Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:
So, I was in the Navy in the 1970's just after the unification. The old Navy "blues" were a bit fiddly, a bit too British and were sort of obsolete. The wool great coats were really good in winter. The work dungerees were vastly superior to anything that has yet to replaced them. The downside is that they were natural cotton fabric and therefore required a bit of effort to keep them looking reasonable. Lots of upsides to that cotton, though. It breathes better and feels good on your skin. It doesn't catch fire. It smolders when it's dry but if you have to fight a fire in polyester, you run the real risk of bursting into a petrochemical-fuelled blaze, yourself. Cotton dungerees, wetted by a fog nozzle are like armour against that fire that you MUST fight. Also, polyester traps grease, oil, DIESEL and it binds with the fibre and you never seem to get rid of it rubbing against your skin. It's hot when you're hot and fecking cold when it's cold. It keeps it's "press" though but that isn't a good trade off for me. I had an old, blue cotyon RCN boiler suit that I lived in. The Chief ERAs hated the greens too and never bothered me for it.
The "Seven-Up delivery man green" dress uniform was ... inert. The idea of wearing rifles green on a ship didn't bother young me. It was a really easy uniform to maintain and you didn't have to spend hours ironing to keep from getting into shit. If you were "guards" or shore patrol, you still wore the traditional naval white gaiters and webbing over it, anyway. The berets were a definite inmprovement over the old Seaman's "port-and-starboard cap. The peaked cap was okay ... not distinctly of any service, although the anchor crest was a dead give-away. We had ball caps, too but they were crap and identical to the one that the guy driving his combine in Saskatchewan was wearing. We wore our berets. The modern Navy does the identification part far better than what we were issued, way back at the height of the Cold War.
I wore the square rig when I joined in the late 60's and still have my #2's minus the Scully hanging in my closet along with the Navy Black uniform medals, badges and black gaiters included that I wore when I got out. I've also got my silk, lanyard and 2 collars with the creases still ironed in. But, when I went to put in on a couple of years ago it had shrunk so badly that I couldn't even get the jumper over my shoulders and the pants looked like they'd fit a 12 year old boy.
That green abomination was burned when we went back to a distinctive Naval uniform so you're preaching to the choir but, unless my mind is shot unification was Feb 01 1968 not in the 70's.
Back on topic. Unfortunately this uniform change is being done for a much more nefarious purpose and has nothing to do with Esprit Des Corp and everything to do with accommodating minorities by making them feel special in the vain hope they'll join the military and make it the multicultural, multisexual, tolerant, peacekeeping group of Boy Scouts that Jean Chretien wanted rather than the warriors they're really trained to be. All this policy is going to do is create equal but separate groups within the military based on race, religion and sexual orientation while diminishing any real hard earned medals, awards and uniform accouterments.
That does not bode well for unit cohesion.
The question came up about how long after the unification fiasco the Navy seitcyed to wearing "Greens" from " Blues". I remembered that the Blues lasted into the 1970s. I stumbled upon footage from HMCS Saguenay of the burial at sea of some of the victims of the reduction gear box explosion on Kooteney in the English Channel in September 1969. They're still in old rigs.
CKA Uber 
CKA Moderator 
