Title: Poker Hands

Informant info: Michael Rodriguez. Informant attends Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH as a United States Army Veteran. Informant enlisted in the Army in 2003 and was a member of the 1st Battalion 8th Marines Bravo Company, which is an infantry military unit. He was stationed out of camp Lejeune North Carolina. Informant served in Iraq from June 2004 to December 2004. He was awarded a Purple Heart. He was from a military family, as well. Informant is 31 years old.

Type of lore: Customary Lore, Tradition

Language: English

Country of Origin: USA

Social / Cultural Context: The informant was asked if there were any traditions or ceremonies related to the military.There is a tradition that the battalions used to do together before they were deployed. This one was specific to his platoon and these traditions are dying down because they want to make everyone more identical. Each of them were given a specific poker hand before they were deployed to Iraq. They would then wear these cards in their helmet while in Iraq. These were mean to unify the platoon as a group.

Associated file: Poker Hands

Transcript: “Uh, we all got… we were all given poker hands. Like, a poker hand you know like when you play poker, there’s different hands for the different types. So, we were all given one and we were all wearing one in our helmet and we got in a lot of trouble… because that’s a very Vietnam era thing and there always like they don’t really want you to be an individual. So, here we are our platoon being like individuals and putting this … ‘well if you have it on your helmet then why doesn’t everyone else do it’.”

Informant’s comments: He told the collector that they got into a lot of trouble for this specific tradition.

Collector’s Comments: Thought that it was interesting how this ritual tied to the Vietnam war. Collector did not understand the reason for getting in trouble at first.

Tags and Keywords: Customary Lore, Poker Hands, Tradition