Which reminds me of a tale that may or may not be true. When the British army changed the dress code to not require/prohibit pig-tails (an early man-ponytail) they also changed the uniform code regs. With the pig-tail, uniform jackets had a small tab or triangle of leather sewn onto the collar, to keep the hair oil (applied to make it behave, and "look good") out of the collar wool.
At least one regiment received the order to nix the pig-tail, but did not get the order to remove the leather patch. So they proudly kept sewing leather collar patches on their uniforms until the regs caught up with them.
I can see some by-the-book senior NCO or officer insisting "Until I get it in writing, I'm not going to stop doing what earlier orders require me to do." Or, a senior NCO in the armorers unit, who got rotated back before the change (wounded, convalescing, whatever) and came back after, stubbornly insisted on marking until someone told him to knock it off.
Wars are usually messy affairs.
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