WAR TIME HEADGEAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 July 1943, Page 4

WAR TIME HEADGEAR

MR CHURCHILL’S RECORD ASSORTMENT. The news that battledress khaki berets are to replace gradually the field service caps at present issued to soldiers is a reminder that, if hats in the present war are not quite as gay as they were in Napoleonic times they are at least as various in shape. This is appropriate enough at a time when the country’s first citizen, Mr Churchill, holds what is probably a world’s record for the number and variety of his headgear. As far back as 1929 someone drew up a list of coverings which had had the honour of gracing the Churchill head. They included three species of top-hat, five kinds of trilby, a cap, a cap with a peak, two kinds of bowler hat, a naval cocked hat, a Court full-dress cocked hat, an Irishman’s “Paddy” hat, an “Oxford degree” hat, the degree hat of a Scottish university, an old army “pill-box” hat, an hussar’s helmet, two kinds of panama, an artist’s beret, an Army service cap, a steel helmet, and a sombrero. In the succeeding fourteen years Mr Churchill must have almost doubled that record; but there are still worlds left for him to conquer. So far as is known, he has never worn a tarboosh, a Kurban, a balaclava helmet, or a Covent Garden porter’s leather helmet. No doubt he is reserving these for trial in times of peace.—“ Manchester Guardian” Miscellany.