Army OKs Sikh Doc to Wear Beard, Turban

[AirbornePFC]

Originally Posted by Indecision

I don't know how I feel about this honestly. To the people remarking the promask and the turban. He meant that the mask won't seal against his beard. Making it entirely worthless.

As for uniform standards, a lot of army stuff generates from trying to look better than the unit next to them. IE, one guy starches his BDUs. His CO sees him and thinks "well, that looks fine, make the whole company do it." Then another CO sees the other company looking squared away and they look bad by comparison, so they start starching their uniforms, and so on and so forth, and it grows. A lot of stuff comes around like this.

Back in WWII a lot of paratroopers had rowdy beards and stuff like that. Now we are all clean shaven. And speaking of which. Army regs say we can have a mustache that conforms to certain standards. You would be forced to shave as an infantryman in my unit, even though it's within regs. You have to have a haircut every week, even though you could not touch your hair for a month and be within army regs. It gets old.

I agree a lot of this stuff comes down to unit SOP. Around here if you've got a tab (ranger) no one says squat about hair length etc. My assigned unit has gotten more that it's fair share of crap for having a relaxed uniform code, but when I'm playing cadet it's all by the book. There are all kinds of double standards in the army. I've met guys in units that require all their gear be identical (this is tactically retarded) and others where it's all about personal preference.

Personally if I'm laying on an ER bed with life threatening wounds I doubt I'll care what the doc has on his head or chin. My personal view is in the field who freakin cares as long as he gets the job done. Anyone who has spent more than a few days in the field training knows that shaving tends to fall low on the priority list. In public or garrison where the "image" of the army is more of an issue I thing he at least needs an ACU turban, like the yamikas (sp?) I've seen.