1954 belgian commando pants

Got some old Belgian pants recently. The condition was amazing. Nobody has touched these things in years. The pattern is not faded at all and as such it offers a good example of how these pants originally looked.

Very nice find.

Very nice "Brush Stroke" trousers you have there. Off the top of my head I think 1954 was the first year anything was produced in this pattern, which is a derivative of "Moon and Balls". The two patterns overlapped for 1954-1956.

It is amazing how much of this stuff is still swirling around in excellent condition. Then I remember that the Belgians had a force of about 300,000 at the time and then quickly downgraded (it is more like 30,000 today!). That's a lot of stuff sitting in warehouses that was not needed

Steve

Very nice trousers! Cool find indeed.

in last few months I've seen a lot of these camo items on Polish Allegro http://www.allegro.pl/listing/search.php?string=belgia&from_showcat=1&category=12083
less than 10 Euro for trousers,I was thinking about geting a set for my collection but jacket is 4 time more expensive

I noticed on the polish site you mentioned that a most of the pants there have the pocket squarely on the front of the left leg, while on my pants and others I've seen it is on the side of the left leg right on the seam. I have seen many with it on the front elsewhere also though. I wonder what the time periods/wartime issue periods are surrounding these differences. Heck any info on the differences in pockets would be interesting. Any body know anything about it?

bajiman55 wrote: I noticed on the polish site you mentioned that a most of the pants there have the pocket squarely on the front of the left leg, while on my pants and others I've seen it is on the side of the left leg right on the seam. I have seen many with it on the front elsewhere also though. I wonder what the time periods/wartime issue periods are surrounding these differences. Heck any info on the differences in pockets would be interesting. Any body know anything about it?

only info on those auctions is that they are para trousers used by Belgians in 50's

There are several slight variations of the cut of trousers between 1952 and 1956. The big difference is that the 1956 trousers are made out of light weight canvas, all the others made out of soft cotton. The 1956 style is quite a bit different in cut as well, the others are nearly the same. I don't remember about pocket locations being in one place or the other for a specific year. There was a lot of production overlap from several manufacturers.

Steve

i have that set with the pants and para smock plus a brown beret dated i think to 1952 with the para insignia on it. and yes it's a canvas fabric, not light weight by any means.

If it is made out of canvas then it is 1956. That is the only year that type was manufactured. There are two types of camo (Brush and Moon & Balls), one style of trousers, two styles of smock each with its own style of hood. That makes for 10 pieces in total to have one of everything from the 1956 period. And let me tell you... it's hard to do!

Note that paras rarely wore badging on their smocks until the 1990s. I'm not saying that 0% uniforms had badging on them, but it's pretty close to that. So it is unlikely, though of course possible, that any badging on a smock prior to 1990s was added after its date of service.

Steve

i should have clarified that the BERET is whats dated 1952, the set i do believe is dated 1956 and it has no badges or patches of any kind on it. the beret has the para insignia on it.

Then everything sounds good The beret is likely worth as much as the uniform.

Steve

Very nice pair of trousers , i also have a pair of them , but on a darker color

ED,
Super nice pair of Brushstroke pants. I picked up 3-4 pairs off a surplus shop in southern Vermont. They all have repairs, but for the $15-$20 that I paid for them, they were worth the price. Hoping to find some more Belgian moon and balls items. I need a pair of pants to match up with my smock. Bruce

Yeah, the Belgians reissued these uniforms many times over again, so repairs, fading, replaced snaps, mismatching buttons, etc. are common. Also, the drawstring around the waist tended to rip at the openings and so there's a lot of repair work done to that area.

Steve