Military Surplus fashion in the 1940s and 1950s

[Deleted member 16736]

Funny, but judging by the Vietnamese economy now, it turns out there was an American inside every Vietnamese waiting to get out.

One of the things that made military clothing cool to wear was that it was cheap. It's not cheap anymore, at least not the military reproductions we all clamor about. I feel like the coolness has been taken out of it, to a large extent.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

In the 1920s Sears sold surplus WWI uniforms as workwear.

 

[Atticus Finch]

One of the things that made military clothing cool to wear was that it was cheap.

There was a military surplus store near my home back during my high school days. It was always easy to know what the store had newly in stock from what the long-haired kids were wearing in school. I remember it once got in a cache of Korean War army overcoats and within a week half the kids in my class had one. For a while our school looked like a WWII stalag.

AF

 

[archbury918]

I wore a surplus M-43 field jacket through most of high school. Yeah it was kinda trendy, but frankly I liked all the deep pockets.
My Dad (WWII,KW vet), hated it.....used to say I "looked like a hood!"

 

[ButteMT61]

I wore a surplus M-43 field jacket through most of high school. Yeah it was kinda trendy, but frankly I liked all the deep pockets.
My Dad (WWII,KW vet), hated it.....used to say I "looked like a hood!"

We weren't "hoods" we were "stoners" according the the adults/teachers, etc. Funny in retrospect. But it was good, cheap gear. And most importantly, wasn't bough by our parents.

 

[p51]

I grew up in a town which had a women's college which went co-ed in 1947 as part of the GI Bill (it's known today as Florida State University).
Over the years I lived there, I talked with plenty of people who recall the immediate postwar era and the 50s. I was told it was very common to see women wearing WW2 flight jackets around there, well into the 50s. I guess they schmoozed them from the vets who didn't think the jackets would ever be considered especially valuable. If I had a nickel for every WW2 vet who told me he gave his A-2 jacket to his high school or college girlfriend (and if course never saw either again), I'd be rich today...

I was particlularly rebellious when I was a teen (to the system, not my parents), and when we had graduation practive in high school my senior year, they made a big deal about a breakfast beforehand where everyone was expected to come all dressed up. I thought it was an idiotic idea at the time (actually, I still do), and showed up when the real practice started wearing a 'Nam era fatigue shirt and messed up jeans. Everyone else were wearing shirts, ties, dresses, real Sunday church service stuff. I stuck out like a sore thumb and like it that way!

 

[jeep44]

Both my parents were WW2 vets, and of course, my dad wore bits and pieces of his uniforms for many years after. When they were in college right after the war, they bought a pair of those surplus ski parkas that were shown in the Sears ad at the start of this thread. We still have both of them (I used to wear one of them hunting as a kid)

 

[Dinerman]

Here are some scans out of late 1940s University of Maryland yearbooks:

 

[rjb1]

As a WWII reenactor, it is frustrating to find otherwise great military clothing that has paint, oil, or other "stuff" all over them. It's because post-war they were cheap and very functional and the people had no idea that anyone would ever want to use and/or collect them.

(the khaki jacket with the buttons up the front in the freewheelers photo is an M1943 field jacket liner and those are particularly hard to find in good original condition)

 

[Atticus Finch]

Dinerman's post caused me to look at some old editions of the Yackety Yak, UNC's yearbook. Here's some photos I found from during my time there in the 1970s. The last one was taken just before I arrived.

Flying club outing at Chapel Hill Airport...old MA-1

Rumpled M-51 with ragged sleeves.

No military surplus, but a taste of the times. Campus Rolling Thunder Protest.

AF

 

[Guttersnipe]

I never really understood the peace protesters of the 60-70's who wore fatigues and camouflage?

Probably like a lot of other folks, it was done out of an equal mix of irony, necessity, and for style. Military gear has a certain panache and current surplus can always be acquired cheaply.

After he was discharged in '68, my Dad gave away his dress greens, medals and all, (what he calls his "green ant suit") to the hippie chick that lived downstairs from him and my mom (she thought the jacket "very groovy"). Though, he saved his mackinaw jacket and field boots for camping and fishing trips. As a staving graduate student, he couldn't afford anything better from the L.L. Bean catalog. When I was a kid in the '80s, he still wore the jacket whenever we went to the Sierras!

Similarly, after the Air Force switched black leather flight jackets, my Grandad saved his pre-WWII A-2 for knock about wear. He wore it without insignia on the weekends and for fishing/hunting for years. The A-2 collectors will be sad to hear my Grandma eventually insisted he throw it away; after 20-odd years of rough wear had it looked pretty shabby . . .

 

[Ishmael]

(the khaki jacket with the buttons up the front in the freewheelers photo is an M1943 field jacket liner and those are particularly hard to find in good original condition)

Thanks for the info. Wasn't sure exactly what that jacket was. Don't think I've ever seen a repro of it. They list it as an M-1943 and describe the materials as "cotton/nylon66 broadcloth". It hasn't been released yet. Probably within the next couple weeks. I'm looking for something to wear inside the vest-coat I bought and this might be an alternative to an n-1 style jacket. I'm guessing that it won't be a true repro, since this years items are all about hybridized military-civilian pieces......

 

[Highwaymanman]

I never really understood the peace protesters of the 60-70's who wore fatigues and camouflage?

It's quite well understood if you research it. A lot of them were Vietnam veterans who had been honorably discharged and/or decorated because of rather than despite having carried out acts against during war time that they later found very hard to live with. They still had the right to wear those uniforms and indeed, anti-war protests were given weight by their participation whilst in uniform. This is all well documented from multiple sources ranging from NYT articles, government studies, material found in the national archives, eyewitness accounts and so on. Read for example the books 'Kill Anything That Moves' by Nick Turse and 'A Bright Shining Lie' by Neil Sheehan.

 

[gtdean48]

I wore a surplus M-43 field jacket through most of high school. Yeah it was kinda trendy, but frankly I liked all the deep pockets.
My Dad (WWII,KW vet), hated it.....used to say I "looked like a hood!"

I still have my Army Surplus field jacket in the cedar closet. Wear it from time to time at hunt camp.
All thru Junior High/High School/College, we'd shop Old Sarge Army-Navy Surplus for Vietnam era jackets & cargo pants (BDU's).
Sometimes put patches on them...

Back in Junior High days, we wore the field jackets & shot at each other with Daisy BB-guns so it wouldn't sting as bad...nobody lost an eye but did get a whelp or 2...

 

[David Conwill]

Similarly, after the Air Force switched black leather flight jackets, my Grandad saved his pre-WWII A-2 for knock about wear. He wore it without insignia on the weekends and for fishing/hunting for years. The A-2 collectors will be sad to hear my Grandma eventually insisted he throw it away; after 20-odd years of rough wear had it looked pretty shabby . . .

Similar thing happened to the B3 my grandfather is wearing in this picture:



It and the matching A3 trousers (I've posted about them elsewhere) hung around until the 1970s or '80s. I think my dad used to occasionally wear the B3 as a cold-weather jacket. Eventually the leather split down the back and Dad pitched it.

Grandpa got back into the Air Force in 1950 and retired in 1968. Between that and Dad's '68 to '73 stint, there was always plenty of WWII, '50s, and Vietnam surplus around as functional clothing when I was growing up. I still wear Dad's M65, along with one of grandpa's paint-splattered '50s fatigue shirts, and a pair of What Price Glory tanker's coveralls, to walk the dog.

Most amusingly, Dad had a Brit-camo parka very similar to the one in the 1948 catalog that was his favorite coat just before he died. That makes me want to dig it out.

 

[Horace Debussy Jones]

I had an uncle that was involved in The Aleutian Island Campaign who ended up staying in Alaska after the war.
I asked my mom once if he had ever kept any uniforms or pin's, patches, etc.
She explained that he pitched all that as soon as he was able because he was fed up with the war and all the saluting and military protocol. As soon as he was discharged he wanted to put it all behind him. I think a lot of veterans maybe felt the same way, regardless of how stylish their uniforms might look to civilians.
I'm fairly certain he would have kept and used cold weather gear like parkas and boots though, for practical reasons.

 

[Atticus Finch]

After my father passed away I found most of his dress uniforms and his heavy overcoat carefully stored in his closet. But almost all of his flight gear (including his B-10) was missing. Then Mom told me why. My father was a frugal man and he had kept the stuff he had been required to pay for, himself. When the war ended he no longer cared a whit about uniforms, equipment or anything else war related...but he dang sure wasn't going to throw away perfectly good clothing that he had worked hard to buy.

AF

 

[andy b.]

I'm like a lot of the posters here, almost every male in my family going back several generations served in the military. Around my house, surplus gear was just considered hand-me-downs or "dad's old jacket". We wore it or used it until it wore out, and that was that. I still have storage containers with uniforms and gear that I wear whenever it fits the occasion.

I also remember buying the stuff because it was inexpensive. There used to be a great surplus store in State College, PA when I was a PSU student. You could tell when the place got a big batch of something cool in because half the campus seemed to be wearing it. I still have the heavy wool German overcoat that I paid around $20 for. One time they got in a truckload of green cargo pants. The knees and cuffs were all worn and frayed, so the store had a lady whose full-time job (for months it seemed) was to cut the pants off at the knee and hem them into shorts. I swear every kid on campus had a pair, I know I did. I don't think it was until many years later that the "cargo shorts" craze started. I guess we were ahead of the times back then.

Andy B.

 

[Dinerman]

Here's an ad from 1948

 

[David Conwill]

Fascinating ad! Can you give any context? "Hot Rod" was a term only just tickling the edge of respectability in 1948.