All military hunor requires the Cliff, as we noted before:

With war imminent, Scoop has destroyed the gear provided to him by the government. Surely there were serial numbers and paperwork involved. No one's going to send him to Leavenworth over a trenching tool, but he threw away a rifle.

I checked subsequent issues of the newspaper; no sternly-worded letters from anyone. It's possible they just regarded it as a cartoon. It's possible no one was paying any attention to the strip at all.

Well, now that the Humor in Uniform phase is over, perhaps the audience will be treated to some actual Reporting. Let's find out..