Military traditions are customs, symbols, ceremonies and practices through which an armed force, service or unit preserves selected parts of its past. They include distinctive uniforms, insignia, drill, military music, commemorations and unit histories. Military culture is broader term than military tradition. It includes the shared values, beliefs, norms, symbols, language, and behaviors that define a military organisation's identity and its members' goals. Traditions are one way through which culture is expressed and transmitted. Concept and transmission
Military culture is communicated through both formal instruction and everyday social practices. Traditions, deployment, rituals, vocabulary, and shared values shape interactions among personnel and transform civilians into military members.
Military tradition is not immutable. Militaries may abandon practices incompatible with professional ethics. The U.S. Army classifies rituals like "blood wings" as hazing. The United States Army prohibits hazing in any form, with the policy applying to Active, Guard and Reserve soldiers, as well as Army civilians and contractors.
Military music
Armies once used drums, fifes, trumpets, and bugles for audible signalling across battlefields and camps, covering tactical orders (advance, halt, assault, cease fire) and daily routine calls. This order-by-instrument practice is termed celeustic music.
Telegraphy ended most battlefield uses of bugle calls, but they remain in military routines and ceremonies. In the United States Army, Reveille and Retreat mark the beginning and end of the duty day and accompany flag ceremonies.
Military music has served signalling, morale, ceremony and unit identity, with modern primary use as ceremonial. Commemoration
Some military practices evolve into public commemorative rituals. The Last Post began as a daily bugle call. It is now sounded at military funerals and remembrance services.
Insignia and dress
Military insignia encode history and battle honors, starting from identification tools into symbols of identity.
Battle honours
Battle honours are granted to publicly acknowledge military units for their active engagement in combat against organized and armed conflicts. By attaching the names of earlier operations to a continuing unit, battle honours carved selected parts of its operational history as collective memory or identity.
Customs and courtesies
The hand salute is a common courtesy used to express respect for rank, authority, flags, etc. Its origin is uncertain. In many armed forces, the gesture acknowledges the rank or office rather than the individual.
Mess
A military mess is a designated dining area for military personnels. The origins of formal military dining are uncertain. U.S. Army literature traces the dining-in to Viking victory feasts held to celebrate battles and feats of heroism. Another explanation form the United States Navy describes it as passing in medieval monasteries and early Christian universities before being adopted by military organizations. The better-documented history begins in the British Army. During the eighteenth century, formal dining became essential to the regimental mess system, where rules and customs of communal meals became increasingly enforced. British mess influenced its Commonwealth of Nations military traditions. The Canadian Armed Forces, for example, describe their mess following the British model.
Formal toasts are a feature of military dining. In the United States Army dining-in, their subjects and sequence are planned in advance according to protocol, unit traditions and the commander's preferences.
Military tattoos
A military tattoo was used for an evening signal. The term later came to mean ceremonial displays performed by military musicians.
In Europe European armed forces maintain traditions through regiments, connecting current members to past formations via names, insignia, ceremonies, battle honours, and uniforms.
Chivalry developed as an important ethical, social and martial ideal among the medieval European nobility and warrior elite, though it varied across time and place.
Within Europe a wide variety of separate military traditions developed until at least World War I. WWI and its social/political troubles disrupted many pre-war military traditions. Armies replaced colorful coats with khaki uniforms and became more mechanized. Post-WWI imperial collapses shifted power from the aristocracy to the working class.
In the United Kingdom In Britain, military traditions developed primarily along regimental lines, taking the form of long-established regimental customs, insignia, badges and distinctive features of uniform. Since the late 1960s, a series of regimental mergers and disbandments have diluted British military tradition, although it still remains strong in the Guards Division.
The Ceremony of the Keys has taken place every night, locking of the Tower of London. Performed for 700 years, with the Chief Yeoman Warder and an escort from the Tower's military garrison.
Trooping the Colour is a British ceremonial tradition in which a battalion's Colour is carried through the ranks. Trooping the Colour was carried or trooped along the ranks.
Royal Navy sailors traditionally received a daily rum ration, known as the “tot”. The practice ended on 31 July 1970. Royal Navy submariners traditionally earn their dolphins after learning the location and function of a submarine’s systems and completing their qualification. Royal Navy submarines may fly the Jolly Roger when returning from a successful combat mission.
Some British military personnel may keep up a animal mascots. Royal Fusiliers replaced their endangered blackbuck with an otterhound.
The Brigade of Gurkhas continues the recruitment of Nepalese soldiers begun by the East India Company in 1816. Four Gurkha regiments entered the British Army following the Partition of India in 1947.
The Light Dragoons continue former horse-cavalry reconnaissance. They now use Jackal 2 vehicles.
In Germany For the Bundeswehr, tradition is a selective, value-based engagement, prioritising post-1955 history and only constitutionally compatible elements. The Bundeswehr ideal of the citizen in uniform comparable to Peelian principles, keeps soldiers' constitutional rights while imposing a special duty to defend the civic liberal democratic order. It forms the guiding principle of Innere Führung. The military resistance of 20 July 1944 is a central Bundeswehr tradition. In Prussia and later the German Empire, traditions were tied to local states. Even after German unification, like Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and Württemberg retained elements of their separate military identities.
Frederick William I of Prussia's Potsdam Giants were famous for recruiting exceptionally tall soldiers.
The modern Bundeswehr explicitly draws on the military traditions of the Prussian Reform Movement of Gerhard von Scharnhorst, August Neidhardt von Gneisenau and other reformers after Prussia's defeat in the 1806 campaign against Napoleon. Its founding date, 12 November 1955, was chosen as the bicentenary of Scharnhorst's birth. Scharnhorst's reforms linked military renewal with education, professionalism, and meritocracy. The Prussian officer corps played Kriegsspiel to practise command with maps. By 1918, playing it formed part of every Imperial German officer’s education. From the 1870s, free Kriegsspiel reduced rigid tables and allowed experienced players to judge results. Opposing received only position-specific information. Moltke the Elder combined war games and staff rides to prepare commanders for independent coordination during operations. The German officer corps developed the staff ride (German: Stabsreise). Officers studied tactical and operational problems on actual terrain. Like Kriegsspiel, it trained Auftragstaktik, staff work and command. The Reichswehr continued staff rides and wargaming during the interwar period, adapting them to the limits of the Treaty of Versailles. Interwar German exercises developed into large two-sided manoeuvre games. In the 1936 Hesse manoeuvres, nearly 50,000 soldiers from five divisions operated against one another; the 1937 Mecklenburg manoeuvres were about 160,000 personnel, 830 tanks and aircraft. The Bundeswehr continues the wargaming tradition.
The Portepee-Fähnrich was an examination to the Prussian officer corps that required candidates to prove a general education before war school. The transition to Fähnrich followed circular academic examinations. Following the thirteenth grade, at age nineteen, cadets would again be examined and, upon passing, gain a degree equivalent to the Abitur. In the late nineteenth-century Prussian Army, even upon graduation from the Kadettenschulen, cadets were not commissioned as officers but were promoted to Fähnrich (ensign), ranking just above sergeants. The German rank of Fähnrich originated with the medieval standard-bearer. Among the Landsknechts, the Fähnrich carried the banner, and was appointed by the Oberst. The title entered German armies for officer training. Once approved, Fähnrich officers received two years of specialist training. In the Reichswehr, officer training followed a stages, Kriegsschule instruction, examinations, field exercises and final qualification. Junior officer qualification took four years. The three-year War Academy course became compulsory for all officers. Wehrmacht Fahnenjunker trained at Kriegsschule and Truppenschule in Army Training Centres. WWII shortened courses, making front service both training and selection.
German Jäger originated from 17th-century foresters for skirmishing and reconnaissance. Jäger and reconnaissance continue the Horrido—Joho! call, as their response and battle cry.
German armour forces wear rose pink as their Waffenfarbe branch colour.
In France The French created the concept of Esprit de corps, or the concept of pride in one's unit, within most elite or uniquely French units. North African units like the Zouaves, the tirailleurs, the French Foreign Legion, or even the Mamluks which served in Napoleon Bonaparte's Imperial Guard developed distinctive styles of dress. Many of these distinctive styles were later adopted by the French Metropolitan Army during the nineteenth century.
Zouaves emerged in Algeria during the 1830 French conquest, initially with local mercenaries. Their name and distinctive dress later symbolized French colonial troops. The 1st Foreign Regiment is the oldest regiment of the French Foreign Legion. Founded in 1841, it maintains the Legion's ceremonial and historical roles, as well as its heritage and band.
The Battle of Camerone became the central tradition of the French Foreign Legion in 1931. Every Legion unit commemorates it on 30 April by reciting the battle narrative. At Aubagne, Captain Jean Danjou’s wooden hand is carried publicly.
The képi blanc is earned by completing the 70-kilometer Marche Képi Blanc . The Legion’s pioneers keep up practice of digging trenches saps. Wearing traditional gear and looks, pioneers lead Legion formations to symbolically "open the way," honoring their historical role clearing obstacles. The Chasseurs Alpins keep the specialised tradition of mountainous and winter warfare. Training combines climbing, skiing, snowshoes. The "tarte" beret shades, cushions, or warms. The Troupes de marine remembers the French Thin defence in Battle of Bazeilles during the Franco-Prussian War annually on 31 August and 1 September. The tradition recalls house-to-house and close-quarter fighting in an early instance of modern urban warfare.