The Campaign Hat & Forgotten History

[Music] this hat was sent to me by a viewer who said it was given to him by a retired lieutenant colonel in the us army quartermaster corps so a lovely felt example of the type of hat that's called a campaign hat which is described as a broad flat brimmed hat with a tall crown that has been pinched symmetrically on its four corners and i'm very grateful that the viewer sent me this hat not only because this hat itself has a really interesting history and not only because the campaign had as a design has an interesting history but because campaign hats have very personal meaning to me my father george henry geiger served in the u.s army as an artillery officer but spent much of his life working in the united states forest service now by the time my father became a forest ranger the campaign hat was no longer a part of their uniform and i don't recall him ever wearing a campaign hat and yet i grew up seeing this hat everywhere it was because of this guy smokey bear is an interesting story himself and many don't realize that he was a product of war the united states forest service got its start in 1876 with the creation of the office of special agent in the department of agriculture to assess the state of the forests in the united states in 1881 the office was expanded into the division of forestry which later became the bureau of forestry and eventually the forest service the purpose of the service is to manage federal lands initially for the purpose of streamflow protection despite its name the forest service manages federal grasslands as well as forests my father served for years as the district ranger for grassland with so few trees that when there was a fire he could legitimately ask which tree while the forest service was not created for the purpose of fighting forest fires that is part of forest management and members of the service certainly fought fires prior to the second world war their service was particularly noted for fighting the great fire of 1910 that burned some 3 million acres but prior to the war firefighting and prevention were not urgent matters for the service nor was there any national strategy for educating the public on forced fire prevention the second world war changed that in two important ways first significant numbers of the able-bodied men who normally fought fires went into the service and now firefighting would mean diverting manpower resources from the war effort and second the empire of japan saw forest fires as a war strategy this strategy included an attempt to start fires using a plane launched from a submarine as well as using paper balloons carried by the jet stream called fugo balloons that are the subject of another the history guy episode but suffice to say during the war the now reduced forest service on increased need to educate the public on preventing forest fires the program started in 1942 and was called the cooperative forest fire prevention program or the cffp and the forest service had a great animated animal to headline the program no not smokey bear but bambi released in 1942 part of the climax of the animated film includes a forest fire started by a campfire and bambi seemed a perfect way to kick off the campaign disney allowed the forest service to use the characters from the movie in the campaign but only loaned bambi for a year leaving the forest service in need of a new spokes animal in 1944 the service settled on using a black bear there was named smokey after a new york firefighter would suffer burns during a rescue and in his first poster released in october 1944 smokey was depicted wearing blue jeans and a campaign hat and that outfit stuck the slogan only you can prevent forest fires was not coined until 1947. now if you were under the impression that smokey bear was based on a real bear that's understandable there was a black bear found injured as a cub in the 1950 capitan gap fire in new mexico the cub was named smokey and was eventually placed in the national zoo forest service did use this real bear in its campaign but the fictional smokey bear actually predated the real smokey bear who was actually named after the forest service symbol this is my great uncle we called him uncle pino he happened to have been one of the fire fighters on the capitan gap fire when i was growing up my house was full of pins and posters and notepads and pencils and comic books and anything that could have a picture of smokey bear on it always wearing a hat very like this hat once a year my dad would get the region's smokey bear costume which included a huge rubber smoky bear head that had a huge rubber campaign hat on top of it and he would march in the 4th of july parade campaign hats are an important part of my childhood memories and even more poignant now that my father is no longer with us but that raises the question why was smokey bear wearing that particular kind of hat and that answer goes back as far as the 1840s for much of the 19th century the us army had a simple undress hat called a forage cap we talked about these in another episode but the key point here is that the various forge caps had relatively small brims or peaks and out on the plains of the wild west they were simply not sufficient to protect a soldier from the burning sun not only were uniform regulations relatively less strictly adhered to at the time but they were even less so in the west and as early as the 1840s soldiers serving on the frontier started to adopt the larger brim sombrero worn by mexican vaqueros slowly the hat which had a high crown and a wide flat brim was modified to be more practical and based on the individual style of where soldiers chose to place creases in the crown some started look very like the modern campaign hat many of these were a distinctive hat made by the stetson company called the boss of the planes hat designed to be lightweight and waterproof the hat was very common in the west and its look really depended upon the style of the wearer but dimpled on four sides with the brim kept flat it was essentially a campaign hat but the same hat could be creased in the middle and pinned up on one side like a slouch hat an exaggerated version was worn in early western movies and called the 10 gallon hat these unofficial hats did not become official for the us army until 1872 when a black felt wide brim hat was reserved for use while on campaign and thus the name of the campaign hat this hat however was not the same that we see today in fact it was designed to be able to fold under the arm and was rather shapeless some of these are worn with campaign cords like popular seen on cavalry hats in john wayne movies the campaign had changed over time getting a smaller brim and changing from black to drab and getting vents in the sides but even then it was more common to have a crease in the middle rather than the distinctive four dimples of the modern campaign hat but notably cavalry units started wearing and dimpling the hat in the four dimpled campaign style that was called a montana peak by at least the middle 1880s notable among these was the famed ninth and tenth cavalry formed in september 1886. the 10th were the first all-black regiment of the us army formed in peacetime there have been black regiments during the civil war the 10th served in the west in the indian wars or were given the name buffalo soldiers by the native americans they fought and the term came to be applied to four us black regiments formed during the period the ninth and tenth cavalry in the 24th and 25th infantry the buffalo soldiers fought with distinction in the indian wars with 19 officers and men of the four regiments earning medals of honor between 1885 and 1898 the 10th also fought in the spanish-american war in the first division of the first brigade which also included the first united states volunteer cavalry also known as the rough riders some of whom also dimpled their hats in the campaign hat style starting in august 1886 members of the us army were deployed in national parks to discourage poachers defend the forest and stop rampant stagecoach robbery these included buffalo soldiers of the 9th cavalry and 24th infantry who served in yosemites at quiet and king's canyon national parks between 1899 and 1904 in 1911 the department of the interior started hiring civilian scouts and established a uniform for them that retained the flat hat with the montana peak that it wore by the soldiers that had previously guarded the national parks when the united states national park service was established in 1916 the hat continued with the uniform and has been retained in the national park service dress uniform to this day that is also worn by some other state park services as well as rangers with the army corps of engineers which is yet another reason that i'm attached to the campaign hat i worked for the national park service seasonally for five summers in the 1980s while attending college being summer seasonal i wore the straw version in 1896 gold was discovered in the klondike region of the yukon in northwest canada tens of thousands of prospectors many of them americans trekked to canada in hope of striking it rich trying to manage the onrush and the resulting lawlessness canada deployed the northwest mounted police of course that had been created in 1873 to maintain order in the northwest territories the official uniform of the northwest mounted police included either a brimless pillbox hat or a white pith helmet neither of which was particularly practical in the klondike the northwest police therefore started wearing the stetson boss of the planes had it's not clear if this was just the most practical hat or if the nwmp were inspired by the many american prospectors who wore the hat but the northwest mounted police in the klondike region began wearing the hat with four dimples except that while the american soldiers generally wore the hat with the dimples offset so there was a front to hold a badge the northwest mounted police were the hat with a dimple facing the front it may be apocryphal but the use of the stetson has been largely attributed to samuel benfield steele who served with the northwest mounted police in the klondike and led the force there starting in 1898. being more practical than the uniform pith helmet the campaign hat came to be adopted by most of the northwest mounted police in 1920 the northwest mounted police became the royal northwest mounted police and the hat pinched symmetrically at the four corners became official it was of course retained when in 1920 they became the royal canadian mounted police and the mounties still wear famously the hat with their dress uniform today as former members of the northwest mounted police including sam steele made up much of the second contingent of canadian volunteers to go fight in the second boer war in south africa in 1900 canadian units with the exception of the very first contingent of the service battalion of the royal canadian regiment wore the campaign hat the style with the four dimples apparently impressed new zealand regiments during the boer war some of whom adopted the style instead of the one side pinned up slouch hat new zealanders colloquially called the style the lemon squeezer the hat was officially adopted by some new zealand regiments as early as 1911 but at the outset of the great war was not officially part of the uniform in 1916 after the gallipoli campaign the territorial force revised its uniform and the lemon squeezer although officially called the felt hat with a peat crown was made an official part of the uniform partly because some seem to think the design looked more military than a slouched hat the hat distinguished the new zealand soldiers from australian and other commonwealth soldiers the style was retained by the new zealand army through the second world war was discontinued in 1960 was re-introduced for ceremonial dress in 1977 and today is still used by honor guards on special formal occasions but the hat may have been adopted in new zealand via another route frederick russell burnham was the son of a missionary born on a sioux indian reservation in minnesota in 1861. he learned the profession of scouting from the sioux as a youth and from frontiersman in the american west he served as an indian scout during the apache wars where he picked up the campaign hat from u.s cavalry including buffalo soldiers he fought in the rain feud called the pleasant valley war was a prize fighter in tombstone arizona but as the american west seemed settled and there was no longer a need for scouts in 1893 he packed off with his wife and son to south africa in south africa he became chief of scouts for the british south africa company fighting in the first and second matabelli wars in the 1890s there he met an english officer and fellow scout named robert baden-powell they became friends and baden-powell both learned quite a lot of the woodcraft that burnham had learned from his youth with the sioux and started wearing the stetson hat in the four dimple campaign style that burnham wore powell would eventually become so associated with the hat that is often called a bait and pal hat it was while the two worked as scouts during the montebelli war that they discussed the concept of creating a broad training program in woodcraft for young men after both men served during the second anglo-boer war they took the idea and the hat and started the worldwide scouting movement baden-powell described the hat as good protection from sun and rain that was part of both the early boy and girl scout uniforms and although largely replaced by simpler and cheaper hats such as berets and ball caps is still a uniform option for the boy scouts of america scouts were well established in new zealand in 1916 when the country was designing its new uniform and the hat was in the discussion often called a baden pal hat so it's unclear if the new zealand archetypal campaign hat was inspired by sam steele's boer war canadians robert baden-powell's boy scouts and so i have another affinity for the campaign hat having been a boy scout of the 1970s when scout leaders still pretty commonly were seen wearing the baden pal hat the us army did not make official the campaign hat be worn with the montana peak until the pattern 1911 service hat the hat was worn by army units during the 1916-17 punitive expedition against pancho villa and was worn by both marines and soldiers during the series of interventions in central america between 1898 and 1934 called the banana wars the hat was a general issue to troops during the first world war these were worn by company h of the fifth missouri infantry in 1917. that takes us back to this guy some men returning from war then served with the forest service and they preferred to wear the campaign hat that they'd used in the army the first forest service uniform had a uniform jacket but had no hat at the time that was officially changed in the 1920s to a western sombrero but the new hat was unpopular and many forest rangers continued to wear the campaign hat into the 1930s but then it was so well recognized that it was chosen as the chapeau for smokey the bear when he was created in 1944 so a hat retained from world war one became the hat for a bear in 1944 that represents the forest service even though the forest service official uniform never actually included the campaign hat the hat is worn today by some state police and various other police departments in the u.s and given its connection to the bear such officers have come to be called smokies the head is also worn as part of the dress uniform for officers of the united states customs and border protection and the united states border patrol the u.s army retained the campaign hat until 1942 although some members notably general joseph stillwell continued to wear the campaign hat throughout the second world war the marine corps adopted the hat again in 1956 for marine drill instructors and various others in training and recruiting roles arguing they convey a level of responsibility and authority that resides with drill instructors the army similarly adopted the hat for its male drill instructors in 1964. where the army says the drill sergeants wear the campaign hat as a testament of their demonstrated professionalism commitment to the mission and proven leadership the hat further symbolizes the lineage of the past present and future of the us army the style in different colors is also worn by drill instructors of the united states air force and united states coast guard all four services wear a batch on the front with the marine corps using the subdued or black painted version of their eagle globe and anchor device which takes us back to this particular hat from the start us army campaign hats could be worn with chords and if you were enlisted man then these chords would represent your area of service so if you're in the cavalry it would be yellow if you're the infantry it would be blue if you're in the artillery would be red there were other colors to represent other areas as well but for officers it was pretty simple if you were a general officer then the cord would be gold but if you're anything other than a general remember this was owned by lieutenant colonel it would be this gold and black on the cord this hat and i have another thing in common in that its owner grew up in south dakota just like i did he served in the army for 22 years and retired in 1954 and passed away in 1967. now he might have had this hat before the army discontinued the use of the campaign hat in 1942 but it also might have been given to him sometimes they were given as awards maybe upon retirement i'm told that the badge is original and that badge is an enamel badge that represents the us army war college at fort leavenworth kansas and yes the hat is a bonafide stetson in 1957 lieutenant colonel gave this hat to his nine-year-old neighbor and last february that neighbor sent the hat to me where i will do my best to display protect and preserve this piece of history that deserves to be remembered i hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy short snippets of forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section i will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guy on facebook instagram twitter and check out our merchandise on teespring.com and if you'd like more episodes on forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe you

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 218,300

Keywords: history, the history guy, history guy, us history, campaign hat

Id: vihhRvKGuK4

Length: 17min 49sec (1069 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 22 2020