Back when I was on AD, we rolled sleeves in the summer months, no matter what uniform was worn. There were a few years where the choice of MARPAT-style was left to the local commander, so you could wear either desert or woodland MARPATs in the summer.
I am of the belief that it's my fault that the entire MC now wears desert MARPAT in the summer and woodland in the winter. It was May 2007...
I was with 2D ANGLICO, stationed at CLNC. The commander there had delegated down to the individual unit commanders what type of MARPAT would be worn. My CO's stance was that our desert uniforms got enough wear in Iraq, and we would wear woodlands at home. In May 2007, bunch of us came to Quantico for an ANGLICO conference. We wore woodlands and didn't think twice about it until we got to Quantico and discovered that the base CG had set a summer/desert and winter/woodland policy, so we were the only Marines on Quantico in woodlands. And of course none of us had brought desert MARPATs...
I very quickly (the first day) developed my line; people would come up to me at the PX and start in with "Excuse me MSgt, aren't you in the wrong uniform?" "No sir. I'm stationed at CL, yadda yadda yadda..."
The last day we were here, the conference finished a little early, so I ran over to the Marine Corps Systems Command building to talk to a friend about some new gear being fielded. While I was walking down the hallway, I ran into the MCSC CG and SgtMaj. The CG kept walking, but the SgtMaj stopped to talk. It went something like this...
Him: "MSgt, why are you in woodlands?"
Me: "Yadda Camp Lejeune yadda etc"
Him: A whole long 3-4 minutes of "does that make sense" "even wear" "etc"
Me: "I really don't have time to worry about things like that. I just wear what my CO tells me to wear."
Him: (starting to get offended) "Well, doesn't it make sense to you that we wear our uniforms evenly?"
Me: (dead pan) "My desert MARPATs get plenty of wear when I deploy to Iraq."
He stink-eyed me, stomped off with out saying another word, and ~ a month later a MARADMIN came out dictating desert/summer and winter/woodland MC wide. I ahve no doubt that the MCSC SgtMaj called a few friends and got some wheels turning; the conversation and MARADMIN happened too close together to be coincidence.
My company SgtMaj (who I had called immediately after the above conversation under the "bad news doesn't improve with age" philosophy) later thanked me (sarcasticly) for my work...
