If you think about it, if you attend 15 events in one year and spend the week-end at it in uniform that is equal to one months service, at that rate it would take 12 years to equal the wear on a uniform of one year in actual service.
My shell Jacket went through about the equal to one years service. I was told when we first started that of course a soldier would not be able to have his dry cleaned, and we had a few who unfortunately learned the hard way that you simply don't wash and dry them the conventional way.

When I attend events it is always fun to look at uniforms to see how clean or dirty they are, have you noticed that you almost never see a dirty officers uniform?

One of my favorite stories to tell around the campfire, is when we attended the 125th Manassas event. After spending 4 days in our wool, in 100 degree temps, we got on our bus (das bus) and went to a truck stop, we all went in to eat, about 50 in number. We sat for some time and notice that the place quickly emptied, finally after about 10 minutes a kid came out of the kitchen and told us that he would be our waiter, because everyone else had gotten sick and went home. It wasn't until then that we realised just how bad we all smelled. We got up and went to the truck stop showers and allowed to use them for free, they were usually reserved for truckers. That was one of my learning moments, as bad as it must have smelled in a real civil war camp, if you were one of the fowl oders, you would never have noticed, but what those camp visitors must have thought?

curtis