Billy1977
Sergeant
- Joined
- Mar 18, 2016
- Location
- Flippin, Arkansas (near Yellville)
Hello everybody, this might be a dumb question but if you'll bear with me I'll try to explain. Many if not most everyone here is surely familiar with the 1st and 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters (Berdan's and Post's sharpshooters), and with how they had dark green uniforms (like European rifle troops from which they took the idea, the better for them as skirmishers to blend in with the scenery in a forest I imagine) and eventually gutta-percha (sp.?) black hard rubber buttons instead of brass or other metal so as to avoid reflecting sunlight if possible.
Well I was wondering the other day and off and on since, if there was a snowstorm and the ground was covered in snow but instead of staying in winter quarters some of Berdan's or Post's sharpshooters (or the Western SharpShooters in the Western Theatre I think they were called, about whom I know next to nothing) for whatever reason had to go out in it and try to ambush a Confederate supply wagon train that the rebels were depending on in the dead of winter or something like that, I don't know, anyway what I was thinking was since they at least cared about camouflage coloration in a rudimentary way then would they have said "Hey listen, the reverse side of our gum blanket is off-white, nearly white, and might help us blend in against a snowy background"? And then wear their gum blankets inside-out for snow camouflage? Or maybe did they take a white bedsheet and cut a hole in it like some of the U.S. infantry did in the Battle of the Bulge decades later? Or even for skirmishers, even for highly trained skirmisher marksmen, as long a time ago as the 1860s this would have been giving them credit for too much "modern" thinking for the era and they simply wouldn't have worried about it or (no offense to them intended) it wouldn't have occurred to them?
Many thanks to a Civil War sharpshooter personal camouflage expert who can answer this.
Well I was wondering the other day and off and on since, if there was a snowstorm and the ground was covered in snow but instead of staying in winter quarters some of Berdan's or Post's sharpshooters (or the Western SharpShooters in the Western Theatre I think they were called, about whom I know next to nothing) for whatever reason had to go out in it and try to ambush a Confederate supply wagon train that the rebels were depending on in the dead of winter or something like that, I don't know, anyway what I was thinking was since they at least cared about camouflage coloration in a rudimentary way then would they have said "Hey listen, the reverse side of our gum blanket is off-white, nearly white, and might help us blend in against a snowy background"? And then wear their gum blankets inside-out for snow camouflage? Or maybe did they take a white bedsheet and cut a hole in it like some of the U.S. infantry did in the Battle of the Bulge decades later? Or even for skirmishers, even for highly trained skirmisher marksmen, as long a time ago as the 1860s this would have been giving them credit for too much "modern" thinking for the era and they simply wouldn't have worried about it or (no offense to them intended) it wouldn't have occurred to them?
Many thanks to a Civil War sharpshooter personal camouflage expert who can answer this.