The Girls of SHAPE

No, it's not a Playboy spread. I could just as easily have labeled it "The Boys of SHAPE." And actually, it's more about uniforms than the soldiers in them.

There are 26 nations in NATO and more than that at SHAPE (Swedes and Irish in the EU mission, for example). The easiest way to tell them all apart is by their camouflage patterns (all the ground troops tend to wear BDUs or ACUs or whatever they call their battle gear). You wouldn't think there'd be so many, but there are. About the only dupes are the Croatians, who are not yet full members but have tons of personnel at SHAPE and who look like they bought surplus fabric from the US Air Force.

The French uniforms are, as you could probably have guessed, very nicely tailored. The trousers for both the women and the men have darts in the waist so that they all fit very tight--much to the delight of all the girls. And I have to admit that the little blond lady capitaine isn't exactly what you'd call ugly. The French also take the prize for dumbest uniform piece: a wrap skirt for the women.

And speaking of women's uniforms, the first time we saw the Czech girls, we thought they were in civvies, their uniform skirts are so short. (Not that I noticed, of course. Other people pointed it out to me.) And they don't seem to have a standard shoe; most of them wear strappy sandal type things--cute but definitely not your grandmother's combat boots. Actually, it seems like lots of countries don't really have a standard for female footwear because many of them get to wear far more stylish shoes than the US girls, who do wear combat boots.