1964 I first met my new daily dress: utilities. In about 3 years of crawling around various places in the US and in Asia, I slowly came to understand the inventor of the fabric had clearly HEARD the uniform procuring officer’s request but when he WROTE it down he got it assbackwards. He wrote — Keep Marines warm in Summer and Cold in Winter.
When that thought occurred to me (riding in a damned Helli-Hopper) I chuckled, and ‘Swede’ sitting next to me said “What?”
“It’s all just assbackwards!” I said.
He grunted and muttered “Yeah!”
Assbackwards!
I always thought the term was “bassackwards.” I guess it just depends on how you heard it and choose to say it. It gets the point across whichever is used. In my 20 years in the Corps, uniform regulations changed quite often and with regularity. The change which I like the most was authorization of the woolly-pully sweater. My least favorite was the “bus driver” jacket in the late seventies. Everybody looked like Jackie Gleason portraying Ralph Cramdon. Don’t remember exactly when it went away, but good riddance. Semper Fi!!! Top Pro