page_title: Service Dress (British Army)
section_title: Khaki
hierarchical_section_title: Service Dress (British Army) / Khaki
caption_attribution_description: English: The Corps of Guides (Cavalry and Infantry) published in 1891.
context_page_description: Service Dress was the new style of khaki service dress uniform introduced by the British Army for use in the field from the early 1900s, following the experiences of a number of imperial wars and conflicts, including the Second Boer War. This variant of uniform continues to be worn today, although only in a formal role, as No. 2 Pattern dress.
context_section_description: In many actions during the latter half of the nineteenth century, the bright red tunics worn by British infantry regiments had proved to be a liability, especially when faced by enemies armed with new rifles firing smokeless cartridges (this had been exacerbated by the white carrying equipment worn by the line infantry, the cross straps of which formed an X on the soldier's chest).
  The term Khaki (Urdu for dusty) had come from India and was used to describe the 'Drab' uniform first worn in 1848 by the Corps of Guides which had been raised in December 1846 as the brain-child of Sir Henry Montgomery Lawrence (1806–1857), Resident at Lahore and Agent to the Governor-General for the North-West Frontier. Lawrence chose as its commandant Sir Harry Lumsden, supported by William Stephen Raikes Hodson as Second-in-Command, who began the process of raising the Corps of Guides from British Indian recruits at Peshawar for frontier service. Initially the border troops were dressed in their native costume, which consisted of a smock and white pyjama trousers, made of a coarse home-spun cotton and a cotton turban, supplemented by a leather or padded cotton jacket for cold weather. For the first year (1847) no attempt was made at uniformity; in 1848 Lumsden and Hodson decided to introduce a drab (khaki) uniform which Hodson commissioned his brother in England to send them – as recorded in Hodson's book of published letters, Twelve Years of a Soldier's Life in India (first published in 1859). It was only at a later date, when supplies of drab (khaki) material were unavailable, that they improvised by dying material with a local dye.
  During the Indian Mutiny of 1857 many British regiments took to staining their white tropical uniforms with tea leaves or other makeshift dyes in order to camouflage them. Rifle regiments had long used dark green uniforms (with blackened badges, buttons, and carrying equipment) as camouflage and some units of the Volunteer Force London Regiment had adopted Hodden grey uniforms for the same purpose. Numerous khaki drill uniforms were adopted by units in the field over the turn of the century but the darker khaki standardised Service Dress uniform was not adopted until after the Second Boer War. First publicly displayed in 1902, the new uniform did not become universal issue until the following year for all of the regular army serving in Britain. The scarlet, dark blue and rifle green uniforms were retained as "review order" (parade) and "walking out" (off duty wear out of barracks) until 1914.
caption: Members of the Corps of Guides in early khaki uniforms
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "150", "Image YResolution": "150", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2011:02:20 18:50:17", "Image ExifOffset": "156", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "294", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6080", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "600", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "450"}