I had to regain my self-respect / So I got into camouflage
November 18, 2018 1:41 PM   Subscribe

I love a man in uniform: "Military history buffs come in many flavours – some intrigued by grand strategy, others by the common soldier’s experience. There’s the study of command, technical innovation, weaponry, the nexus between politics and war. But me? I’m more of a Punk Historian, fascinated by military miscellany – the origins of dits, legends, kit and the near-mystical concept of allyness." Dominic Adler, "A Punk History Of Military Cool, or the pursuit of ally – ness."

(Title stolen without shame from Gang of Four. Link spotted via William Gibson's Twitter.)
posted by MonkeyToes (18 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
Fascinating!

I'm dying for some etymology, though.
posted by clawsoon at 2:21 PM on November 18, 2018


Yeah, any conflict where you find yourself in the midst of it shopping at an Aldi probably isn't winning you any glamour points...

I'd read the shit out of that account though - sounds like that could have some great stories of obscurity.
posted by Nanukthedog at 2:34 PM on November 18, 2018


I'm not sure this has the direction of causality entirely right. I mean sure, soldiers are as much into looking like a badass as anyone, probably more (the cardigan thing notwithstanding)...

But conversely, I imagine that soldier cult, association with death and violence, movies, etc. etc., will also tend to make whatever the standard military issue is seem cool. And say you're the kind of punk who'll spend two hours doing your hair... you want to look cool, you have a contrary streak, and you're really not into authority. Oh, and you have no money, cause nobody will hire you with that bone through your nose. Those surplus-store parkas are starting to looking pretty good I imagine.

[And, who's going to mention William Gibson first? Clock's ticking]

posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 3:47 PM on November 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


Me, I just like to whistle at sailors.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:04 PM on November 18, 2018 [6 favorites]


It sounds like there's maybe more tolerance for this kind of non-standard appearance for those who've been in combat(?) Like it's something you earn the right to do, to some degree? Like you've entered the tradition of knights, with their individual crests, or, at the extreme, the fashions of the Landsknecht?
posted by clawsoon at 4:22 PM on November 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


I can't get past the baffling use of this unfamiliar word "ally"; is it actually related to the normal word "ally" in some way, or is it a novel homophone?
posted by crotchety old git at 6:43 PM on November 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


The word is a Commonwealth, maybe mostly but not exclusively British, military slang term, not used in the US.

I don't know the origin, and I'd never actually seen it in print before. (It's pronounced like "olly", at least as I've heard it spoken.) I've only heard it used pejoratively. E.g.: CQB gloves, dump pouches, tactical underwear, etc.

I think the closest equivalent term in broad usage in the US Army would be "high speed", but that's open to debate.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:07 PM on November 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


So Dan Carlin got me into (1900s) military history and I've read a ton about the savage, lunatic, insane, no-holds-barred take-no-prisoners fighting of Russia vs Germany in WW2. One thing that I've seen again and again in pictures of German officers is that they tilted their hat off to one side, they look like morons* but I've seen enough of it to know that it wasn't a mistake, it was capital S Style for those unbelievably rigid warriors. Here is a duckduckgo search on WW2 German officers -- check it out.
* German officers were a lot of things but morons isn't on that list.
posted by dancestoblue at 1:43 AM on November 19, 2018


I studied black military history, and fashion was important. Those uniforms meant something to black soldiers. If you were an officer -- imagine being born into enslavement and becoming a well-paid officer of the United States. It wasn't a minor thing to look the part. Even decades later, those uniforms mattered.

I've read a lot of the Army and Navy Journal, and it's always interesting to come across an article that mentions changes to uniforms. Everyone in the 1860s hated epaulettes (those gold-fringed shoulder pads). They hated them. There was much rejoicing when the uniform got rid of them (I think it was in the late 1860s).
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 1:58 AM on November 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


Thanks, languagehat!
ALLY Term for a battlefield fashionista – desirables include having a beard, using a different rifle, carrying vast amounts of ammunition, being dusty and having obscene amounts of tattoos and hair. Special forces are automatically Ally.
[N.b.: This does not actually belong under this heading; as ajay explains in the comments, it is not the word ally but an abbreviation for alumin(i)um, and rhymes with “valley.”]
posted by zamboni at 2:02 AM on November 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


For far more on the subject, and more of an insight into the british army, try ARRSEpedia - the Encyclopedia of the British Army Rumour Service. Specifically; Allyness, Ally, etc.
posted by Luddite at 3:46 AM on November 19, 2018


[And, who's going to mention William Gibson first? Clock's ticking]

More inside:
Link spotted via William Gibson's Twitter.)
The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.
posted by zamboni at 5:30 AM on November 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


At first I thought "ally" might be a reference to like British/Commonwealth soldiers copying their US counterparts, but being derived from "aluminium" makes sense as well. (A lot of "high speed" gear for "operators" is made of aluminium for weight-savings. Or at least it used to be before polymer technology got a lot better.)

I don't know if American servicefolks use "tacticool" the same way that it gets thrown around in civilian conversations, but it seems to me that "ally" and "tacticool" are probably fairly synonymous.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:55 AM on November 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


Guy in the front of De Magere Compagnie? Fucking Ally, mate.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:31 AM on November 19, 2018


I like how the guy to his immediate right seems to be saying, "Do you see how ally this fucking guy is?"
posted by tobascodagama at 8:49 AM on November 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


The Army has its uses / in times of civil crisis

Ello boys, seen any action?!

Gang of Four is the greatest, and it's startling how appropriate their entire discography (and that of Killing Joke) is in this foul year of our lord 2018.
posted by Existential Dread at 9:03 AM on November 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


Roll back your clock, my dudes: pinks and greens are coming back!
posted by wenestvedt at 11:36 AM on November 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


Far as I can tell none of the words we have in the American military for these individuals / this phenomenon are complimentary. Geardo captures the obsession with non-issue equipment, high-speed captures the Imitation Operator aesthetic, and tacticool captures the molle-festooned and morale patch-bedecked excessiveness of it all, but I can't think of anything positive. Maybe I just don't know anyone who has the requisite self-restraint to make something like this look cool. Maybe all the faux-operator stuff is so pervasive as to be unremarkable and, as such, without jargon.
posted by ProtagonistZero at 9:07 PM on November 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


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