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The DEU Sweater - Keep, Bin, Improve

Do you wear the DEU Sweater

  • Total voters
    31
  • Poll closed .
K

Kilted

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FJAG said:
Or Garrison Dress. I'm one of the fourteen guys in the Army that actually liked it. :giggle:

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Why was this graphic made? Is Garrison dress going to be a thing again?
 
Oldgateboatdriver

Oldgateboatdriver

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Grimey said:
Around the same time, the RCN got the polyester version of NCDs, which on the face of it made sense. NCDs were expensive, being made from Nomex and (supposedly) fire retardant. Why wear them out on fleet school/shore postings?
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Actually, Grimey, we never got nomex NCD before polyester. Nor did we ever get something that was tailored the Army Garrison Dress way.

During the pre-unification years, officers wore their service dress at sea - wool pants and jacket with cotton shirts and tie, while the sailor wore either the cotton square rig shirt with wool "serge" pants, or , more often, cotton made jeans and a blue-jeans shirt - supplemented by anti-flash gloves and hood as required. There was no such thing as a "naval combat" dress.

After unification, we wore the green polyester work dress issued to all three services as our sea going rig, with the officers wearing the light green shirt and cap instead of the dark green work dress shirt and beret.

When we got back to different environment colours, the Army adopted the Garrison Dress that you saw in the picture. It had a longer jacket with big square Army style pockets and a web belt over it in the midriff. The navy just changed the "old" work dress style, turned it blue (Navy for the pants and jacket, wedgewood for the shirt) but it remained polyester and became known as the Garrison Dress - but it was not the same as the Army one at all.

But this one hundred percent polyester had already been found to be too dangerous, and it was only kept while the Navy worked on getting a proper fire retardant sea going uniform. That became the original nomex NCD, which replaced the old "naval" Garrison Dress, and so we never "went back" to polyester from nomex. Once we finally had a fire retardant "Combat Dress", we never looked back.
 
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Grimey

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Oldgateboatdriver said:
Actually, Grimey, we never got nomex NCD before polyester. Nor did we ever get something that was tailored the Army Garrison Dress way.

During the pre-unification years, officers wore their service dress at sea - wool pants and jacket with cotton shirts and tie, while the sailor wore either the cotton square rig shirt with wool "serge" pants, or , more often, cotton made jeans and a blue-jeans shirt - supplemented by anti-flash gloves and hood as required. There was no such thing as a "naval combat" dress.

After unification, we wore the green polyester work dress issued to all three services as our sea going rig, with the officers wearing the light green shirt and cap instead of the dark green work dress shirt and beret.

When we got back to different environment colours, the Army adopted the Garrison Dress that you saw in the picture. It had a longer jacket with big square Army style pockets and a web belt over it in the midriff. The navy just changed the "old" work dress style, turned it blue (Navy for the pants and jacket, wedgewood for the shirt) but it remained polyester and became known as the Garrison Dress - but it was not the same as the Army one at all.

But this one hundred percent polyester had already been found to be too dangerous, and it was only kept while the Navy worked on getting a proper fire retardant sea going uniform. That became the original nomex NCD, which replaced the old "naval" Garrison Dress, and so we never "went back" to polyester from nomex. Once we finally had a fire retardant "Combat Dress", we never looked back.
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I didn’t mean to imply that the Navy adopted a version of Army Garrison Dress, just that the Navy version was issued around the same time. From memory, the first version of NCDs were issued before Navy garrison dress and was a direct replacement for the old green work dress.

The initial version of NCDs were gash. The shirt buttons fell off with every wash, the pants shrunk every wash cycle and looked comical with the crippler sea boots, and both the pants and jacket turned a fetching aubergine colour. This was late ‘88/early ‘89 or so. Because of the quality control issues, we held on to the green stuff as long as we could. Later versions were much better. Can’t comment on the latest stuff other than being perplexed by the number of Velcro badges.
 
Humphrey Bogart

Humphrey Bogart

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Grimey said:
I didn’t mean to imply that the Navy adopted a version of Army Garrison Dress, just that the Navy version was issued around the same time. From memory, the first version of NCDs were issued before Navy garrison dress and was a direct replacement for the old green work dress.

The initial version of NCDs were gash. The shirt buttons fell off with every wash, the pants shrunk every wash cycle and looked comical with the crippler sea boots, and both the pants and jacket turned a fetching aubergine colour. This was late ‘88/early ‘89 or so. Because of the quality control issues, we held on to the green stuff as long as we could. Later versions were much better. Can’t comment on the latest stuff other than being perplexed by the number of Velcro badges.
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I think the CAF should make the Navy wear Green Army Dress. For no other reason than I would get a kick out of the Navy complaining about it 😄.
 
FSTO

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Humphrey Bogart said:
I think the CAF should make the Navy wear Green Army Dress. For no other reason than I would get a kick out of the Navy complaining about it 😄.
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The first bunch of combats I ever received turned green after a couple of weeks in the sun. So, been there, done that punk!🤨🤣
 
dimsum

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FSTO said:
My first instinct when anything comes down from the CAF hierarchy is to think “Fucking Army”
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Canadian Army First?

Although, having spent some time in dark blue, the RCN is by no means devoid of such ridiculousness.
 
Oldgateboatdriver

Oldgateboatdriver

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Actually, the first batch of NCD's had a bad habit, even when cleaned according to the procedure that was indicated, to turn purpleish pink. It was funny to those of us who did not inherit one of those, especially considering that it was not considered a defect by the supply system and thus they could not get replacement.
 
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