Original US issue Coat, Camouflage Pattern: Desert, in the six color print, on contract DLA100-83-C-0574 to Selma Apparel Corporation. Medium Regular, 50 percent cotton and 50 percent nylon. Instruction and size labels both intact and fully legible.

A 1983 contract puts this coat at the front of the story rather than the end of it. The six color entered issue in 1981, and in those first years it did not go to the Army at large. It went to the Rapid Deployment Force, the standing contingency command built to put American troops into the Persian Gulf on short notice, and to units flying to Egypt for the Bright Star exercises. This is a garment from the years when the American desert army was still a plan being rehearsed, seven years before it became a war.

The pattern behind it is older still. 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 design was shelved and stayed shelved until the late 1970s put the Middle East back at the top of the list.

Look at what the print is 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 cast. It is a literal painting of desert floor, rocks included, which is where the chocolate chip and cookie dough nicknames come from.

Then the theory met the ground. In August 1990 American forces deployed to Saudi Arabia in six color, and this became the uniform of Desert Shield and Desert Storm, in every photograph and every broadcast of that war. Soldiers found it contrasted too sharply with the flat open terrain they were actually fighting over, ground 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 had been standardized in 1990 but could not be produced in time. The six color was discontinued after 1991.

The coat itself follows the standard four pocket combat cut: bellows chest and skirt pockets with pointed buttoned flaps, buttoned cuff tabs, and the label instruction to wear it outside the trousers and adjust the closures to ventilate rather than overheat. Uninsignia’d examples like this are the ones collectors and reenactors want, because they take whatever unit patches and tapes a display calls for. It pairs naturally with early contract six color trousers and with the desert night camouflage overgarments cut to be worn over it.

CONDITION AND DETAILS

Size Medium Regular per the label
Fits height 67 to 71 inches (5 ft 7 in to 5 ft 11 in)
Fits chest 37 to 41 inches
NSN 8415-01-102-6766, NATO size 7080/9404
Contract DLA100-83-C-0574, Selma Apparel Corporation
50 percent cotton, 50 percent nylon
Fabric sound throughout, softened and lightly faded from service wear and laundering
Scattered light staining, most visible on the collar, the left chest pocket and the lower front
All buttons present on the front, cuffs and all four pocket flaps
All four pockets and flaps intact 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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