Military personell as well as border guards, customs and police have the fake ties for their own protection. If you have a real tie you could be strangled either if some madman decide to pull it really hard or if the tie gets stuck somewhere.
I assume that higher rank personell, generals and marshals, ambassadeurs, ministers etc did not wear the simple, sometimes rather silly knot fake ties but real ones - but that is just my own assumption.
08-04-2008, 05:04 PM (This post was last modified: 08-05-2008, 01:51 AM by Synthesis.)
Thank you both very much!
You know, thinking about it, a snap-on IS safer to wear than a conventional tie. Still, it's not as though ties were part of field or combat uniforms, right? I could understand police wearing snap ones, since they'd regularly be confronted by potentially dangerous circumstances.
On the other hand, you'd think a Warrant Officer in the Army or Air Force would have comparatively few dangerous circumstances that he'd/she'd run into while wearing their dress or service uniform. Especially considering Soviet Uniforms included the Sam Browne belt (i.e. the suicide belt, since you could strangle someone wearing one with part of the belt near their neck), that were dropped from American and other nation's uniforms.
Ambassadors are know to wear civilian ties with their uniforms.
I agree with Marc. Safety is not the issue with ties. In field/combat, when someone is in close quarter combat with you, what do you think they will choke you with, the thick leather strap of the sam browne or the flimsy cloth tie?
In situations without a sam browne posing as a safety risk, a regular tie would probably also not be hazardous due to the fact that it is safely tucked in tunic. Then again in shirtsleeve order it may be not such a good idea...
It is mainly to make sure troops look good when wearing a tie. When most of your enlisted men in you army are drafted from the four corners of the USSR, not everyone knows how to tie tie.
AFAIK, many soldiers in the US Armed forces wear a velcro or clip on tie (lazy punks...), but the four in hand is still authorized for wear for those whose tie tying techniques pass uniform inspection...
