Service Dress (British Army)

Service Dress was the new style of khaki uniform introduced by the British Army for use in the field from the early 1900s, following the experiences of a number of imperial wars and conflicts, including the Second Boer War. This variant of uniform continues to be worn today, although only in a formal role, as No. 2 Pattern dress.

In many actions during the latter half of the Nineteenth Century, the bright red tunics worn by British infantry regiments had proved to be a liability, especially when faced by enemies armed with new rifles firing smokeless cartridges (this had been exacerbated by the white carrying equipment worn by the line infantry, the cross straps of which formed an X on the soldier's chest).

The term Khaki (Urdu for dust) had come from India and was used to describe the 'Drab' uniform first worn in 1848 by the Corps of Guides which had been raised in December 1846 as the brain-child of Sir Henry Montgomery 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, who began the process of raising the Corps of Guides from British Indian recruits at Peshawar for frontier service. Initially the border troops were dressed in their native costume, which consisted of a smock 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; 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 were unavailable, that they improvised by dying material locally with a dye.

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