Forage cap

Forage cap is the designation given to various types of military undress, fatigue or working headwear. These varied widely in form, according to country or period. The coloured peaked cap worn by the modern British Army for parade and other dress occasions is known as a forage cap.

In the 18th century, forage caps were small cloth caps worn by British cavalrymen when undertaking work duties such as foraging for food for their horses. The term was later applied to undress caps worn by men of all branches and regiments as a substitute for the full dress headdress. The kepi widely worn during the American Civil War is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a forage cap.

During the French Revolutionary Wars, French soldiers made their own forage caps from the sleeve of an old coat. Known as the Bonnet de Police, these caps resembled a nightcap and were also worn by Santa Anna's army during the Mexican War, and by Confederate troops during the American Civil War. From the 1840s until World War II, French troops wore the blue and red kepi, but in 1915, the Bonnet de Police was reintroduced as the Garrison cap. By the 1940s, the beret was also widely worn.

The German army was the first to use the peaked cap, in the final years of the Napoleonic Wars. When the Pickelhaube was introduced in the 1840s, the Germans adopted a new, peakless forage cap, resembling the sailor cap. Originally made of Prussian blue wool, this was replaced with a slate grey version in the 1890s, with a dark green cap band. After World War I, the German Wehrmacht used a variant of the garrison cap called the Feldmütze, before adopting the Austrian-style ski cap of the Gebirgsjäger.

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