Badly Worn Berets

The U.S. Army should unadopt the Black Beret.

A bit of history:

First used by Scots and Basques for keeping heads warm.  Later used by tankers in WWI who had some difficulty donning traditional headgear and operating within armored vehicles.  Currently used in many forces around the world as a part of their uniform. 

In the late 1950's U.S. Special Forces units boosting esprit de corps and displaying their unique nature began wearing "unauthorized" green berets.  This headgear was adopted from the British Commando units.  The department of the Army denied requests to wear the headgear. In 1961, William Yarborough was told by JFK to "wear them with pride," and the headgear becoming synonymous with Special Forces.

Thereafter, Airborne units began wearing maroon berets, and Rangers began wearing black berets. These became badges of distinction and pride among these units.  For a while other units jumped on the band wagon and wore a rainbow assortment of berets; until the Army put a stop to the nonsense, and limited the berets to only Special Forces, Airborne, and Rangers.

On Oct. 17, 2000 Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki announced that the black beret would become standard Army headgear. Shinseki said he wanted to use the sense of pride that the beret has long represented to the Rangers to foster an attitude of excellence among the entire Army as it moves forward with its sweeping transformation effort to a lighter, more deployable, more agile force.

In 2001, the powers that be figured the entire army is elite, and everyone should be wearing black berets and the Army adopted the Black Beret as the official piece of head gear. This created some heartburn among the Rangers, and they switched to tan berets. Most argued that taking something from an elite group and giving it to everyone, does not make everyone elite, it just dilutes the solution.

So, almost ten years later, can Shinseki wave a mission accomplished banner and throw up victory fingers?

Now the black beret is just a piece of headgear, but it seems an undercurrent of grumbling may have the Army change back to the trusty and more practical Patrol cap.

Drum roll please, and now the Top Ten reasons to dump the beret:

10. Berets are too closely associated with the French.

9. A beret's functionality and practicality:

- it doesn't keep sun out of eyes

- it takes two hands to place on head

- when wet it smells like a wet dog

- it has to be shaved and shaped to look right

- it is hot, which would be fine in cold weather, but in cold weather you switch out for a cold weather cap.

8. The Patrol Cap is already required and part of the uniform for field use.  So soldiers must maintain both a beret and Patrol Cap.

7. The Patrol Cap is cheaper than the Beret, plus it is easier to maintain.

6. The beret can look cool, but let’s be honest – most people can’t pull this off.

5. Berets already worn by colorful characters and role models like Che Guevera, Fidel Castro, Lady Gaga, Monica Lewenski, and beatniks,

4. Even the Marine Corps (not the forefront of adaptation to be sure) experimented with blue and green berets in 1951, before deciding they looked too "foreign" and "feminine."  

3. Bad Ideas don't get better with time.

2. So many soldiers make the beret look ridiculous - or vice versa:

1. Too many options for personal expression:

So switching back to the patrol cap readily applies to the field uniform.  (Adavanced Combat Uniform - ACU's, a whole other issue).  But what about with the dress uniforms (becoming dress uniform - army blues)?

In all practicality, and simplicity – keep the beret, but wear it with the service uniform.  Wear the PC with ACU’s.

Here are some suggestions to round out options for the panel I am sure the Army will adopt soon after seeing the urgency of this matter:

spartan helmets

raspberry berets

cowboy hats (as put forth in an atypical Army April Fool’s joke)

And while cowboy hats have some merit as being American and going back to Army Calvary units, these are rather expensive and unpractical and difficult to transport.

So how about baseball caps.  Very trendy, practical and 100% American.

And what to do with all these unused berets: 

Donate them to the newly trained Iraqi Army - to make them feel more elite.  (Didn't Saddam also wear a black beret?)

Use them to make eye patches for international talk like a pirate day (ITLAPD).

Donate them to wildlife conservation programs for animals with cold heads.

 I'm sure this has all been compelling enough to make changes promptly.