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The Duffel Brief · the free edition, Monday, Wednesday and Friday

Vol. 15 · No. 121 · Saturday, 10 October 2026

Pentagon

Hegseth opens up new TradWife MOS

Army says new career field will allow warfighters to focus on lethality while someone else remembers the kids

DTS works properly after hack by rogue AI

Lincoln sailor returning from deployment already broke

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Vol. 15 · No. 121

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Vol. 15 · No. 121 · Deployed worldwide

Saturday

10 October 2026

1444 Zulu

Next edition Monday

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· Page 2

Soldier kicked out of Special Forces because he can't grow a beard

Filed · 1545

FORT CAMPBELL, KY – A former member of the U.S. Army’s elite 5th Special Forces Group is not a happy soldier these days. Army Staff Sergeant Mark Diggs is still coming to grips with the fact that his childhood dream of being a Green Beret has been cut short due to an unofficial technicality in the esteemed group’s operating procedures.

“It’s really embarrassing,” said the twenty-eight year old from Spicer, MN. “I keep trying to tell myself that I’m just highly evolved, but it still doesn’t make up for the fact I have a testosterone level of an eleven year-old French boy.”

Diggs is referring to his recent ejection from the legendary unit based on his inability to grow a suitable combat beard.

“My instructors warned me during Robin Sage that I was walking a thin line when they discovered that my hair wasn’t filling out,” he added. “I kept telling them, ‘Patience, patience, it’ll happen. I’m one-sixteenth Cherokee … these things take a while.’ But in my heart I knew I was only delaying the inevitable.”

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