The Code of Conduct for the United States Armed Forces is a six-article set of principles, issued by President Dwight D. Eisenhower through Executive Order 10631 on August 17, 1955, that tells every U.S. service member how to act in combat and, above all, in captivity. It is written in the first person so each article reads as a personal pledge, and it has been amended twice in substance since then, once by President Carter in 1977 and once by President Reagan in 1988.
Why the Code Exists
During the Korean War, Chinese and North Korean captors used isolation, starvation, and psychological pressure to push American prisoners into signing propaganda statements and false confessions. Existing military regulations covered battlefield conduct but said almost nothing about the gray areas of captivity, where a prisoner might trade a small concession for food or sleep without realizing what they had given away. A Department of Defense advisory committee studied that experience after the war and recommended a short code every service member could memorize. Eisenhower’s executive order was the result.
The Six Articles
Article I: Purpose of Service
The first article is a statement of identity. A service member serves in the forces that guard the country and its way of life, and accepts that defense may cost their life. It is not a combat instruction. It is meant to anchor every decision that follows in the other five articles.
Article II: No Voluntary Surrender
A service member may never surrender voluntarily while able to resist. For those in command, the standard is stricter: a leader may never surrender the members of their command while those members can still fight. Reagan’s 1988 amendment (Executive Order 12633) replaced “my men” with “the members of my command,” recognizing that women serve in roles where capture is a real possibility.
Article III: Resist and Escape
If captured, a service member must keep resisting by every available means and make every effort to escape, and help fellow prisoners escape when possible. The article also forbids accepting parole or special favors from captors. Even a small privilege creates leverage the captor can use, and taking one signals to other prisoners that cooperating is acceptable.
Article IV: Keep Faith With Fellow Prisoners
Prisoners must keep faith with one another and take no action that harms fellow captives. The most senior person in the camp takes command regardless of service branch, and everyone else follows their lawful orders. Without that chain of command, captors can isolate and work on prisoners one at a time.
Article V: Say Only What’s Required
When questioned, a prisoner is bound to give four things and only four things: name, rank, service number, and date of birth. Beyond that, the service member must evade further questioning to the best of their ability and refuse to make any written or oral statement disloyal to the United States and its allies or harmful to their cause. Carter’s 1977 amendment through Executive Order 12017 added the duty to evade and the ban on disloyal statements; the original 1955 text stopped at the four identifiers.
Article VI: Accountable on Return
Capture does not erase a service member’s responsibilities. They remain accountable for their conduct in captivity and will answer for it when they return. Reagan’s 1988 amendment replaced “I am an American fighting man” with “I am an American, fighting for freedom,” making the language gender-neutral and shifting the emphasis from identity to mission.
Who the Code Applies To
The Code covers every person serving in the U.S. military: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Space Force, and Coast Guard. It reaches active-duty members, reservists during qualifying duty periods, and National Guard personnel serving in a federal capacity. Rank does not matter. A newly enlisted private and a four-star general carry the same obligations.
Department of Defense Directive 1300.7 requires training on the Code to begin when a person enters the military and continue through their career. Training runs in three tiers. Level A is baseline awareness for all service members. Level B is intermediate, for personnel with a moderate risk of capture. Level C is the most intensive tier, corresponding to SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) school, typically required for aircrew, special operations forces, and others whose missions carry a high risk of isolation or capture behind enemy lines.
How the Code Lines Up With the Geneva Conventions
Article V mirrors Article 17 of the Third Geneva Convention, which governs the treatment of prisoners of war. Under that treaty, every prisoner “is bound to give only his surname, first names and rank, date of birth, and army, regimental, personal or serial number.” The Code’s four required disclosures match those categories.
The Geneva Convention also prohibits captors from using physical or mental torture to extract information and bars them from threatening, insulting, or disadvantaging prisoners who refuse to answer. A service member who knows those protections exist is better equipped to resist, because international law backs their silence. Carter’s addition of the duty to evade further questioning reinforced that alignment by giving service members explicit permission to keep resisting rather than leaving them to guess how far they could go.
How Violations Are Punished
The Code itself is not a criminal statute. It is an executive order that sets ethical expectations. Legal consequences come from the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which does apply to all service members and contains charges that track the Code’s duties.
A service member who disregards a lawful order tied to the Code’s requirements can be prosecuted under UCMJ Article 92 for failure to obey an order or regulation, which authorizes punishment “as a court-martial may direct.” That gives military courts wide sentencing discretion, from forfeiture of pay through confinement and a dishonorable discharge.
Captivity misconduct has its own provision. UCMJ Article 98 addresses misconduct as a prisoner, covering collaboration with the enemy, mistreatment of fellow prisoners, and other violations of the duties the Code lays out. Article 92 is the general charge for disobeying orders; Article 98 targets the specific pressures of captivity.
Prosecution is not automatic. Military authorities weigh the circumstances, including the level of coercion the service member faced. A prisoner who made a propaganda statement after weeks of torture is evaluated very differently from one who cooperated voluntarily for better rations.
Pay and Family Protections During Captivity
Federal law keeps a captured service member’s pay running. Under 37 U.S.C. ยง 552, a member in “missing status” continues to receive or have credited the same pay and allowances they were entitled to when that status began, plus any increases they would have earned, including promotions. A promotion that takes effect while a service member is missing is fully effective for all purposes.
The statute defines “missing status” broadly. It covers anyone missing, missing in action, captured, besieged by a hostile force, interned in a foreign country, or detained against their will. An enlistment term expiring during that period does not cut off pay. Entitlement ends only when the relevant military secretary receives evidence that the member has died or when death is officially determined under federal law.
Allotments in place before the service member entered missing status can keep flowing to dependents. The Secretary of the relevant branch can also start, change, or stop allotments as circumstances require, to protect the missing member, their family, or the government. Some or all of the captured member’s pay can be directed into an interest-bearing savings fund maintained by the Secretary of the Treasury, with procedures for withdrawal once the member returns. Families are not left destitute while a service member is held, and returning prisoners have accumulated pay waiting.