British battledress in 1944 - was it common to wear blouses and trousers of different shades?

[Didier]

This is the question that has been bothering me for some time now, ever since I received my Canadian made BD trousers: although both the BD blouse I already had and the trousers were made in Canada in 1943, they are not the same colour. The blouse is markedly greener than the trousers, which was a bit of a disappointment to me.

However, as I wanted to get to the bottom of the question, I have been looking for colour photos taken during WW2 and have found this:

(Normandy, 13 July 1944)

Now, for comparison purposes, here are my BD blouse and trousers:



My question is simple: from your own experience, do you think it was common to wear BD blouses and trousers of different shades in 1944?

Regards,

Didier

[Adrian Stevenson]

The colour would not matter and you would just wear what was issued to you.

[Watchdog]

The colour would not matter and you would just wear what was issued to you.

I agree 100%. It was a case of what you were issued and the uniforms were not issued as matching suits. Rather it was issued as "Blouse, Battledress, Khaki" x 1 and "Trousers Battledress Khaki" x 1 and so on. You might even receive blouse and trousers from different makers depending on what was on the shelf. It was a matter of fitting the correct size of each to the individual soldiers physical proportions (long legs / short body or vice versa).

The differences in shade come down to different batches of material or different factories.

As recently as 1976 I had a DPM combat jacket that was a totally different shade not only to my trousers but to everyone els's kit in the company, the green in the pattern was almost the same shade as antifreeze and the brown was a kind of russet colour. It kind of stuck out a bit but it was issued and I had to use it. Conversely the rest of my combat clothing (I had three suits) was perfectly normal.

In wartime the situation made this especially prominent. I imagine the same occurs in most armies.

I hope this helps

Regards

Mark

[asterperious]

Concur with the above - Canadian made BD was a darker shade typically - but it came down more to the dye lots on runs of cloth. Some dyes were not as colour fast as others and shift with exposure to UV faster, washing etc. The Commonwealth went to war in potato sacks as my old neigbour as a kid and D-Day veteran often remark. The Germans probably prosecuted crimes against fashion given their love of haberdashery and sartorial splendour - but not the Brits.