Do sailors (Navy) ever fight, or are they just an image?

[Anonymous]

Soldiers, Marines (more soldier than sailor) and pilots fight and serve their country. Sailors just clean their boats and gallivant.

Most sailors have never, or will never go into a body of water either.

[RebelinSteel]

Sailors are pretty much constantly at sea, there are various deployments. North Atlantic, Mediterranean, North Africa, Black Sea, Middle East including, Red Sea, Indian Ocean anti pirate patrols, Indo Asia Pacific (carrier strike group as required), Caribbean mainly anti drug patrols but also assistance during hurricane season, South Atlantic and Antarctic.

As we have Royal Marines there is less reliance on Naval Infantry, however there were operational in Afghanistan.
In the First World War there were Naval Infantry brigades, also naval artillery ashore, ditto Second World War.

In modern times do you really want to risk a marine engineer who can work on nuclear reactors or Gas turbine engines.

Then there is fire on a ship, not a great thing to go through.

The impact of a missile on a modern warship can readily sink her, if a ship or fleet gets attacked, there will be a large number of deaths.

Those deaths are what you are taking the piss out of, good skills not.