what was the situation?
The law of the Officer's Club at Ft. Meyer, VA, being mowed by a mule drawn lawn mower. This photo dates from early in the 20th Century at which time Congress had technically made the sale of alcohol illegal on Army bases, but at which point the Army chose to define beer and wine as not being excluded.
This follows from this post here:
Lex Anteinternet: The Military and Alcohol. U.S. Army Beer 1943-1946: Patrons of a bar and grill in Washington D.C. in 1943. The man on the left is drinking a glass of beer, and it appears the woman is as well...
Let me explain.
In 1982 when I was stationed as a recruit at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, there came a time when us boots could go to the 1-2-3 Club, a sort of combination cheap fast food/beer/high school hangout, type club. It wasn't great, but if you had nowhere else to go, and we had nowhere else to go, it was okay*.
The 1-2-3 Club had 3.2% beer, which I guess actually no longer is brewed by anyone, save perhaps by Guinness, as draft Guinness is only 3%. Nobody brews it in the context of its earlier days, in which it was brewed in order to comply with certain laws. It's history goes back to 1933 as Prohibition was being repealed. Prohibition never completely dried up the supply of legal alcohol, contrary to what people imagine it did. Alcohol remained legal for "medicinal" purposes and extremely low alcohol beer, i.e., "Near Beer" was legal. In 1933, prior to Prohibition being officially repealed, the legal alcohol limit for beer was increased up to 3.2%.
Following the end of Prohibition, some states restricted beer sales based on the 3.2% amount, and Oklahoma was one of them. Generally, if you were below a certain age you could buy 3.2%. You couldn't buy beer with a higher alcohol content than that. This was, of course before "Light Beer", which generally has around 4% ABV. Coors, which is pretty light to start with, introduced Light Beer prior to World War Two, far earlier than many people might suppose, and relaunched it in 1978. Millers Lite actually came out in 1967, prior to the Coors relaunch, but as Gablingers Diet Beer, a market name doomed to failure. The recipe was later sold to Millers.
I never really did grasp why Coors would market light beer. Coors is pretty light to start with and there were already all those 3.2% beers around. Oh well, my view obviously isn't the clever marketing one, as light beers became a pretty big deal.
Anyhow, in 1982 you could buy 3.2% beer at the 1-2-3 Club on Ft. Sill, or 3.2% beer downtown in Lawton, Oklahoma. Obviously, Ft. Sill also had a NCO Club, or clubs, and an Officer's Club, or clubs.
Camp Guernsey had a NCO Club and an Officers Club as well. Camp Humphreys, Korea had them as well and I had a nice bulgogi there for lunch while there.
I guess this is somewhat of a thing of the past now, to my surprise. The Army has completely done away with Officers Clubs and now there are unitized clubs. Privates can go to the same club that officers can, although 1-2-3 Clubs remain. Without knowing for sure, I suspect that not only is the culture of such clubs now radically different, but probably a lot of more senior officers and NCOs rarely show up at the club. This is part of the current culture in which we do not wish to recognize any differences at all in the social status of anyone, but frankly, I think this likely a mistake, although one reflecting the current military culture. The current military is small compared to the giant Cold War Army that followed the giant World War Two Army, and its much more selective than its been at any prior point in history. There are certainly problems in the current U.S. military, to be sure, but one current feature of it is that the up and out and selective nature of it means that the guys were sort of fit the definition of a "working man" that were sung about by Tennessee Ernie Ford aren't really in the service anymore. That may have some negative aspects to it as well, but its a fact. Anyhow, given the current make up of the currently fairly small army, the traditional separation in all things between enlisted men and officers has been much reduced and the clubs are gone.
So what was the situation in 1916?
Starting in 1890, about the time that the temperance movement was really gaining cultural steam, the Army banned the sale of hard alcohol at military posts that were located in areas that had Prohibition. So, for example, if you were stationed in a county that was dry, the Army post was as well, sort of. The Army barred the sale only of hard alcohol, so beer and wine was still sold and you could still consume them at the post canteen.
In 1901, however, Congress entered the picture with the Canteen Act of 1901 which prohibited the sale of any intoxicating beverage including beer and wine. This was pretty clearly intended to make all alcoholic beverages a thing of the past on post, but in practice the Army simply chose to define "intoxicating" beverages to mean those having a pretty stout alcohol content. So, once again, no Kentucky bourbon on post, but beer was probably okay.
This continued to be the practice up until May 18, 1917, when the Selective Service Act stretched the military prohibition beyond the base to include a five mile alcohol exclusion zone and, moreover, it was made a crime to sell alcohol to a uniformed soldier anywhere. Congress, recalling the end run the Army did with the 1901 act, defined "intoxicating" to be anything containing 1.4% alcohol or more, a very low threshold.
To complete the story, when Prohibition ended the 1901 statute remained in effect and the Army, at this point, continued to enforce the 1.4% limit. Halfway through the Second World War, however, the Army changed this allowed 3.2%, the figure that had been created earlier when Prohibition was lifted. This standard remained in place until 1953 when a legal ruling determined that the entire Canteen Act of 1901 had been repealed by the 1951 amendments to the Universal Military Training and Selective Service Act.
So, going back to our query about 1916, in 1916 a soldier stationed almost anywhere in the U.S. was probably able to buy beer at the post canteen. Beyond the post fence, there would have undoubtedly been saloons catering to soldiers that sold everything. The scene of a night of leave in 1941 Honolulu depicted in From Here To Eternity in that regard was likely pretty accurate on occasion. And at that point, in some of the US, the "saloon trade" was unrestricted. Having said that, in some locations Prohibition had already come in.
Footnotes
*There were other places to go, to be sure. Ft. Sill had a swimming pool open to privates, but I never went there. The one time I had on base free time when we could have gone, I had a horrible case of progressing pneumonia and no interest in going to a pool.
I did once go to the library, as odd as that may seem, simply because I was sort of tired of the intellectual quality of my stay at Ft. Sill and because I hoped it to be quiet. It was quiet, and very nice. I looked like a fish out of water there, however, and I simultaneously froze and fell asleep there. The freezing due to my having acclimated to the 100F+ Oklahoma summers and the sleep due to simply being exhausted.
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