But wait, Captain Crabby, maybe you've missed the point. More Pinks & Greens.

Signal Corps lieutenant, World War Two.

On Monday, I ran this item criticizing, I guess, the Army's adoption of a new Army Green Uniform of the old officers' Pink & Green variety:

Lex Anteinternet: Pinks and Greens: Having a taste for history, and a dislike the of the last two Army dress uniforms, you'd think that I'd like the Army having gone t...

Could I have missed the point?

The same Signal Corps officer in France.

I surely could have.

And that point might start with why is the Army doing this anyway?

Well, dear reader, you might have already surmised that's because the dress blue uniform is ugly and soldiers don't like it, but that's only a partial answer, actually.

Indeed, the dress blue uniform isn't going anywhere.  It'll remain the dress blue uniform, resuming the status it had prior to it becoming the only dress uniform.  So there it will go once again, back to a presumably fairly rarely worn and not daily worn uniform.  One might hope, in that context, that the Army starts making it in a decent wool fabric again so it doesn't have the polyester disco look its acquired in recent years.

But as its not going anywhere, what's up?

Well, what's up is an intent to return to the pre mint green dress shirt days when soldiers who weren't on field duty or some sort of fatigue or quasi fatigue duty wore a uniform that had a military bearing and was appropriate for the office or non fatigue duty.

And that's actually a majority of soldiers, most days.

It's not that Army Green Uniform with the mint green shirt couldn't be worn that way.  It could, and it was supposed to have been, but the uniform was so unrelentingly ugly that soldiers hated it from the top to the bottom and didn't want to wear it if they could avoid it.  Given that, over time, after its introduction even office clerks took to wearing the heavy BDU uniform if they could get away with it, and they were soon able to get away with it as officers liked the Army Green Uniform no more than the men did.

And on top of it, the lightweight mint green shirt and poly blend pants were such anemic apparel that they really weren't terribly suited to much in the way of diverse use to start with, which prior semi dress uniforms had been.

To illustrate what we mean, we probably need to go back to the uniform of the late 1920s where the story of the Pink & Green uniform originates.

Black cavalryman of the 10th Cavalry Rgt at Ft. Riley Kansas in 1942.   He's wearing field gear and the khaki uniform, without tie, that was a field and semi dress uniform, theoretically, at the time.

At that time, the Army returned to issuing a summer khaki cotton uniform, which it had done prior to World War One, when just before that it phased that out in favor of an olive cotton uniform for hot weather.  The new khaki uniform was a sharp looking uniform, designed to be worn in the field in hot weather as a combat uniform and, with black tie, in non field situation when a coat wasn't required. For that matter, as the soldier was not to normally wear decorations on the service shirts, wool OD or khaki, both were meant to be worn with a service coat when required.  Technically ties were actually supposed to be worn in field situations, which was flat out silly, and which was widely disregarded right from the onset.

Solider of the 10th Cavalry at Ft. Riley in 1942. He's wearing the summer uniform appropriate for most things at that time, including a khaki colored garrison cap.

Anyhow, while that was field uniform, it was highly suitable for wear by clerks, medical personnel, people assigned office duty, etc., whenever the need arose. So was, we would note, the wool equivalent, which was worn the same way. About the only difference between the two uniforms for that purpose is that the wool uniform was always worn with a tie in an office etc. setting but the khaki one was not.

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Trailer from the movie A Soldiers Story which does a really good job of depicting hot weather uniforms of the World War Two period.

Now this may seem to be just what I was critique above, the wearing of  field uniform for office, etc. settings, but we have to keep in mind that in the era which we are discussing the Service Coat was an integral part of the uniform and was suitable for most dress occasions.  Indeed, most enlisted men never owned a dress blue uniform.  And when World War Two came, things changed.

While technically the khaki uniform remained a combat uniform throughout the war, it very rapidly ceased to be in actual practice.  You can find photographs of it being worn that way in the US in training until 1942 or so, but not really after that.  The wool equivalent, ie., shirt and trousers, did keep on keeping on in that role and was part of every soldiers combat kit during World War Two and a bit beyond.  But even before the war the Service Coat had left for various Field Jackets, the final expression of which was the M1943, which was only however one of many such jackets.  At the same time herring bone tweed cotton trousers and shirts came in for fatigue uniforms (something now entirely absent from the military service for the most part) that replaced a prior uniform that was blue denim.  That's significant in that that uniform was soon altered for field use and worn in hot regions, like Italy or the South Pacific, and the concept of cotton field uniforms really took off.  So at a point very early in the war the khaki uniform was more of a semi dress uniform for the summer months and the wool uniform, when worn with tie, was pretty much the same (while retaining a combat role) for the rest of the year.

Now, all this may raise a big "so what?" but even by World War Two most soldiers were not combat troops, something that's often conveniently forgotten.  In the American way of war, material matters more than men and the goal is to use it profusely in order to defeat the enemy without getting men killed, to the extent possible.  This became very much the case between World War One and World War Two when this thinking really took off and it was fully American, and British, doctrine by the Second World War.  This reflected both nations democratic natures and the view of the democratic populace that they didn't want their sons killed if at all possible.  And, for what its worth, it also partially explains the huge casualties endured by the Germans, Soviets and Japanese in the war as their leadership in large measure simply didn't care about that and didn't have to answer to the public.*  The answer to the "so what" question, therefore, is that it is important for a modern Army to have a suitable military uniform for the many, many troops who don't serve in combat. The khaki uniform and the service uniform of World War Two was just that, and that uniform remained in that use until the early 1950s.

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1950s era film depicting basic training showing fatigue and khaki uniforms in use at the time.

After the 1930s era service uniforms were phased out in the late 1950s, the Army Green Uniform and the new khaki uniform took over that role, at first.  Indeed the new khaki uniform that replaced the old one was very widely worn at that time, and during the cooler months of the year the Army Green Uniform, which featured a khaki colored shirt at first, filled that role as well, although in the Army both uniforms were already seeing less use and the period Army "fatigue" uniform began to fill the role that the Service Uniform and earlier khakis had previously, often after being stiffly starched.  After the mint green shirts came in and the khaki uniform went out the change was enormous and even soldiers who fired nothing more dangerous than a typewriter often came into work wearing Battle Dress Uniforms, a fact which actually caused the BDU uniform to be lightened as clerks found the uniform too heavy for office work.  After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the US an absurd order trying to make everyone feel like a combat warrior allowed combat uniforms to be worn even in the Pentagon, even though the U.S. had managed to get through World War Two requiring dress uniforms in the Pentagon.

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Army film in basic training circa 1966 in which how the khaki uniform was in daily use can be seen.  In most of the instances in which it appears here, today the combat uniform would be worn instead.

So what, a person might ask once again. Well, here's ultimately why it matters.  The Army has found its way around to noting what the Marine Corps had never forgotten, appearances and standards of dress matter.  Most non combat troops wearing combat uniforms look a little silly and they begin to look like they're wearing a sack of potatoes or pajamas, that's not a good look.  And frankly, as noted above, the combat uniform that came into being starting in 1943 is a comfortable one for combat, but not for the office itself.

Which brings back the question of why any change was actually necessary, if it was. Well, it was because soldiers won't wear an ugly uniform unless compelled to, and the Army Green Uniform, particularly after the adoption of the mint green uniform, was so ugly that a service wide conspiracy to do away with  the need to wear it meant that it simply ceased being used. 

The prior uniforms, which were better looking were worn. And they were better looking as, ironically, they were closer to the combat uniform itself.

That may sound ironic or even hypocritical but its' true.  Indeed, at first the Army Service Uniform was the combat uniform. . .theoretically, and the khaki uniform was a field uniform.  But as they dated back to a prior type of uniform in which the service uniform was closer to a dress uniform, and not the other way around, they had a sharper appearance. The Army forgot this lesson with the Army Green Uniform which was intentionally supposed to more closely resemble business attire and whoever even thought up the mint green shirt had completely lost his military bearings.

The old Pink & Green uniform had that military bearing.  And therefore the Army hopes to reinstate a uniform that doesn't cause clerks to feel like they have to come into the office every day looking like they're about to parachute into Normandy.  That is a worthwhile endeavor, my earlier criticism not withstanding, and if it succeeds, it will have been worth the effort.

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*This might be best illustrated by the German and Russian armies of World War Two in comparison to World War One.  Both armies had been at the service of Imperial regimes in the Great War and and while neither nation was  democracy (the Russian one much less so), the position of the crown as a supposed caring sovereign ultimately caused the populace to completely abandon both when the vast rivers of blood spilled by those nations in the war meant that the monarchs didn't seem to care that much.

In the Second World War neither nation's leadership pretended to care about the average soldiers or man and they were both purveyors of propaganda that glorified individual soldierly death for the nation.  That reflected tactically as both armies deployed tactics that were guaranteed to cause massive loss of life and in the case of both nations some of that loss of life was intentional.  

Put in context, therefore, when people try to make too much of the massive loss of life on the Eastern Front, to an extent, albeit only to an extent, it has to be understood that it was a partial product of armies that intentionally chose to expend lives promiscuously.  Put another way, the U.S. Army wouldn't have fought the Battle of Stalingrad the same way the Red Army did.  A person can take away from that the lessons that they will, but the American and British Empire forces proved amazingly effective against the German Army with a much lower loss of life per mile than the Red Army did.

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Pinks and Greens