United States Boy Scout Uniform Garments: Berets

Figure 1.--Several individual American Scout troops adopted a red beret beginning in the 1960s.

The traditional Boy Scout hat was the lemon-squeezer hat designed by Lord Baden Powell. (Americans now call it the Smokey Bear hat.) Americam Scouts wore these hats for decades. This hat was adopted by the American Boy Scouts when the organization was initially established. It was worn through the 1930s. There were, however, problems associated with it. While it had considerable nostalgic value, it was expensive and was hard to keep looking smart--especially if it got wet.

Chronology

The traditional Boy Scout hat was the lemon-squeezer hat designed by Lord Baden Powell. Scouts wore these hats for decades. This hat was adopted by the American Boy Scouts when the organization was initially established. It was worn until the 1940s when American Scouts tried several different caps before deciding on the current baseball cap. Berets have never been the official American Scout headgear, but they have been worn by a number of Scout groups, especially in the 1970s and 1980s.

Beginning in the 1940s, American Scouts experimented with different caps. The most popular was the campaign cap worn bybmost Scouts from 1940-80. Otherbstyles experimented with included a fatigue cap. There was also a red winter cap with ear flaps for cold weather activities. Finally American Scouts in 1980 settled ion the current baseball-style cap which has proven popular with the boys.

Some American couts have worn red berets. While never the official headgear of American Scouts, quite a few individual groups selected it, especially during the 1970s-80s.

The red beret has proven less popular in the 1990s and is now less commonly worn. They haven't made any since 1990 I think. I don't know of any place that sells official BSA berets, but there are plenty of places that sell generic berets in various colors. I've seen troops that buy berets and put BSA pins on them. I think this is probanly not technically correct for troop headgear, but some troops still do it. The red berets may still be available from a local trading post or Scout Shop, however they are not listed in the official BSA catalog.

I'm not sure why the BSA discontinued them. One Scouter claims that the BSA discontinued the red beret because the Guardian Angels were buying them and cutting off the patch to use the beret for their own purposes. I don't know if there is any truth to this. Perhaps they just became less popular with the boys. The beret had a snappy look, and boys bow prefer the grunge look.

Figure 2.--Many American boys wore their berets rather nonshalantly.

Style

American boys never wore the large floppy berets worn by some European Scouts. American boys have tended to wear their berets in a kind of pan cake fashion, although some boys would wear their berets at a bit of an angle.

Color

Almost all American Scouts choosing berets chose the red berets offered in Scout stores. A few Scout groups in an effort to stand out choose other colors, but this was not common.

Emblemn

The beret was worn with a diamond shaped patch with the Scout emblem inside.

Conventions

Berets in American were seen as a cap worn by either little boys or girls. Notably the Brownines (junior Girl Scouts) adopted the beret. Thus most boys rather dismissed berets. This did not change until afterr Worl War II when military units such as the Special Forces (Green Berets) and paratroopers began wearing the beret--changing its image. As a result Scouts by the 1970s began to wear berets as an alternative to the ca,paign cap.

Current Situation

One Scouter reports that berets are hard to find for Scouts and special permission is needed to wear them. He reports that when the Scouts in Beaver Patrol wanted to wear red berets in the mid-1990s, the red beret is no longer an official BSA hat. They found red to be extremely hard to find, and that black berets were easier to come by. Since they couldn't buy real Scout-issue berets, when Beaver Patrol petitioned the PLC for permission to wear a beret, they decided to attach a brass "scout" pin to the GI surplus version they'd found in the 1994 U.S. Cavalry catalog. The Beavers were given condtional permission to wear them instead of their Troop hats. They had to become a B-P Patrol to earn the right to wear the beret, and they had to remain a B-P Patrol to keep wearing them.