poster child for why berets should be EARNED!!! not handed out... 
Posted on 06/13/2011 6:19:19 PM PDT by cll
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Army is abandoning the beret, after a failed 10-year experiment.
The black beret, which proved deeply unpopular with American soldiers, will be replaced by a patrol cap for everyday wear, US Army spokesman Colonel Tom Collins said Monday.
The move came after outgoing Army chief of staff, General Martin Dempsey, asked the army's sergeant major "to go out and talk to soldiers across the force and see what was on their minds," Collins told AFP.
"One of the things that soldiers consistently brought up was the desire to wear the patrol cap as part of their duty uniform," he said.
The beret will still be part of the Army's dress uniform, but will no longer be worn in the field as soldiers complained that it was impractical, he said.
"It does not have a visor and doesn't shield the sun, doesn't absorb sweat well," Collins said.
One soldier put it more bluntly.
"I hate wearing a wet sock on my head," Chief Warrant Officer Mark Vino, at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, told the Army Times. "Plus it makes head/skin break out."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I was in the Air Force in 1960. After basic, I was assigned to Goodfellow AFB at San Angelo, TX, for radio school. We had ten man classes, five airmen and five sailors. While in school, the airmen wore 505 (khakis) and the sailors wore the white uniform with the flap (undress uniform?). Then both services switched to blues on 15 Oct. The sailors had those uniforms to which you referred, with the dragons on the reverse of the cuffs, even though none of them had ever been overseas before. It was bad enough for airmen, soldiers and Marines having to travel wearing Class As, but those Navy uniforms struck me as being awfully uncomfortable during the summer. I spent a lot of time at the flight line at Clark Air Base in the PI, and saw a lot of sailors passing through, wearing those dress blues when it was about 95 out with a humidity to match.
An ascot... until tonight I had forgotten that I used to wear an ascot during a time in my life, weird...
poster child for why berets should be EARNED!!! not handed out...
***I believe a pisscutter is a garrison cap (or flight cap to us zoomies).***
The same as a c**t cap? I never wore one as I only wore a fatigue cap, or the regulation dress cap.
When I got my maroon beret and then my black beret it was pretty special. I always resented it when it when it became the standard uniform for cooks and clerk typists.
They should go back to the Ridgeway style caps, not the baseball caps.
I dumped all those stupid hats ages ago.
And most of the uniforms.
I kept a summer and winter set of crackerjacks and all of my Submarine “poopy suits”
Those coveralls are actually useful.
Any old Texas farmer could tell you, that they have room for tools, smokes, a flashlight and a zippo lighter.
To bad we could only wear them on the sub pier or underway.
All the uniforms the Navy had were worthless from a practical working standpoint.
Even the dungaree working uniform was worthless.
I like the choo, choo, hat. Is that the Marine type?
Source - Army.mil
Black Beret. The tradition of wearing black berets began with armored units. In 1924 the British Royal Tank Regiment adopted the first modern military beret, based on the Scottish highland bonnet and French Bretonne beret. The regiment selected the headgear for its practicality—brimless for use with armored vehicle fire control sights and black to hide grease stains.
In the US Army, HQDA policy from 1973 through 1979 permitted local commanders to encourage morale-enhancing distinctions, and Armor and Armored Cavalry personnel wore black berets as distinctive headgear until CSA Bernard W. Rogers banned all such unofficial headgear in 1979. Rangers received authorization through AR 670-5, Uniform and Insignia, 30 January 1975, to wear black berets.
Previously, locally authorized black berets had been worn briefly by the 10th Ranger Company (Airborne), 45th Infantry Division, during the Korean War before their movement to Korea; Company F (LRP), 52d Infantry, 1st Infantry Division, in 1967 in the Republic of Vietnam; Company H (Ranger), 75th Infantry, 1st Cavalry Division, in 1970 in the Republic of Vietnam; and Company N (Ranger), 75th Infantry, 173d Airborne Brigade, in 1971 in the Republic of Vietnam.
Brown Beret. While HQDA’s morale-enhancing order was in force from 1973 to 1979, there was a proliferation of berets, in a rainbow of hues. In Alaska the 172d Infantry Brigade adopted an olive or brown beret. Members of the brigades 1/60th Infantry wore their brown beret with a light blue flash insignia. It was soon dropped when the Army standardized headgear policy in 1979 to limit beret wear to Special Forces, Airborne, and Ranger units.
Bring back the “Ridgeway”.
That brown beret makes it look like you have a cow pie on your head.
yep...very often the winter blues uniform was the last thing you wanted to be wearing when you got off the plane at Clark AFB...
And yes, those un-dress whites were almost as big of a PITA as the dress whites where. What made even less sense was attempting to own a pair of Corfam dress inspection shoes in a flight-deck non-skid environment. One mis-step, and those $40 shoes looked like you tried to shine them with a brick...
I think Major Kong was onto something in Dr Strangelove.
Coveralls and a cowboy hat.
Plus that dang bugout kit. “Heck, a feller could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that”
Yeah, but you gotta have the Dixie cup with the blue band to let the ladies on the beach know about the middies’, ahem, cough, cough, cough....physical hygiene problems...
/sarc
1st of the 9th
Bah! The beret is for gays and french"men". I'm glad I got out before I ever had to wear one.
They did the same thing in Somalia and Desert Storm. Nothing new.
All I can tell you is my present fly says “The best there is” on the inside. LoL
To bad I’m the only one that has read it LoL
Yeah, no Stetsons for those that haven’t done a “spur ride”! If you ain’t Cav, you ain’t ....!
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