A couple years back, I saw a picture in the paper of a scene in the Balkans that featured Canadian military unit which has a tradition of wearing long beards. The troops in the picture looked like something out of the Sturges biker rally.
I seem to recall that this unit had something to do with bomb disposal or the like, but I can’t recall the name of the unit.
Any help?
I think this is the photo to which you refer.
The Pioneer section, or platoon, of British (and, by extension, Commonwealth) infantry regiments used to have the right to wear big ol’ beards–something that the rest of the infantry didn’t (at least, not since the 1870s or so). They also got to wear big white leather aprons on parade, and carry big axes. They wore (and still do) crossed axes as insignia on their sleeves.
The pioneers were the guys who did a lot of the heavy work, cutting down trees, building earthworks, generally the hewers of wood haulers of water sort of thing, generally taking their overall direction from a military engineer.
The “bomb disposal” thing is wishful thinking–that is a very specialised function, carried out by highly trained EOD personnel (or at least, carried out only once by untrained personnel). In WWI, my grandfather’s generation considered the pioneer platoon in his unit to be the “awkward squad,” where the slower-witted men were sent. Unfair, perhaps, but that was his view back then. I think the booby-trap/bomb disposal thing may be a little bit of compensation for being viewed as the guys who build the latrines (a totally necessary and important military function, but unglamorous).
Now, the guy in the photo is really taking advantage of being in the Pioneer Platoon of his battalion of the RCRs (Royal Canadian Regiment), and abusing the beard priviledge–his sergeant should be all over the guy, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. The very valid point is raised about “how do you put on a gas mask over a beard like that?”
Sometimes known as the ZZ Top Platoon. 
AFAIK, The pioneer plt in the Canadian army has already, or is in the proccess of being phased out due to budgetary reason, along with the mortar plts organic to each infantry battalion. I’m not sure if the former pioneed have had to shave their beards off.
