The Blue Beret

A U.S. Army specialist's battalion was assigned to a United Nations preventive deployment force in the Balkans. His commanders ordered the soldiers to wear United Nations items with their uniforms: a blue UN beret and field cap, a UN shoulder patch, a blue scarf, and a UN badge and identification card. At a company formation, the specialist appeared without the UN items, even though he had been given two opportunities to comply. He was charged with failing to obey a lawful order. The defence argued that the order was unlawful because it conflicted with the Army's uniform regulation and because the deployment itself lacked a proper constitutional basis, and that the members of the court-martial, not the judge, should have decided whether the order was lawful.