Cliches: How many Sergeants ever chomped on a cigar whilst in battle?

[Donnadogsoth]

I've see this image in art enough times to make me wonder if it has any basis in reality or is it just a fantasy that looks cool. How many cigar-chompin' hardasses are there in any given war?

[Florian]

Good question. I used to know a Nam vet who used that to put up a show to calm the common privates. Guy was pretty crazy, tho, smuggled a light machine gun out, was pretty addicted to Cokain and celebrated new year eve with a Cohiba and firing tracer rounds up into the night....

[Rogar Demonblud]

Cigars? Not so many. But cigarettes used to be issued with every C or K ration (so three meals a day). So the answer is probably 'more than we're comfortable with, after a lifetime of Surgeon General's Warnings'.

[Vinyadan]

Nicotine calms you. So it's not that someone is so calm that he lights a cig, it's the opposite -- in the moments of tension, you feel like lighting one. Of course, it's an odd priority. But civilians in Teheran did smoke cigarettes while being bombed.

[AMFV]

I imagine that the cigar chomping sergeant probably has a real world analog. Just the same way that pipes were popularized in reference to certain generals and admirals. I will say though, that in the military tobacco use of all kinds far exceeds that which you'd see elsewhere.

[Frozen_Feet]

Cigars are rare because they're expensive, but smoking is ubiquitoud in all risky fields of work, including construction, forestry and what not in addition to the military. If there hadn't been purposefull attempts to ban smoking at work, you'd see a cigarette stuck in everyone's mouth save for the rare few people who are chemically impervious to gaining any joy out of it.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Actually thinking about it for a bit, cigars got to be popular in the Marines with all the grunts who did hitches in Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican, Nicaragua, etc between the wars. Most of those men became the 'old hands' and platoon sergeants of a later war.

[Scarlet Knight]

I remember the photos of General US Grant always with a cigar. But since the Civil War was the first war with photos , it's hard to be certain if earlier wars had cigar chomping sergeants.

I know Washington smoked a pipe and I believe that was the most common way to smoke during the Revolution but I don't know for sure if cigars were popular or not. I just don't remember ever seeing art work depicting cigars among American troops that early although there was smoking in the New World when Columbus arrived. Were Native American pipes proof that they were the most popular method to smoke, or just the method that survived over the centuries?

[Starwulf]

I've see this image in art enough times to make me wonder if it has any basis in reality or is it just a fantasy that looks cool. How many cigar-chompin' hardasses are there in any given war?

I know my Dad was one of those back in Vietnam ^^. I even have photographic proof, lol.

[sktarq]

The US Military was in and out of various Caribbean Islands and Central America ever since the Panama Canal kicked off. So there was a long period of time where cigar smoking as normal way of smoking (and usually of higher quality stuff than those in the rations or most chewing tobacco) would have been easily available. And the military guys were high status in those parts with the dollar's buying power and cigars were the way such people smoked in that part of the world back then. So there is a good entry point.

Also since nicotine is both a stimulant and a depressant (in different parts of your brain) it helps with both paying attention during boring times (like watch, or long patrols) and stressful ones (like long patrols). So having tobacco makes sense in general.

So it probably happened more than a few times on its own. And once it did enter into the lexicon of national images that tempted more than a few more people to try out the iconography as part of their self identity...some of whom found they liked it and incorporated it. So it reinforced itself repeatedly...until health rules kicked in.