*** Welcome to piglix ***

Khaki drill


Khaki drill or KD was the term for a type of fabric and the British military uniforms made from them.

Uniform of Khaki color was first introduced in 1848 in the Corps of Guides that was raised in December 1846 as the brainchild of Sir Henry Lawrence (1806–1857) Resident at Lahore, and Agent to the Governor-General for the North-West Frontier. Lawrence chose as its commandant Sir Harry Lumsden supported by William Stephen Raikes Hodson as Second-in-Command to begin the process of raising the Corps of Guides for frontier service from British Indian recruits at Peshawar. Initially the border troops were dressed in their native costume, which consisted of a kurta and white pajama trousers made of a coarse home-spun cotton, and a cotton turban, supplemented by a leather or padded cotton jacket for cold weather. For the first year (1847) no attempt was made at uniformity. Subsequently in 1848 Lumsden and Hodson decided to introduce a drab (khaki) uniform which Hodson commissioned his brother in England to send them – as recorded in Hodson's book of published letters: "Twelve Years of a Soldier's Life in India", first published in 1859. It was only at a later date, when supplies of drab (khaki) material was unavailable, did they improvise by dying material locally with a dye. As well as the Corps of Guides, other regiments in India soon adopted the uniform and eventually it was used throughout the British military.

Khaki Drill was worn as a combat uniform from 1900 to 1949 and was most often used in desert and tropical service. A variant, still referred to a Khaki Drill or KD's, is worn by the UK Armed Forces in noncombatant warm weather countries where the British are actively serving (e.g. personnel stationed at R.A.F. Akrotiri in Cyprus will wear any of four working variants of this uniform). Generally KD was a series of different uniform patterns of light khaki cloth, generally cotton, first worn by British and British Empire soldiers in the Boer War. Canada developed its own pattern after the First World War, and the uniform was commonly worn in Canada, with officers again having the option of finer garments privately purchased. In the Second World War, Canadians serving in Jamaica and Hong Kong wore Canadian pattern KD; the I Canadian Corps troops in Italy wore KD supplied in theatre by the British, generally of British, Indian or US (War Aid) manufacture.


...
Wikipedia

...