Milsurp After Hours

Saw this video on facebook. The Cold Stream Guards, British veterans of many years back, attended a parade and ceremony, including a band dressed all up in red braided outfits with those tall beaver hats,all to honor the unit dead on "Black Sunday". The Cold Stream Guards probably have dead to honor going back to before that Italian guy got credit for discovering America...or not much after. All of the ceremony was quite one up on anything any American veterans group every did as far as that goes. The British military do have style and do know how to put on a proper show. First rate parade. Traditional. Kinda like folly chasing death around a stump being the best Mardi Gras tradition where I'm from. It was up to that level.

After the band passed from view in the video I noted the marchers behind them were what looked like fifty or so men in suits and ties and bowler hats and each carrying an umbrella. Behind them were companies or platoons of ordinary looking old guys in suites without the hats or umbrella. All of the veterans of either hat and umbrella group or the others all had their medals in rows upon their chest. I wondered about the hats and umbrellas. I found this on facebook.

Have you ever wondered why officers, when wearing suit and bowler hat, always carry an umbrella but never seem to use it?
That's because the tradition is to have an umbrella but not open it unless in the presence of a lady to protect them from the rain.
During the siege of Bayonne, Grenadier Guards raised their brollies against the rain – only to be told off by their commander, the Duke of Wellington. The Duke’s own umbrella was made of oiled cloth and hid a sword stick.
At the Battle of Waterloo, a French commander called the British officers, ‘les efféminés avec leurs parapluies’ (effeminates with their umbrellas). These 'effeminates' – with their dry uniforms – went on to defeat him.

Nothing like style and tradition in military pride.... In America we mostly skip the parades and instead remember catchy lines from movies, like where John Wayne says to the young lieutenant .." Never apologize Mister. It's a sign of weakness". It all amounts to...about.... the same thing... I guess. The parade shows some effort at least to get into the spirit of the thing though.

Its not beaver skin its Bearskin and of course there are now animal rights twats complaining that it should be changed to man-made fibres.
The material comes from legally culled Brown Bears in Canada and in fact is a byproduct of the cull not the reason for it.

https://ageofrevolution.org/200-object/ ... in%20caps.

Noted. Brown bear fur dyed black.

I must admit, the Brits do how to dress up for a parade......


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The brollies aren’t just for show, they will usually stop a sabre cut, the multiple steel ribs make a good defence and the pointy end can be very effective and a butt stroke with the open side of the handle can tear cheeks and bust teeth.
I read many years ago of a Guards Officer, in mufti, being accosted by a knife wielding robber in London in 1946, the Officer did a ‘point to the throat’ and killed his assailant.