Why are British royal guard’s required to maintain a poker face 100% of the time?
In: 4918
It:’s not just the British Royal Guard. Pretty much
any military force around the world is required to pokerface when on parade, or when they’re guarding some important figure. Hell, I had to pokerface in my
JROTC unit in high school.
Because showing emotions may be considered as weakness, which is not really preferable around the royal guard who, you know, guard the royals
I feel like it’s just the more intense version of why you can’t distract life guards. Can’t do the guarding thing if you are distracted.
I was part of the USMC honor guard for a couple years (Obamas inauguration/funerals at Arlingtom/whatever other shots we had at ceremonies around DC) and that’s the first thing they drill into your head is how important bearing (and uniform prep) is.
There’s a lot of routine that goes in to being a soldier of the royal guard. There’s even something called “falling to attention” where if you feel like you’re going to pass out due to heat or whatever, it must be performed in a certain way.
Because they are supposed to be focusing on their job, not on the shenanigans of the tourists. Their roll in guarding the royalty might seem ceremonial, but they are the first line of many in that pursuit, and they need to take it seriously.
Not british, but when I was trained in the danish army. Our sergents told us to “see” “dead children and burning churches” in order for us to have a stone face
Im speaking of the tombs of the unknown soldiers.
The Americans, French, and Russians have a ceremonial “tomb of the unknown soldier” that’s typically a memorial with a burning light. The Russians dedicate theirs to a WW2 idea that lots of unknown Russian teenage conscripts have up their lives to defend Moscow. The French date theirs back to their revolution and the Americans… I don’t actually know. But it’s the idea that throughout these nation’s histories lots of privates, peasants, conscripts and just generally unknown people gave up their lives to fight for their homes.
But what happens now is there’s an actual soldier stationed at the memorial. This individual is typically a war veteran. Someone that lost friends in Afghanistan, Mali, Chechnya or some other far off location their governments had no reason being in. It makes it so if you’re stationed there it’s a very sobering feeling. These people have lots on their minds. This in addition to the fact they’ll be yelled at if they get caught taking selfies with tourist.
They tried having them wear those glasses with the fake nose and mustache back in 83, but they had a 20,000% increase in terrorism and tomfoolery so they changed it back.
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