Milsurp After Hours

......our discussion last Sunday on ZOOM.

https://www.forces.net/news/what-are-mi ... urs :GBR:

I get a page not found message.....

But tried again with this address:

https://www.forces.net/news/what-are-military-colours

Speaking of colors I ended up buying the Regiment publication from 1921 that I think I mentioned on the chat. The owner came down in his asking price. That particular Regiment production has the "proposed" Regimental coat of arms on the cover for the five year old regiment. The 31st Infantry was known as America's Foreign Legion because it spent WWI, WWII, and Korea totally on foreign soil. It wasn't until Vietnam that the 6th battalion was formed on American soil at Ft. Lewis Washington and shipped to Vietnam in April 1968 after training. I won't get the publication in my hands until next week sometime.

I watched the colors presentation of a new set of colors to the parachute regiment in the UK. Very impressive. When I was organizing a reunion for the 6th of the 31st I inquired about the location of the colors of the battalion after it was deactivated upon leaving Vietnam. I couldn't get an answer from the Army on the question so I went to my congressman. Seems the best information that could be obtained from the Military is that it should have been retired to a particular storage place. However, nobody seemed to be able to find it. Nobody knew where it was. I was also politely told that if it had been located we couldn't borrow it.

When the battalion reunion took place I was in luck. A son of the last battalion commander, deceased, had a reproduction of the battalion flag his father had made in Vietnam as a keepsake. He loaned it to us.

The ribbon scroll at the bottom was changed sometime after WWII. The battalion flags are numbered in the blue field to the top right as you see in the photo I posted.

This is a photo from the Philippines from around 1920.

The two on the left are obviously Staff SGTS, not sure about the guy on the right, either an
officer or a Private, I'll guess officer.....
The only ones wearing Smokey Bear hats when we were in were the Drill Sergeants, who took great
glee on making our lives miserable. In basic the Drill Corporals (Drill Sgts in training) and the
officers wore shiny helmet liners. One day a kid mistakenly called a 2nd LT a Drill Corporal,
his life was not fun after that, since most 2 LTs were assholes.......

.

The guy to the right I'd guess was a private because he has a bayonet scabbard on his pistol belt. I could be wrong but I'd guess a garrotrooper officer would have been issued a pistol, like the E6's, instead of a rifle and accordingly not needing a bayonet.

According to a long explanation of the Regiment organization in the magazine down to how many mules there were, there were two assigned color sergeants and they were attached to the band.