MODERN BATTLE DRESS

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 May 1940, Page 10

MODERN BATTLE DRESS

DISCARDING GAY UNIFORMS.Reginald Hargreaves, the military historian, writes in the .Daily Telegraph: — . Criticism of the British soldier s “battle-dress” on the ground that it lacked weather-resisting qualities, -vvas rebutted lately by the Army Medical authorities with a reassuring answer. The critics have certainly found nothing to say on the score ■ of the garb’s utility. A more sternly practical fighting kit, conceding nothing whatsoever in the way of ornament, has never been devised.

One may invert Bosquet’s famous comment in another connection and proclaim: “It may not be magnificent, but it is war.”

Thus uniform, whose purpose in its early days was, by striking colour and elaborate decoration, to look impressive and render its wearer conspicuous on the field, now seeks to avoid so much as the glimmer of a solitary: button. This time, it would seem, Britain has set a fashion in uniforms which others may well envy and, in some degree, try to emulate. It is reported that khaki shirts or jerseys will be an issue in Summer to the French poilu in place of his uniform jacket, and “plus fours” pattern pantaloons with waterproof gaiters are being- introduced. , The journey from the ornate to the merely business-like has been both difficult and long, though 'at' times it has seemed as if uniform would have taken a short cut to its present level of sombre efficiency. ;... . .Before the red coat became universal in the days of Fairfax and Cromwell's “Army of the New Model,” the English man-at-arms fought as often as not in what amounted to his ordinary civilian clothing, plus some form of distinguishing badge—such as the crest of his overlord’s coat-of-arms—-to differentiate him from -.his opponent. Standardisation of arms rather than of clothing was chiefly sought;' the garb a. man chose to wear was considered very largely his own affair. An elementary form of standardised “battle-dress,” however, was already on the way. The surcoat bearing the device of a cross, first adopted in the time of the Crusades, received official sanction in the reign of Edward 111. A Royal ordinance decreed that: “Every man of whatsoever condi-. tion, so that he be of our party, shall; wear a sygn of St. George, large, both before and behind; . ; . and no enemy shall wear the said sygn of St. George upon pain of death.” : /

Thus the red cross on a white ground came to be associated with the English fighting man in action, on land and sea; fulfilling the obligation to render the wearer both picturesque and easily identifiable.' ’ ‘ MORE BRILLIANCE. With the Restoration and the inception of England’s first standing Army, uniform attained a brilliance': of -hue and ornamentation which succeeding reigns sought ever more sedulously to outdo —despite the increasing accuracy of musketry fire; .which..might have suggested that .self-effacement father than conspicuousness should be the primary concern in clothing, those who might become' a target. ' 7. Some such considerations had already been' given weight—for a brief spell—even earlier ; an ordinance ■of Queen Elizabeth decreed... that, •' for certain troops' detailed ■ for the: campaign- in Ireland, "the men shall goe, for their greater comfort, and safety, with a cassock of some motley or other sad green colour, or russet.” Again, for Cromwell’s Irish expedi-

tionary force, it was ordained that the troops should be clothed in “coats of a dark, sad colour, as russet and such like, and not" so light (i.e., conspicuous) a colour as blue and red, which heretofore hath commonly been used.” These, however, were but tentative attempts; as short cuts to colourless efficiency they were never followed up. Obsessed with the parade value of colour and glittering “trimmings,” .the military hierarchy continued to gild an dembellish. British troops under Marlborough through the appalling mud of the Low Countries in skintight breeches and spatterdashes (long leggings buttoning to the knee) of plain white; the soldier’s hair was frizzed and tortured into curls which took hours to arrange in the regulation pattern. Junior officers, prior to a ceremonial parade, after receiving those attentions from the barber which their seniors reserved for the following morning, were forced to sit up all night lest the set of their coiffure should suffer disarray.

. By Peninsular Wai’ days tunics w’ere so tight under the arm that split seams were the first and most general casualty'when the cavalry went into action.

Eventually, the Foot Guards’ white trousers had to be abandoned, but in the Crimea the unfortunate soldier’s neck was still being choked by a relentless leather stock; while sweltering brass helmets and towering shakoes added their torments to those imposed by the climatic conditions from which all ranks suffered throughout the Indian Mutiny. Even on. the heights of Majuba the British infantryman was clad in the conspicuous white topee and red tunic' of orthodoxy, a combination which rendered him a magnificent tar ; I get for the deadly Boer marksmen. Attempts at reform, if frowned upon by-the more tailor-minded militarists, had not been altogether wanting in the 19th' century. It was in 1846 that a junior officer serving in India embarked upon an 'experiment which was destined to have far-reaching consequences, Young Harry Lumsden, entrusted with the formation of the Corps of Guides which still bears his name, conceived what Major-Gen. Sir George ’Younghusband has ironically described as “the highly unorthodox notion that a tight scarlet tunic, with a stock, was not the ideal garment in which to wage war on the plains of the Punjab in hot weather.” COMING OF KHAKI.

Procuring, therefore, a supply of white cotton cloth, this daring heretic had it taken down to the river to be well soaked and rubbed in the mud. This rendered it of very much the tint of the dusty, plains where the Guides were to. operate. Dried and ji’oned, and cut up in loose .blouses and shorts, it made a thoroughly satisfactory..' “battle-dress.” Thus khaki—from the Persian khak (dust or ashes) —first came into' the Army quartermaster’s store.

Of course, the innovation met with a good deal of mockery and opposition —what new battle-dress does not? But the derisive cries of “Here come the old khakis!” which greeted the Guides whenever they marched into cantonments did nothing to abate the wearers’ enthusiasm for the comfortable, protectively inconspicuous bat-tle-cum-working dress which was now theirs. ./

Khaki gradually succeeded in gaining wider popularity. There was an issue of khaki-dyed cloth to the 43rd and 52nd Foot (now the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry) in 1857; while that same year the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry; gallant defenders of the Lucknow Residency, improvised a kind of khaki

uniform by dyeing their white tropical kit “a sort of brown by a. judicious admixture of the different coloured office inks.”

The Afghan War of 1878-80 saw British troops staining their white clothing “with a- boiling of tea leaves”; the Gordons wore khaki in their 1880 South African campaign; hodden grey vied in popularity with khaki during the Nile expedition of 1884; while the Duke of Connaught, after his experiences in Egypt in 1887. pressed for the adoption of the dust-coloured garb as a “battle-dress” throughout the entire Army. It was not until the Boer War of 1899 that khaki found general acceptance, its recognition reinforced by the approval bestowed upon it by Queen Victoria herself, as an entry in-her “Journal” makes clear: Windsor Castle. July 18, 1900. Saw a private of the Scots Guards in the proposed khaki working and fighting dress, which seems very good and practical. The man himself liked it and said it was very comfortable. Compared with the “active service” garb of the period, it was doubtless a great improvement. But there were still shiny, light-reflecting buttons, badges and metal shoulder tablets to catch the sun’s rays and betray the wearer’s presence to a keen-eyed enemy. So, with the experiences -of another and greater war to recommend a yet profounder concession to practical needs, uniform eventually became the intensely utilitarian, if totally uninspiring “battle-dress” which renders our fighting men the “Bayards in boiler suits” we know to-day.

Yet even during a time of war it is necessary to legislate for the peace which is to come; and any Ministry of Forward-Planning, if the War Office is represented, will find it highly advisable to weigh the claims of ornament as well as utility in working out the appropriate parade dress of the soldier of the future.

If the Highlander has to be assured that the kilt will be restored to him the rest of the British Army are no less entitled to their “high day and holiday” dress. It should not be over-costly or flashy, but it should enable the wearer to take a proper pride in his turnout and in the honourable profession of arms of which his uniform is the symbol. As Lord Wolseley remarked, “The better you dress a soldier, the more he will be thought of by the women, and consequently by himself.” .And even in the present grim preoccupations this old soldier’s commentary should not be completely overlooked.