Quote Originally Posted by Major Robert Dump View Post
With the obvious exception being protective equipment and sensitive items like weapons and NVGs, any Platoon Leader or C/O worth his salt will let his troops in theater modify their uniform as they see for comfort and mobility. Regardless, there are still jerk officers in theater who expect boots to be bloused a certain way and molley vests to be organized a certain way, and it hurts morale. It's not all bad, though, because those same jerk officers inadvertantly push good enlisted to commission so I have peers that arent mostly 24 year old ROTC kids.
Oh dear. I don't think we would have got on, should you have been in my regiment. In my opinion, the British soldier can face any enemy, of any size and brutishness, with nary a twitch of his lip as long as his buttons are polished and fastened, and his boots sparkle.

Of course (to paraphrase an old chum) this was back in the old days when the prerequisite of a British campaign was that the enemy should under no circumstances carry guns -- even spears made us think twice. The kind of people we liked to fight were two feet tall and armed with dry grass. One's military experience comprised the perfecting the art of ordering a pink gin and saying "Do you do it doggy-doggy?" in Gaelic, when suddenly forty million heavily armed Russians hoved into view.

I have the highest regard for the United States military, but you do take this democracy thing far too seriously. Promoting the common soldiery to the officer corps? How will they know how to dress for dinner?