Soldier's Uniforms, Clothing & Gear

This section of Olive-Drab.com covers the very wide ranging topic of the uniforms, clothing and equipment used by individual soldiers. Everything a solider wears or carries has to be supplied by the military organization based on standards and mission requirements.

137th Infantry Regiment soldier, near Brussels, July 15, 1945.

Soldier's Uniforms, Clothing & Gear

Since every soldier has to be equipped for a variety of missions, and the requirements change from time to time, it is practically impossible to list all of the clothing and gear used by soldiers even of the U.S. military, and even more so if you include other countries of the world with their army, naval, air and other forces.

Olive-Drab.com has individual pages for well known items of clothing and equipment from World War II forward. Click on the link for the item that interests you. For first aid kits and other medical equipment, see Military Medicine.

Find More Information on the Internet

There are many fine websites that have additional information on this topic, too many to list here and too many to keep up with as they come and go. Use this Google web search form to get an up to date report of what's out there.

For good results, try entering this: army uniform. Then click the Search button.

Highly recommended:

• U.S. Militaria Forum is an outstanding website on the topic of American uniforms and equipment.
• gunboards.com offers a number of forums that cover web gear, uniforms, packs and other militaria from the U.S. military.

Militaria Bibliography

The pages of Olive-Drab.com that describe U.S. clothing and equipment from World War II have been developed with the guidance of the following list of publications. The two Historical Studies from the Quartermaster General are out of print but can sometimes be found as reprints or as originals from used booksellers or on eBay.

• Clothing the Soldier of World War II, QMC Historical Studies, No. 16, by Erna Risch and Thomas A. Pitkin, Historical Section, Office of the Quartermaster General, September 1946
• Quartermaster Equipment for Special Forces, QMC Historical Studies, No. 5, by Thomas A. Pitkin, Historical Section, Office of the Quartermaster General, February 1944
• Survey of U.S. Army Uniforms, Weapons and Accoutrements, by David Cole. Classroom reference for the U.S. Army Museum System’s Basic Curatorial Methods Training Courses. November 2007 (PDF download, 7MB)
• Government Issue: U.S. Army European Theater of Operations, Collector's Guide , by Henri-Paul Enjames, Histoire & Collections, February 1, 2004
• Volume 2 of Government Issue: U.S. Army European Theater of Operations, Collector's Guide , by Henri-Paul Enjames, Histoire & Collections, November 2008
• Doughboy to GI , by Ken Lewis, Motorbooks International, October 1, 1994
• Grunt Gear: USMC Combat Infantry Equipment of World War II , by Alec S. Tulkoff, R. James Bender Publishing, July 1, 2003
• U.S. Army Uniforms of World War II , by Shelby Stanton, Stackpole Books; Reprint edition, January 1, 1995

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