How about this Cold War moment frozen in time, when the M151 1/4-ton 4×4 utility truck, or MUTT, reigned supreme in the days before the adoption of the Hummer.
24 March 1986. Official period caption: “A member of Company A, 1st Battalion, 38th Infantry, 2nd Infantry Division, drives an M151 light utility vehicle across a bridge during the joint U.S. and South Korean Exercise Team Spirit ’86. The M151 is equipped with a tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided (TOW) anti-tank missile launcher.”
Scene Camera Operator: Sgt Jimmie T. Dugans Jr., Agency-Assigned Identifier: DASC8705427. National Archives Identifier: 6411295
You just have to love the carefully applied face camo, how bright the M81 woodland camo BDUs are, as well as the new-issued K-pot Kevlar helmet with skrim camo, and the old-school M16A1 in the backseat. Oh yeah, and the unbuckled web gear. A man has to have some creature comforts between evolutions.
Out of all the above, only the TOW survives, where it no doubt still sees service with the 2nd ID, which is still in Korea.
80 years ago today. Official caption: “The British Army in Burma. Men of 2nd Division man a position on the Irrawaddy River near Pagan, Burma, 25 February 1945.”
Photo by SGT. P. Sanders, No. 9 Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit, IWM (SE 3181).
Note the blend of No.4 Enfield .303 rifle and M1928 Thompson along with the slouch hats, common for British troops of Lt. Gen. Bill Slim’s “Forgotten” Fourteenth Army in Burma at this stage of the war.
They would soon cross the river, a key moment in the campaign to liberate the region from the Japanese that was the equivalent of crossing the Rhine in the ETO.
Men of the 2nd Division disembark from boats having crossed the Irrawaddy River at Ngazun, on 28 February 1945. Photo by SGT. P. Sanders, No. 9 Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit, IWM (SE 3146)
The 2nd British Infantry Division– 2nd Manchester Regt, 6th Bn Loyal Regt (North Lancashire), 1st Royal Scots, 1st Bn 8th Lancashire Fusiliers, 2nd Bn Royal Norfolk, 1st Bn Queen’s Cameron Highlanders, 2nd Bn Dorsetshire Regt, 7th Bn Worcestershire Regt, 1st Bn Royal Berkshire Regt, 2nd Bn Durham light Infantry, and 1st Bn Royal Welsh Fusiliers– was a pre-war unit of regulars with a history that dates back to Wellington that had lost all its equipment at Dunkirk.
Reformed in England, with many of its original members chopped to form new units, the division was ordered to Ahmednagar, India in June 1942 where it would serve a garrison and training role until March 1944.
Then, as one of just two British infantry divisions (along with the 36th) in the CBI to fight in Burma, would slug it out in the jungle for 15 months before being sent back to India for rest in June 1945.
They were most notable for breaking the Japanese siege of Kohima and destroying the Imperial Army’s “Furious” 31st Division.
Post-war, the 2nd would serve as occupation troops in Japan and, after a few years garrison in Malaya, would be an integral part of the BAOR in West Germany during the Cold War. Since then, it was brought back as a UK-based training division only to be disbanded again in 2012.
Original Caption: “PFC Rocco Festa, 328 Ft. Hamilton Parkway, Brooklyn, N.Y., brushes up on his French as he awaits transfer from a personnel carrier to a landing craft. Destination: a Normandy beachhead. Aboard SS John Hay.“
Note the MP brassard and helmet stripe as well as the 2nd Infantry “Indianhead” Div shoulder patch, which was returning to France for its second world war. He also has an M1 carbine over his shoulder and a ship’s hose behind him. Signal Corps Photo 190428, via NARA https://catalog.archives.gov/id/176887974
MPs on the Normandy Beachhead were extremely busy, securing thousands of enemy prisoners of war bagged in the initial landings and subsequent outbreak. Over the next 10 months, 2ID would process 51,055 EPWs, making the division’s MP platoon very, very busy. Odds are, PFC Festa learned a lot more German than French!
After suffering 16,795 battle casualties spending 303 days in combat across Northwest and Central Europe from Omaha Beach to Czechoslovakia– where they were still in combat on VE Day– 2ID would go on to see a war of a different sort in Korea, where they remain today.
In the first part of 1943, the Army began flirting with a two-piece (jacket and pants) herringbone twill (HBT) camouflage uniform. Now, one thing to note is that this differed from the Marine HBT “duck hunter” or “frog skin” camo that was introduced around the time of the invasion of Tarawa, as the Devil Dog kit was based on their P41 design while the Army’s was a slightly different variant based on Big Green’s M1942 fatigue uniform.
These two-piece camouflage uniforms were fielded by units of the 2nd Armored Division, including the 41st Armored Infantry Regiment and 17th Armored Engineer Battalion, for D-Day. They appear in photos between June to September 1944.
Private Joseph De Freitos of Yonkers (New York) of the 41st Armored Infantry Regiment, 2nd US Armored Division, heats his rations on a stove, taken at Pont-Brocard in late July 1944. There is nothing particularly strange about the way he is wearing his e-tool; this was fairly common when the M1928 haversack was not being used.
Records and photos indicate that at least some units of the 2nd Infantry Division and 30th Infantry Division received them also.
U.S. soldiers in HBT camouflage uniforms in a Half-track M2, Pont Brocard July 28, 1944, 41st Armored Inf. Regiment, 2d Armored Division. Cherbourg Library via Flickr.
Camouflaged US Soldiers of the 41st Armored Infantry Battalion working with the 82nd Reconnaissance Battalion (2nd Armored Division) study a captured German map during Operation Cobra in Normandy, France, in July 1944. Note the added foregrip to the M1 Thompson on the right and the German pistol holster on the scout to the left, the latter surely a “battlefield pickup.”
Battle of Saint-Lô, July 1944, 41st AIR, 2AD. LIFE Frank Scherschel Photographer
These surviving examples from the Normandy Tank Museum show a diorama of 2nd Armored Div troops in your typical battlefield mix-match:
The first dummy has the regular GI shirt, camouflage pants, M1 Garand ammo holder belt, M36 web, M1 Garand reproduction, M28 bag, M1 helmet, gaiters very similar to the medic above. The second dummy has much the same but adds a T shovel worn in the same way as the C-rat connoisseur Pvt. De Freitos above, and gas mask cover. The third has the full HBT suit, original camouflage pants, and jacket, M36 webbing with FM-BAR belt and charger holder. He also seems to have ditched his gaiters because he is that kinda guy.
Saint-Georges-d’Elle Normandy France, July 1944, 2nd Infantry Division, note the camo on the one Soldier to the right. LIFE Archives photo by Frank Scherschel
Saint-Georges-d’Elle, Normandy, France, July 1944, 2nd Infantry Division, note the camo jacket on the one Soldier, the M3 Grease gun in his lap, and the censored unit patch. LIFE Archives photo by Frank Scherschel
The thing is, with so many Waffen SS guys and German Fallschirmjäger wearing camo smocks, the idea of GIs in camo proved unpopular, and they were soon withdrawn from the ETO.
However, the material, especially that of discarded parachutes, was recycled by the locals.
“Homemade dress” made out of a parachute used on D-DAY. It was worn by Renée Catherine, a little girl of Sainte-Mère-Eglise
Speaking of which, there is at least some evidence that German paras found U.S. camo very useful in Normandy.
A German cavalry officer (note the spurs and breeches) during the battle for Normandy wearing a crude cover fashioned from U.S. parachute silk duck hunter camo peers through a hedgerow. Also, note his Beretta 38 SMG
Fallschirmjäger at Normandy wearing a cloth cover made from U.S. duck hunter camouflaged cloth, secured to the helmet with a chicken-wire keeper
Meanwhile, in warmer climes
Some U.S. Army units were issued some of the two-piece HBTs in the Pacific late in the war.
U.S. Army Alamo Scouts, two in HBT uniforms. William E. Nellist (middle) pictured with unidentified trainees from the 4th Class. Cape Kassoe, Hollandia, DNG. August 1944. Dig the folding stock para model M1A1 Carbines, very useful in jungle fighting. Via Alamo Scouts website.
Official caption: “Nissan Atoll, Green Islands, South Pacific, 31 January 1944: Inside enemy territory, a recon party lands, senses keyed up for sounds of the Japanese troops known to be present. A perilous fact-finding mission is underway.” The SMLEs and Mills bombs on the men in the center of the landing craft point to Commonwealth troops, probably Australian, in Marine frogskin camo. The non-camo’d fellows at the ramp are likely USCG. A Marine is at the rear, his M1 Carbine at the ready
That theater also saw the use of a one-piece uniform jumpsuit. They were reversible with regular mustard green on the inside.
27th Infantry Division trains in Hawaii before embarking on the amphibious operation to seize Makin in the Gilbert Islands, Fall 1943. A soldier in one piece camouflage uniform is to the right.
Issued briefly, this zippered onesie was found by the Joe in the field to suck balls and was withdrawn.
Many of the Army’s surplus HBT went on to be donated to French forces such as was seen operating in French Indochina, and the Dutch trying to pacify their East Indies archipelago.
HBT-clad French Paratroops in Indochina circa 1953 ready their MAT-49 submachine guns for an assault on Viet Minh guerrillas
Dutch KNIL infantry with British SMLE Enfields fighting Indonesian separatists in 1948– dig the ex-Army HBT
Dutch Lt. Gen. Pieter Lodewijk Gerard Doorman (center-right, just inside the frame) speaks to a duck hunter camo’d crew member of a recycled Japanese Type 89 I-Go medium tank during a visit to 1e Bataljon, 9e Regiment Infanterie (1-9 RI “Friesland”) in Cimahi, Dutch East Indies, September 1946. Formed in the Netherlands in Sept.1945 just after the liberation from German occupation, 1-9 R.I. was sent to the UK in late 1945 for training and basic Malay language lessons, then landed in Batavia on Java as part of V-Brigade in Feb. 1946, where they no doubt picked up the above Japanese armor. Fighting through the Indonesian wars, they were shipped back to Europe (likely sans tanks) and disbanded in August 1948.
The Bay of Pigs gang, Brigade 2506, utilized a significant amount of surplus WWII U.S. gear, including M1941 Johnson rifles and camouflage patterns commonly used by duck hunters.
U.S. Army Special Forces, Vietnam, Sept. 1966. Note camo beret, BAR, and M3 Grease gun. D-Day in the A-Shau
Here is a look at how effective the “Beo Gam” was in Indochina:
And of course, as with anything, both surplus and recreations were popular with hunters in the 1950s and 60s as seen in this 1952 sportsman’s catalog image:
Interestingly enough, Colombia, Turkey, Iran, and Red China adopted duck hunter-like schemes for a time in the 1970s and early 1980s, effectively sealing the fate of the pattern in military service.
Colombia frog duck hunter camo called “Tigrillo” circa 1980s. Note the Galil
Turkish soldiers stand ready during the war in Cyprus, the 1970s with locally made HK G3s and Aegean camouflage pattern, based on American frogskin
Iranian soldiers photographed during the Iran-Iraq War, in the 1980s. The man in front has a locally made version of American P42 camouflage, which was made in the 1970s for the Shah and continued to serve in the war against Saddam
This rakish Chicom soldier during the Sino-Vietnamese War (1979) is wearing Type 81 duck hunter camouflage, with a Type 56 AKMS over his shoulder and a painted combat helmet hanging from the muzzle
