little more interesting a little more easy to get along with each other mr emerson said this about and i thought it was pretty good the oldest person that we have in the military is saluting saluting and we need to be able to salut real well if you happen to be the best brain surgeon in the world and you left upstate new york or wherever you grew up and went down the appalachian area to practice medicine and you didn't understand the native customs and traditions in that area it might have some effect on the quality of medicine the two practiced in that area whereas if you got along with the folks blended in with them a little better it would be a lot easier while in the military it's important that we as a medical people blend than with the old traditions and customs and saluting is the one that labels us right away as being different if we don't do it properly so this morning we'll we'll talk about how to salute in fact will go into a little kindergarten drill here later on and each of us will get to try it with each other and then when we go home and practice it this evening is on the wall of you will and over the weekend looking in the mirror and trying it a little bit so you're more comfortable with then you'll know some things that you want to do and you'll know some things that you don't want to do by looking at each other so when we salute and we're not moving we're standing still the first thing we should do the first thing we should do is stand at attention and when we stand at attention the heels have to be together the heels have to be together the feet at a forty five degree angle the weight distributed evenly on both hips your hands should be cupped in this manner so that the last digit of the index finger in the thumb touch each other like so and the thumb is parallel to the same of your trousers are your skirt as the case may be in this manner  when you see the load is all you want of those take your right hand and touch this portion this portion of your eyebrow with the last digit your index finger and if you bring your hand up to that position extend your fingers so that they're are like this and you have a complete flat plane from the tip of this linger to the tip of the cell bow so you bring your hand up you form the flat plane with your arm and you place your hand just by your eyebrow edge of your eyebrow in this manner turning your hand down like i have mine a little bit so that you don't have the palm of the hand showing in this manner to lawyer your hand it's the most direct route back to your side and that's very simple some things you want to watch for the void is the pup tent in the hand the cupping of the hand the palm up this way the thumb left out because it's hazardous to your health ok r r cup in the thumb underneath and then your elbow it's important your elbow finds a comfortable position out here somewhere instead of pulling it back and being all rigid and tense you need to relax a little bit let that elbow find a place that's comfortable and feels good out here some work to let it get so far out that you end up with a configuration like this ok so it should be flat and then take your hand if you want glasses if you wear glasses you touch the edge of the frame approximately in the same place the ok what i would like to do now is for every other person to stand and face each other and the if it doesn't work out exactly perfect over here on and on was turned face each other this way i think it will now is much better that we laugh with each other here today and experiment with this little little drill than monday morning when we hit the street in uniform and proud that joe blow is on the way to class and he looks at us and he thinks let's see if the new officer knows how to slip because they can tell we're new officers some way some i don't know i don't know what it is maybe our shoes squeak or something when we walk ok if you would now please stand up and let's try this and we'll only do it half and half and half of the group at a time ok so the paper facing i'll say my left raul over here and i'll say att ok now other people talk to him say look pretty good is a hand in the proper position it i was enlisted for a little while and we used to get a lot of fun out of walking along and see a new officer and salute with our left hand are in our would act like we didn't see see the small and not real big and gruff the best thing for me did the it just look at that person say hey good morning how are you because really a salute in the military is what it should be a is a way of saying hello in a military  way and that's the purpose of it it has a lot more meaning than that may goes back in history we'll talk about that in just a minute but it's a way of saying hello it's a form of greeting so then listed person or the junior person is supposed to salute courteous or polite you've been rather rude but for me the best laying those with us limit just a kind of catch there and with a with a with a nasa loud voice say good morning how are you or some appropriate greeting and salute first they get that day on then there's no problem with it and there's no problem with it in the that paper or junior paper would have been around for a while get really upset when we failed to salute and we should because they look at us as being rude and not doing what we're paid to do and if if you've ever been through basic training and you fail to salute there's a big sergeant and jumps out from behind a rock and he turns into a green frog or something right on the spot you know so it's it's it's looked at by those folks a little differently than what it is to you  i we talked about it being one of the the oldest traditions it started many years ago started many years ago and they say goes all the way back to the days of old when that were bold and the would raise the visor on their steel helmet and say hello to someone that was a friend they used the rod hand because normally the rod handles the hand the weapon was health and so they're saying hey hello no weapon they're showing friendship and trust the raising their their visor on their helmet and then on down through the years on down through the years  society changed a little bit and i guess that the things change don't down with them the way of saying hello and not many folks wear hats anymore and tip them when they meet people on the street but that was part of our system heritage the way it kind of came about known down through the years  military leader that had a little black mustache and he thought the proper way to salute was the whole his hand up in this manner and that must not been the proper way because the things didn't work out too well for him  military today as we just talked about the the proper way to salute is very similar to what you see here if your head gear has a bill or a patrolling front on it like a steel pot has a little little part that turns out here the steel  helmet if your baseball cap up with your fatigues you touch the bill of the hat as a stylus doing here and if it's headgear without a bill like the overseas hat or the lady's bray you touch the eyebrow as we talked about here  earlier in class now mentioned before that it's the junior person's responsibility to initiate the salute and give a verbal greeting of some type such as good morning ma'am or good morning sir good afternoon good evening would be appropriate greetings sometimes you may run into someone especially like at fort bragg for example and there are some strange folks in the world they think they need to do something type and when they see you and they're greeting is not hello or good morning they scream real loud airborne is a salute and they're not been this respectful but it's a set top of folks that think they have to do something to have a spree and what have you keep their morale up so what do you do whenever they say they yell this at you you don't get insulted because they're screaming and hollering airborn at you if you just want to let them know that you know what it's all about the salute back and say all the way was that our main i'm not real sure i was in one unit i was in one year they wanted you to shout gary allan's and the reply back was was how are you or something i don't even remember a lot of us do that i don't know i think maybe it does add a little  boat getting ready go ski in and there's a general that you know and you see quite often and knows you and the germans on the way the tennis courts of the golf course and you meet those ten those face to face out on the street say good morning general that's not very appropriate i don't think you don't have to salute but i probably would just out of habit and the reason that it's ok it's ok to salute at any time it's a way of saying hello in a military way we're not required to do it in civilian clothes it's much better to salute when you don't have to than to fail to salute probably when you should ok so if you're ever in doubt about whether you should salute or not  and and relax and have a smile with it instead of saying hey it's something real bad and real distasteful because it's just really a greeting with saying hello to military