Thursday, December 03, 2009

Dress Blues

I was noticing the uniforms worm by the soldiers in attendence at President Obama's speech at West Point. Currently, the Army's equivalent of a suit is the Class A, or Dress Green uniform. It's the one you usually see them wearing when they testify before congress, for example. See below. (Click any image to enlarge.



At West Point for the speech they were all (except the cadets, who have their own uniform and wierd rank) wearing their Dress Blues, stepping it up a notch.



BTW, there is an even dressier uniform, called the Dress Mess uniform.

3 comments:

Tara A. Rowe said...

What type of event would call for the Dress Mess?

Alan said...

Something along the lines of a formal dance or dinner. We have annual events called a "dining in" and soldiers wear the green class A, the Dress Blues, and some will break out the Dress Mess. If any soldiers went to Obama's state dinner for the prime minister of India, I'd bet they wore Dress Mess. (Mess, of course, relating to food, like we used to call it the mess hall.)

fortboise said...

You tease with those photo links -- they're just the same picture, not a larger version.

Wikipedia's got a fun (and international) Mess dress page to satisfy a bit more curiosity.

That reminded me of visting my cousin Sigi, back in 1999. (A younger me tried on his grandfather von Poten's Consul uniform, pictures down at the bottom of that long page.)

Among his memorabilia was a pair of cavalry trousers he wore in WWII, with bullet holes in them.