I have nobody to consult or talk to, but I love BDU’s for their comfort and practicality and wish I could find them sold locally or mail order for a reasonable price. He doesn’t understand there is price to looking cool. Even my father who is a retired Marine thinks it’s expensive at the PX. I am sure I could purchase from somewhere, but when I find some it’s costly and often not real military issue, which could mean it is of inferior quality or it is terribly expensive. If that is true or done often, or not at all I can’t say. I was told that the military often disposes of or even buries used BDU’s. Seemed so easy to find sources like 15 years ago. I did purchase from a company called RAM Enterprises and the cost was like $30 for top or pants. It’s hard to even find any surplus like when I lived in Virginia up to 1989. I haven’t seen much in the way of camouflage here in Orlando, Florida. I learned of him from paintball magazines. There is or used to be a company owned by Tim Schloss called Tiger Stripe Productions that produced a nice pattern. “Not only Special Forces type units wore them, infantry, Air Force para-rescue & Air Police, Marines, Riverine – anyone who had access to them would wear them,” added Chatt.

The other fact about tiger stripe camouflage is that it was universally appreciated by those who were “in-country” during the Vietnam War. “No one will ever know how many different patterns there were as every tailor shop could and did print their own patterns.” “During Vietnam, tigerstripes were made in Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, Okinawa, Taiwan, Philippines, and Korea,” said Chatt. The tigerstripe uniforms were manufactured across the region so there is a wide variety of patterns and color shade variations. Marine Corps advisors also had contracted Vietnamese tailors as well as Southeast Asian manufacturers to produce fatigues as well as Boonie hats. These Navy SEALs are wearing tigerstripe camouflage among other patterns. Throughout America’s involvement, a variety of camouflage – much of it locally made – was used in Vietnam. The pattern then became popular among the insurgent forces and was adopted by the armed forces in some of the former Portuguese African colonies including Angola. It was used from 1956 by elite paratroopers, then other units, and was worn in the Portuguese “Overseas Wars” in its African colonies. Portugal had also developed its own version of lizard camouflage that was similar to the French, but it featured vertical lines rather than horizontal lines. The final country to use the pattern across its military was Congo, which only phased it out in 1978. The Israel Defence Force also used French lizard uniforms, which were supplied from French stocks – while several African countries including Chad, Gabon, Rwanda, and Sudan all adopted similar uniforms. However, a variant of the lizard pattern remained in use with the entire French Foreign Legion in the 1960s and by the French Foreign Legion paratroopers until the early 1980s. The French Army continued the use of horizontal lizard patterns until after the Algerian War as it was felt it was too closely associated with the Paratroops Munity that called for French President Charles de Gaulle not to abandon French Algeria. French soldiers in Indochina in the early 1950s wearing the lizard pattern uniforms, which proved quite adequate in the jungle terrain.

Ucp camouflage