Well, I think that most in the combat arms part of the military didnt worry too much about taking our stuff to the cleaners. In the units I served with, we had ONE pair of starched BDUs, and ONE pair of "garrison" boots. The rest were ratty field wear stuff. We figured we were out in the field 8 months out of the year, so, we could get away with wearing a highly starched uniform for a week at a time, without going back to the cleaners.
And, field boots didnt polish well. Shiny things in the field=bad.