Y’all act like there’s an infallible order out there where every proper action is written down and every deviation from it is evil. Truth is the president could direct the military to salute squirrels with their left hands tomorrow and so long as it’s not illegal and the troops don’t rebel, it’s gonna happen, and the next time they revise the D&C code (and there are officers all the time doing nothing but looking at revising various regs), it might get updated to include it
The famed Green Berets were out of uniform when they performed some demonstrations for JFK in the early 1960s. They just thought the hat looked cool. JFK didn’t ask why they were out of uniform so they got to keep it and the regs got updated to allow it. Stuff like this is how personal preferences, superstitions, bad logic, and traditions get encoded into regs.
My #24 was merely explaining to FReeper Mick RR’s stated reason for saluting.
For me, saluting in mufty just never sits right....but that’s just me, I’m old school.