Slouch Hat - Slouch Hat in The U.S. Military

Slouch Hat in The U.S. Military

The slouch has been known in the U.S. military at least since the Civil War, being fairly common among officers.

Some American soldiers assigned to units in the China Burma India Theatre of World War II (CBI) such as the OSS Detachment 101 and the 1st Air Commando Group wore British Army issue bush hats with their uniforms without official authorisation.

In the early 1960s when American soldiers went to the Vietnam War, the standard headgear was a fatigue baseball or field cap that offered limited protection from the sun. Local tailors made a slouch hat in a style between a French type bush hat of the First Indochina War and an Australian type bush hat with a snap on the brim to pin one side up that was widely bought and unofficially worn by American troops in Vietnam. The local tailors usually used green fatigue cloth or leopard skin pattern military camouflage from old parachutes. The hat often had a cloth arc emblazoned with the word VIET-NAM on the brim. The U.S. 1st Air Commando Group members adopted the green slouch hat as their distinctive and practical headgear with an AIR COMMANDO arc.

In 1972 the U.S. Army authorized female drill sergeants to wear a similar type cloth bush hat with the brim pinned up on the side as their distinctive headgear. The U.S. Air Force female Military Training Instructors were given an Air Force blue slouch hat.