Original US issue Trousers, Combat, in the six color desert print, on contract DLA100-94-C-8801, RN 89706. Small Regular, 50 percent cotton and 50 percent nylon. Instruction and size labels both intact and fully legible.

Start with the contract date, because it is the interesting thing about this pair. The six color is remembered as the uniform of Desert Shield and Desert Storm, and by the usual telling it was finished after 1991, replaced in frontline US Army issue by the three color desert pattern standardized in 1990. This pair was made on a 1994 contract. The label has also dropped the old wording, printed simply as Trousers, Combat rather than Trousers, Desert Camouflage Pattern, and it carries a later stock number than the early 1980s runs. Production of the six color plainly continued after the pattern’s headline service was over, filling residual requirements and supplying allied and coalition forces who kept it in use long after the US Army moved on. Late contract examples like this are considerably less common in collections than the 1980s and 1990 to 1991 runs that everybody has.

The design behind the print goes back much further. It was drawn in 1960 by John H. Hopkins at MERADCOM and formalized in 1970, modeled on the rocky deserts of the American southwest, at a time when planners were thinking about American involvement in an Arab-Israeli war. When that prospect cooled the pattern was shelved and stayed shelved until the late 1970s put the Middle East back at the top of the list. It entered issue in 1981, at first only to the Rapid Deployment Force and to units flying to Egypt for the Bright Star exercises.

Look at what the print is actually doing. A light tan ground carries broad sweeps of pale green and two tone bands of brown, and scattered across all of it are clusters of black and white spots meant to read as pebbles and the shadows they throw. It is a literal painting of desert floor, rocks included, and that is where the chocolate chip and cookie dough nicknames come from.

The reckoning came in 1990. American forces deployed to Saudi Arabia in six color and it became the uniform of the whole war, in every photograph and every broadcast. Soldiers found it contrasted too sharply with the flat open ground they were actually fighting over, terrain with none of the rock clusters the pattern was built to imitate, and the dark areas pulled heat in a place that needed no help being hot. The three color replacement was ready on paper but not in quantity. Which makes a 1994 pair the tail of a story that had already been written.

CONDITION AND DETAILS

Size Small Regular per the label
Waist 27 to 31 inches, adjustable by tabs on the waistband
Inseam 29 1/2 to 32 1/2 inches
NSN 8415-01-184-1346, NATO size 7583/6979
Contract DLA100-94-C-8801, RN 89706
50 percent cotton, 50 percent nylon
Fabric sound throughout with bright color and a crisp, sharply registered print
Light wear only, with faint scattered marks to the seat and waistband area
Waist adjustment tabs and buckles present and functional
Both leg bottom drawcords present with tips intact
Button fly complete, all buttons present
Cargo pockets, hip pockets, watch pocket and all flaps present and sound
Instruction and size labels both present and fully legible
No insignia, markings or name to the garment
No holes, tears or repairs noted

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