On Rendering Military Courtesies (Saluting in the Valkyria Chronicles and How to Deal With It in Your Own Fiction)

Remember the last post where I overanalysed the treatment of reconnaissance in a chapter of the Valkyria Chronicles? To be honest, I think I have a weird attachment to that chapter and the associated combat mission in the game since they’re full of low-hanging fruits for discussion. When we left off the last time around to go on a tangent with the whole reconnaissance thing, there were three officers — Captain Varrot and her two platoon leaders, Welkin and Faldio — gathered in an orders group. Immediately afterwards, the game ended up sidestepping the need to discuss the Gallian Militia’s reconnaissance doctrine (or the lack thereof) by having Alicia — one of the three sergeants in Welkin’s platoon — simply barge in and interrupt the meeting. And that’s hilarious. I mean HILARIOUS.

But why? Well, first, the fact that she could make an unimpeded and unnanounced entrance at the orders group implies that there was no security at all in Varrot’s command post, not even a sentry posted outside the briefing room. So they’re lucky that it was just Alicia who barged in, not an enemy infiltrator with a grenade or something. This is one of those small things that could really annoy readers with military experience (or even readers who don’t have any military experience but have read enough stuff about daily life in real-world military forces), and the lesson here for fiction writers is please make sure that your fictional command posts have security. Except, of course, if the lack of security is the whole point of the thing and you want the characters inside the command post to suffer for it. You know the drill.

The other thing that stood out to me is that Alicia didn’t make any overt displays of military courtesy — no saluting, not even standing at attention and offering a formal greeting. Now, this is a slightly more complicated subject, so let’s break it down into several smaller issues.