Uniform Numbers
The British army numbers its uniforms for ease of instruction. Fourteen 'orders' of dress are authorised and prescribed to be worn on various occasions; "Full Dress" is also prescribed for the most important ceremonies.
While there are officially fifteen different grades (or 'Numbers'), many of these are rarely worn or phased out altogether. Note that uniform distinctions can vary greatly from one Regiment or Corps to another, and the following descriptions are a generalisation.
Read more about this topic: British Army Uniform
Famous quotes containing the words uniform and/or numbers:
“Iconic clothing has been secularized.... A guardsman in a dress uniform is ostensibly an icon of aggression; his coat is red as the blood he hopes to shed. Seen on a coat-hanger, with no man inside it, the uniform loses all its blustering significance and, to the innocent eye seduced by decorative colour and tactile braid, it is as abstract in symbolic information as a parasol to an Eskimo. It becomes simply magnificent.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“The principle of majority rule is the mildest form in which the force of numbers can be exercised. It is a pacific substitute for civil war in which the opposing armies are counted and the victory is awarded to the larger before any blood is shed. Except in the sacred tests of democracy and in the incantations of the orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)