Correction: MultiCam Camo, not UCP-D

In my revisiting the Ghosts of Army Camouflage Patterns Past earlier this week, I was apparently the partial victim of my own wishful thinking. While the Army is officially going to start issuing a new camouflage-pattern Army Combat Uniform (ACU) to soldiers deploying to Afghanistan, starting later in 2010, it's not going to be the four-color Universal Camouflage Pattern-Delta (UCP-D). Instead, it's going to be a less-"digital"-looking pattern called "MultiCam."

The "UCP-Delta" pattern option was a four-color version of the now-standard three-color Army camo pattern. I'd apparently been blinded by the idea that Uncle Sam was finally getting around to making me and my buddies look like were all part of the same organization. With so many different camo patterns floating around the past couple of years, we'd been looking like equal parts Mad Max and Garanimals on Crack. Nobody looked the same in the mix-and-match Army. We looked like "The Rat Patrol."

Old Sherpa had even gone so far as to purchase with his own lunch money a new tactical man-purse, one capable of carrying his computer and other stuff in the field. A full review of my new best luggage-friend will follow in a later post, but here's the teaser: I didn't want black, because I already have too many black bags. I didn't want UCP pattern, because I wanted to be able to use the bag in civilian-life, too. That left ACU-friendly "sage" gray-green, and a more Leatherneck-friendly "coyote" brown.

I went with the sage.

A couple of days later, the Army announces that soldiers like me might get MultiCam uniforms downrange.

Sigh. Uncle Sam makes it so hard to accessorize sometimes ...