Blacking up!

[James]

When looking at some stuff on WWI, I came upon a delightful snippet of information:

That in the early years of that war-The London Scottish blacked teir knees as well as their faces before embarking on night raids.

James

[Bil]

That's a pretty cool little bit of trivia.

[NewKilt]

That's very interesting, James. Thinking about it, it makes sense. Do you know if they wore khaki kilts? Just curious.

Darrell

[chasem]

I haven't done much study on this, but if I remember right (and by all means, someone correct me if I'm wrong!), they wore tartan kilts, but wore kind of an apron-guard on the front that was a sort of khaki material.

again, someone correct me if I'm wrong!

[James]

The London Scottish wore their Hodden Grey kilts when first in action.

The so called camouflage apron did in most cases go right round-think an 'overkilt'.

James

[g koch]

Yabba Dabba Dubh !

[Blu (Ontario)]

Yabba Dabba Dubh !

or if you were born in the '50s...

"a little dab 'L' dubh ya".

[michael steinrok]

I haven't done much study on this, but if I remember right (and by all means, someone correct me if I'm wrong!), they wore tartan kilts, but wore kind of an apron-guard on the front that was a sort of khaki material.

again, someone correct me if I'm wrong!

You are correct. There is a great osprey booklet available with a 1914 era black watch piper available from Sierra toy Soldier that has great pictures of this apron. The piper is very nice too! Look up Del Prado on their website . 20th century

http://www.sierratoysoldier.com/

[James]

Be very wary of any reference works regarding British Army unforms and equipment-or regarding this or that picture taken at a particular time of a soldier/s.

This is because units would often have their own ideas, even battalions within the same regiment might not share a common uniform code.

I've seen pictures purporting to be of my unit, yet they were entirely different to what we actually wore.

So the fact that some units might wear an apron only, and others an entire all round khaki covering is just the way it happens: too individuals might have as is common scrounged something not available to others in their battalion/platoon even.

I'll close by saying that I'm rather sure that you'll not see a picture of British soldiers wearing stable belts on operations in a reference book: but we did.

This is not to knock Osprey who are doing their best, but please accept that their generalisations are not of necessity correct when looking at a particular soldier/unit at a particular time.

James

[mbhandy]

I Don't know but that seems pretty tough to be crawling in the dirt and brush in a Kilt. Really rough on the knees. Might be why I joined the Air Force :rolleyes:

MrBill