Berets Part I

[Lustmolch]

Paddy,

I suppose you get attached to whatever you wear first. To wear THE red beret, well that's one thing, you have to earn it. For an infantry anti-tank commander to lead armoured vehicles, and in a black beret was quite another, it simply came with the vehicles.

- Hans

I remember a documentary on the TV a few years ago about the landings on Crete. There were some veteran fallschirmjäger on the programme and it was interesting to note that they all wore a maroon beret very similar to that of the (English) Parachute Regt, with a Bundeswehr version of the WWII parachutist's qualification badge. Even more interestingly, the Paras adopted "Rot scheint die Sonne" as their marching song.

If you've read the late Spike Milligan's war memoirs, he made some similar comments about berets in one of his books.

[Paddy Keating]

The Parachute Regiment (UK) never adopted Rot scheint die Sonne as a marching song. Our regimental march was an interpretation of Wagner's Ride of the Valkerie. We did sing Kretalied in English as an unofficial regimental song and some of us sang it in German too. The Bundeswehr wear the maroon beret with a badge based on the WW2 jump badge so the WW2 Fallschirmjäger veterans naturally wear this at reunions and functions.

PK

[Riverine]

'Better that sailors would adopt the beret than that ridiculous 'dixie cup'... especially when worn according to US Naval Uniform Regulations. I wore the 'black beret' of the Riverine Force while in the Mekong Delta. It was smaller than the current Army version and 'correctly' worn with the puffy liner ripped out. (I still have it.) The Navy used to have a blue wool 'Flat hat'... which was essentially a symetrical beret... 'n could be made to look good with some fore 'n aft tweaking. It needed a 'device' on the front peak tho... Oh well. It was abandoned because hitchhiking sailors couldn't be seen very well in their blues at night. Now there's no hitchhiking anywhere 'n they finally pay well enough for sailors to afford cars. (Never enough... but that's another story.) The 'cow turd sliding off the head' was funny...