Flawed Design said:
Anytime I've went to clothing to get a new uniform because mine is faded and mismatched I get laughed at.
"Well just find a faded top to go with your bottoms,or wash the top more HA HA HA HA"
Soldiers are faced with either willfully destroying CF property (ie slash the combats) which of course none of us do, OR, playing the not from your platoon 2IC game.
"Please give so and so a new pair of pants because he looks like shit" which is followed by the clothing higher ups barking at the poor cpl following orders.
The two colour combat problem is because of different kinds of materials being used for the tops and bottoms or different 'years' of uniform manufacture. If you have set of pants made a while ago and a newer shit, the materal from the former fads much faster.
Too true, different lots and batch numbers fade at different rates - even the recently manufactured stuff. Brand new pants and shirts issued on the very same day may match (or mostly, even they are different in colour shading!! That happens when there's a couple sub-contractors making pants and a couple of other sub-contractors making the shirts) when you leave clothing with them, but 10 washes later and they don't match anymore.
There is a message on "fading" which direct that cadpat can only be exchanged (for fading) once they've reached a 50% 'fade rate'. When this message came out, I found some of my staff would exchange and others would not - the "50%" call being an ambigious number. I hung a faded set of cadpat on a clothes hanger up front and right behind the front counter wth a sign that reads: "When your cadpat gets this faded, we can exchang it for you." There's also a copy of the message posted beside it if any of the customers should have any issues with that. That set of cadpat hangs there to this day. If any of the staff wonder if a customers cadpat has reached the allowable level of 'fade' they simply hold the customers uniform up next to the set hanging there. So, at least we have a 'standard' to enforce when otherwise it would be purely a judgment call based on "50%" - with each tech working the counter making a personal decision that essentially relates into "no standard".
We once had an outgoing CO of a Unit send a whole platoon down to clothing who had given them a directive that "they each exchange a set of cadpat and obtain a brand new set for the CoC parade". The troops called me out to the front counter --- I spoke with the Pl Comd and refused (politely) to do the exchanges as the uniforms they reported with were perfectly fine and nowhere near to an 80% level of fade let alone the "minimum 50%" level that our directives lay out for us. The complaints happened. The Comd put his foot down and pointed out that cadpat were considered and brought into service as the Army's "field uniform" and not it's parade uniform - that was DEU if the CO wanted everyone "looking perfect and brand new". No exchanges occured.
As an aside: Most troops, in my experience, coming in for cadpat issues/exchanges actually ask for "used stuff" instead of new stuff ... as none of them want to be the guy who seems to be "the newbie with no TI in the field".
Another aside: "Fade" and "Wear" are two totally diffrent things. If your thighs, ass, whatever is suffereing "wear" (thus I can tell what colour underwear you have on etc), but the colouring is still 99% there ... they are exchangeable.
