Uniform in the News!

Lost military jacket found on post-Sandy NJ beach

"Gugger had stumbled across an 80-year-old tunic owned by a 1933 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, a World War II hero described in his West Point yearbook as a soldier with a "heart like a stormy sea."

Cool, huh?

Very interesting story.

I saw something on the news about a World War II letter written by a soldier being delivered to the right address - nearly 70 years later ... that's the US Postal Service for you

Says a lot for the quality of West Point uniforms - designed to last! Does anyone know if modern items of USMA ceremonial dress (shakos, plumes, tail-coats etc) become the personal property of the individual cadets? Or are they handed back after graduation to be cleaned up and reissued? After all they are presumably only worn infrequently and must be expensive.

Near my house is a community center named after a person of one-time local prominence, and among other things in a glass display case is a West Point shako, implied to be the man's own when he was a cadet.

My feeling, though, is that most graduates would not be allowed to take such things away with them.

buistR wrote:Says a lot for the quality of West Point uniforms - designed to last! Does anyone know if modern items of USMA ceremonial dress (shakos, plumes, tail-coats etc) become the personal property of the individual cadets? Or are they handed back after graduation to be cleaned up and reissued? After all they are presumably only worn infrequently and must be expensive.

You're not thinking the coat was under the sand all these years, are you? The people in the article say the coat had been carefully kept by someone until Sandy tore apart homes and scattered stuff everywhere.

Also, everyone in the article seems to have assumed because the coat had "issued to so-and-so" it belonged to him post-graduation. But the deceased man's widow said she had never known it existed. And you gotta believe an Army wife who has moved house at least a dozen times in a soldier's career KNOWS what they own.