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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear RhubarbCommando: I remember reading a long time ago that khaki originated in India when a unit clad in white was so vulnerable to enemy snipers that their colonel ordered them to rub dirt onto them. Several sources say "khaki" is an Urdu word
khaki - 1857, from Urdu khaki, lit. "dusty," from khak "dust," from Pers. First introduced in uniforms of British cavalry in India (the Guide Corps, 1846); widely adopted for camoflage purposes in the Boer Wars.
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467 |
Facings go back millenia, at least as far as Alexander the Great, who was the first to realize the importance of coordinated movements of troops. Timing is everything. He devised a system whereby different parts of his armies wore different colored head sashes. A wave of a flag from the command post would send say the green band into battle, followed by a flanking movement from the wearers of red on the right. This was the origination of Alexander's Rag Time Bands.
TEd
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
Jazzo, you have to think back to the days before the invention of smokeless powder. Battles were fought by masses of troops arranged in units which advanced like chess men over the field in blocks of varying sizes. Battles usually began with an artillery barrage, which invariably left the field covered in dense smoke. European armies early on (late 17th century, I believe) adopted bright colored uniforms so the troops would be visible in the smoke which generally covered the entire battlefield. Different nations used different colors. The Brits adopted scarlet (a technical term for a particular shade of red), the French wore blue, the Austrians wore white, the Spanish, green. And the sense of professional pride made it hard to give up these colors when smokeless powder and more modern tactics made the colorful uniforms downright hazardous, as has been noted by others, notwithstanding there were lots of old veterans who hated to give up the red and thought khaki was the ugliest color ever invented (which is probably right, with the possible exception of OD [olive drab], which is the U.S. army combat uniform color, or was in my day).
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146 |
Yeah, what Rhube, BYB and Bingley said. I do remember reading that the Federal blue and southern grey were actually not bad cammo during that liddle fratricidal stoush y'all had in the 1860s, particularly once they had both faded. The blue went to grey, the grey went to butternut.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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