Did you know this about American snow camo uniforms in the Battle of the Bulge?

It’s well known that American troops fighting in the Battle of Bulge suffered greatly from the lack of proper winter gear. The winter of 1944 was particularly cold, the German offensive was unexpected, and the strained supply lines prioritized ammunition and reinforcements over warm clothing.
 
Warm clothing, however, was not the only important thing U.S. soldiers lacked. If you look closely at contemporary photos, you’ll note that their white camouflage overcoats look rather peculiar, almost as if they were mattress covers rather than proper clothes. And that’s because they were.

The development of military camouflage only began in earnest after the 1909 publication of Concealing – Coloration in the Animal Kingdom, a book by American amateur zoologist Abbot Thayer. Some belligerent nations, such as Austria-Hungary, and certain French, Russian, Turkish and German units already wore white uniforms in the snowy mountainous theaters of World War I, but the American Expeditionary Force, fighting far away from such regions, did not pick up the practice.
 
In fact, the U.S. still lagged behind in World War II. Germany and the Soviet Union made good use of snow camo, and even Britain adopted the practice after their experience fighting Germany in Norway in 1940. (The German invasion of Norway) American soldiers who found themselves in and around the Bulge, however, had to make do with mattress covers, parachute silk and whatever other white fabrics they could scrounge from the local civilians. The relatively few U.S. troops who did have proper winter camo uniforms got them from the British.  

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