re: History buffs: What is your favorite style of US military uniform?

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For me it’s the 1989 Invasion of Panama uniforms with the bush hats:

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We called them cabbage patch covers. My unit didn't use them during OJC but some units did. Looking back on the era BDUs tended to look sloppy as hell, at least in the Army we knew how to roll a sleeve up properly (looking at you crayon eaters).

For modern US uniforms it is hard to beat the 1st Cav horse detachment.

Germany WWII unis are goat.

Those chocolate chip Desert Storm uniforms were pretty tight

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Those chocolate chip Desert Storm uniforms were pretty tight

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The DBDUs looked pretty good but were terrible at their intended job. They could have saved a lot of money and just given us solid light khaki uniforms that would have been cooler and better fit for purpose in most of the environment. The thing I hated most about them is when you were in the sun you could touch the dark patches and they were 30 degrees warmer than the light areas. They were a morale boost because everyone in the military likes fresh shiny kit that is supposed to be better. When we moved from M1s to PASGT (aka Kevlars) it was like Christmas for the troops.

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surely you arent implying that the army had sharper looking rolled sleeves than the Marines

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Nothing else matters when the cuff is inside out.

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surely you arent implying that the army had sharper looking rolled sleeves than the Marines

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I’m from the old black-boot BDU wearing Army. I remember the joke back then was the Marines rolled their sleeves up all ate-up looking because they couldn’t figure out how the Army did it.


As for me, I was normally wearing tanker’s Nomex which didn’t lend itself to being rolled up in the normal Army fashion.




As for my favorite, this is it. 80s -90s tanker’s Nomex.

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I’m from the old black-boot BDU wearing Army.

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I'll say this about the sleeve rolling thing re: Army vs USMC. Obviously, much like everything about the uniforms we are discussing, if you care it'll look pretty damned good. If you don't care and/or are a shitbag, then no matter what regulations you may be following - it'll look like shite.

Gunny rolls in the USMC can get bad, but if you take pride in the uniform you're putting on - usually it'll look pretty damned crisp no matter what.

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Gunny rolls in the USMC can get bad, but if you take pride in the uniform you're putting on - usually it'll look pretty damned crisp no matter what.

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I saw the same thing when I was in the Army. The key was keep your shite tight and squared away.

One thing I don’t like about whatever they call the current Army uniform that replaced the BDU is you can’t iron the damned things. Back in my day, unless you were in the field, which for me meant wearing Nomex anyway, you had your BDUs ironed and starched to the point they’d just about stand on their own.

Same for boots. Now they have these suede boots you can’t even polish. Unless I was in the field, my tanker boots were shined. We took pride in our uniform and its appearance. It was a different time.