Talk:Combat uniform

Hmmm. When I was in school cadets, we had five forms of attire:

A combat uniform of jungle green cottons, known as "JGs" for obvious reasons. We were issued with two shirts and one pair of trousers, and strongly and well advised to buy a second pair of trousers. These were worn for most parades and for serious military exercises, and to firing ranges.
A woollen dress uniform consisting of khaki trousers and jacket that buttoned together, worn with braces (issued) a khaki shirt (from our school uniform) and a khaki tie (issued). This was known as Battle Dress or BDs, and was worn for public parades and travelling to and from camp.
A working set of old JGs or khaki clothing, called working dress or "WDs", issued when in camp and worn whenever JGs or BDs weren't required... work parties, less serious exercises.
Dress kilt, a kilt worn with a BD jacket, khaki shirt and tie and white webbing for the most serious public parades. Not all cadets were issued with a kilt, it was an honour reserved for the senior platoons, the others just wore their BDs.
Summer kilt, the same kilt worn with a JG shirt and white dress webbing, in summer whenever orders called for it. I never quite worked out why, perhaps it was to get us used to the kilt! Anyway, it was rather fun.

The kilt was always worn with a beret (not issued and compulsory, it was the price you paid for the honour), WDs with a slouch hat or giggle hat if you owned one (again, not issued and highly recommended), BDs with slouch hat (or beret possible in theory for kilted platoons but that was rare), JGs with whatever headware was ordered, if unspecified your choice of slouch or giggle. And always the same pair of black leather boots, shined for parades and dull for exercises, you either made good friends of them or suffered very badly. Ah, memories!

Anyway, the point of all that is that in the Australian armed services in the late 1960s, Battle Dress meant a dress uniform based on the battle dress of the world wars and of Korea, while what we wore into combat in theory was JGs or in more serious units camos (we didn't rate those).

Which isn't what this article says at all! Not quite sure how to update it. Suggestions? I'll have a go sometime after a bit more thought. Andrewa 17:38, 12 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]