Otzi the iceman wore a grass cape. I don’t know if it was camouflage or just cheap, available material like birch bark leggings in the Birkenleg Saga. Probably both. The German legend of the Tarnkappe is traced by Wiktionary to ‘darne’, ‘secret, hidden’: ttps://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Tarnkappe
I’ve seen pictures of New Guinea tribesmen wearing grass pointy capes that look both cheap and hard to spot. When NVA were putting bushes on their heads to hide from our bombers they looked similar.

* * *

I just read ‘Across the Dark Islands’ by Floyd Radike on Dave in Seattle’s recommendation. It’s a pretty good war memoir, not as stuffed with wry commentary as Roy Dunlap, who after all was a top professional gun magazine writer. Floyd Radike was a teacher and National Guard officer who went to the Pacific War. Regulars looked down on National Guard units, and so does Radike. I think MacArthur used up the old Army of the Southwest in the Pacific war due to them being his only regulars. One reason the Pacific war involved so many dead prisoners is that it was fought by decimated units of US regulars and starving units of Japanese.

Radike uses ‘good old boy’ as slur for ‘politically adept crooked nincompoop’. I don’t know if that was forties usage, since he revised the book through 1984.

‘What was obvious on Guadacanal was the relegation of the Guard regiment to second-class status . . . I was not sure that the division commander wasn’t right. I didn’t know whether we would fight, and the ‘old boys’ who dominated the officer corps were less than admirable. I was disgusted with most of the field-grade officers I’d had contact with. The NCOs, including my own, were a mixed lot, few exhibiting any leadership, courage, or initiative.’ …
‘There was perhaps another reason for the reticence of higher headquarters to use the National Guard regiment in a significant way… In war, a captain can look forward to a colonelcy and, if he is lucky and brilliant, even a general’s star may be in his future . . . Guadacanal would be no exception to this hunger for combat, command, and promotion.’

With exceptions- ‘I was going to ask if he [division commander] he knew how to handle such a weapon [machine gun] and in the nick of time remembered he had written the manual’. He thinks very highly of that division commander, and of regular units in general. He thinks highly of Army using artillery preparation and flanking tactics. He hates unprepared assaults by infantry on prepared positions, and hates his commanding officer for ordering unnecessary patrols at night when standing orders were for everyone to hide in foxholes and shoot at any movement.

When his commanding officer (personally brave and kind to wounded men, nasty to unwounded, never praised a job well done) was killed there were no regrets in the unit.

The first time his National Guard unit is ordered to the front line, as opposed to cleanup operations, it is to replace another Guard unit that broke and ran when attacked. The regiment that broke was, ‘as the Soviets say, unregimented’ and disappeared from Army records. Wiki supports Radike.

The first march into Guadacanal the colonel collapses from heat, along with a number of others accustomed to Georgia heat and not up to tropics. ‘The older men, those over twenty-five’ are pretty much doomed by heat and disease.

The first skirmish by Radike’s unit, a popular, brave lieutenant is killed with several men trying to capture a lone Japanese soldier left visible as bait for an ambush. At first the whole regiment advances with glacial slowness, allowing the Japanese plenty of time to retreat and prepare positions. The first time the regiment attacks a prepared position they give the Japanese five days to prepare and then attack without artillery preparation. When they do get artillery, ‘it was not uncommon to find cannoneers for an entire battalion cowering in their foxholes while one sniper took potshots at them. Of course, during the cowering period no missions were fired to support the infantry.
‘The Japanese were very adept at strong, interlocking defensive positions. To order our soldiers to attack such positions with infantry and rifles was to get a lot of Americans killed. Of course no one wants to be deemed a coward, so during the course of the Pacific War thousands of GIs and marines demonstrated their courageous response to foolish orders …’

Guadacanal is a training war for his regiment.

By the PI they are fighting like regulars, and the artillery is sorted out. And it’s still tough.

But still- ‘As officers passed through the different commands on their way to war, the strong, athletic, bright guys were siphoned off by intervening headquarters. But the small, timid, or weakly types were bound to wind up in the infantry. So much for the personnel system . . . ‘Skimming’ best describes it. . . And of course the rifle companies were at the bottom of the ladder: it was exceptional for a rifle company to get any troops with outstanding qualities. Instead there were too many of the short, fat, and relatively uneducated- many from rural areas. The concept that the best soldiers were needed at the ‘cutting edge’ was not honored in replacement policies … My platoon sergeant was the only exception I ever saw.’

I’m not sure Radike is completely right. The Romans compared good solders, short, bandy-legged, accustomed to hardship, with athletes- bigger, stronger, faster, but needing more food and less hardened to dirt and disease. People hardened by social mistreatment are hardened against military hierarchies.

‘On the plus side there was the M-1 rifle. It was the best thing that every happened to an infantryman. No matter how dirty it was, or how much sand had penetrated the mechanism, it always fired. And the 30 caliber bullet would go through a tree and kill a man on the other side.’

‘Royal Navy food was absolutely tasteless. Salt and pepper didn’t help. None of our crew said anything, but I could see by the grim set of their jaws that a can of good old-fashioned C-rations would have been preferable. . . ‘What you want, sir, is a sweet.’ I nodded and received a small dish of grayish-white substance. The steward enlightened me ‘It’s duff, sir’. ..’Mix equal parts of flour and water, boil until thick, cool, and serve’. I struggled through the remainder of the duff . . .’

US navy food was fresh and wonderful compared to the endless C rations, which gave Radike more calories than ever before or since in his life and led to increased troop losses from disease.

‘The Japanese fought with tenacity, but their willingness to die in a hole, rather than escape and fight another day, was the fatal flaw that led to their defeat. The banzai charge and fighting to the death in a hole were not courageous but silly.’

Not sure Radike was right. Most Japanese casualties were from starvation. A starving man can die bravely in a hole or a charge. Play different, lose different.

Finally the Japanese surrender. ‘The biggest plus for us was the presence of Douglass MacArthur in Tokyo. No one, repeat no one, could have established the authority of the occupation as well as he did’.

Radike refuses a promotion to major to get home and be a teacher again. Well done!

https://i.ibb.co/t4xhQX6/USAF-service-dress.png

Even worse, the organization is overrun by women.

Tower: What is the color of your plane?
Pilot: Camouflage.
Tower: So if you go down, you don’t want us to find you, right?

Oh well, everyone has to get in on “the latest thing.”