Time to Lose the Green Lid? Should the Royal Navy Get Rid of Headgear?

Sometimes it is very easy to take things for granted, but never question why we do them. We take the wearing of headgear in the armed forces for granted and probably don’t think about it in any meaningful way. 

It was in this vein perhaps that Twitter user ‘Sleepy Greenie’ (some may ask if there is there any other sort?) asked a very reasonable question today:

“In the 21^st Century, other than for ceremonial reasons, does the Royal Navy need headgear”?

The Royal Navy has four different types of daily headgear in use – the traditional sailors caps, the male officers and senior rates cap, the female tricorn and finally the generic beret. All of these are worn for different reasons and circumstances, with, in the most broad of terms, the beret being worn in working circumstances at sea or operations, while the cap is more usually worn for office wear or on shore (although can be worn at sea too). 

Different circumstances call for different outfits, and different headgear. In the Royal Navy headgear is traditionally only worn outside (or in very specific circumstances), and saluting is only done to those wearing headgear.

But if you go back to first principles, why in the third decade of the 21^st century do we insist on our workforce wearing headgear when walking outside?

The 1st Sea Lord at BRNC Passing Out Parade Summer 2020  Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

  

There is no health and safety reason why caps or berets are worn – they aren’t designed for that purpose. Similarly they are often very uncomfortable to wear for any sustained period of time, can get dirty easily, and as anyone who has ever shaped a beret will know, can take a long time to look like anything other than a flight deck fit for a QUEEN ELIZABETH class aircraft carrier.

There is some value in using them to spot badges and senior officers at a distance (Commanders and above have varying levels of gold braid on their male cap, and a barely distinguishable gold band on the female tricorn), while Officers, Senior Rates and Junior Ratings all have subtly different badges – helpful in a hurry to spot people and pick them out.

Yet, even if used to spot badges at a distance, there are plenty of other distinguishing marks, such as rank tabs and gold braid (and in very senior cases, are usually escorted by gaggle of less junior but nakedly ambitious staff officers name dropping and talking about their GEMS ideas for OJAR glory).

So, if there is no health and safety reason, are there any operational reasons for wearing headgear? When this challenge was put out on twitter earlier, there was a fairly deafening silence about this – people couldn’t come up with a reason headgear is routinely worn that worked to support operational circumstances.

Wearing something on our head used to be de rigeur for society, and no self respecting individual would go outside without some form of head covering. Sadly this trend has died off and today it is far less common to see individuals routinely wearing hats in their daily dress (although Humphrey longs for the introduction of a Civil Service rank tab system using bowler hats and umbrellas as pips). The armed forces are some of the last bastions of society to wear a hat as part of their routine daily working outfit.

We’ve taken this state of affairs for granted for many years, and it is unlikely that it has ever actually been questioned. We wear them because we’ve always worn it this way. But is there actually any need to do so?

It is a curious thing that the Royal Navy in particular seems to have a particular dislike of practical headgear, for example baseball caps, which take up little space and with their rim are particularly useful for shielding eyes from glare. This practical innovation is often sneered at, and there is a steady undertone of disapproval from many (mostly retired) RN officers who see this as a somehow dreadfully American innovation.

It is curious that the one piece of headgear which is probably most useful at sea is the one least likely to enter any form of RN service. Perhaps this hints at some deeply rooted cultural insecurity (a desperate desire to maintain standards or not to appear to be going all American perhaps).

The most pressing reason given is that it permits people to salute each other – but again, if you ask the question, why do we salute, and what is its operational benefit, then it all gets a bit odd.

Saluting is terribly romanticised, but also seems at times to be a bit of game – the way that some people actively avoid trying to take routes where seen, or where junior ratings hold off until the last safe moment, testing the nerve of a Junior Officer to call them on it (after all the standards you set are the standards you walk past).

As anyone who has been on a naval base at 0755 can attest, the lengths that some people go to in order to avoid being in the proximity of the mainmast at 0800 to stand still, face the mainmast and salute is odd (although it is worth watching in case it goes wrong, Humphrey once watched the White Ensign be hoisted upside down at HMS COLLINGWOOD, and within 30 seconds the pipe, ‘Colours Party, XO’s office, at the rush’ was made…).

The Royal Navy tends to be fairly laid back about saluting (usually done once per day on first greeting) but it can at times feel a little cliched. Anyone who has been to Northwood can attest to the short walk between the Bunker/Atlantic building and the mess, and the way that near conga lines can form at busy times of officers bustling in each direction, desperately trying to work out who outranks whom in this busy international tri-service environment.

It’s a bit like the ‘Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor etc’ scene in ‘Spies Like Us’ with everyones arms popping up and down at regular intervals. Its done because we’ve always done it, but is it really necessary to do and why do it at all in a routine office environment between grown adults and professional colleagues?

This may sound very trivial stuff but the point of this is to note that the MOD and armed forces take a lot of their world and life for granted. Things are rarely explained, and if you ask people to go back and justify why something needs to be done, or something needs to happen, it can often be extremely difficult to understand why this has been done.

To an outsider trying to make head or tales of much of the military way can be extremely difficult. The problem is when we answer the reasonable challenge (why do you wear headgear?) with a mixture of faux outrage and mumbles about it being something that’s always been done for ‘reasons’.

We live in a world where the military has got to be able to justify its role, purpose, structure and so on to outsiders who will actively question. The era of quiet deference has gone forever, and with it the assumption that things that have been taken for granted will always be done.

At its simplest surely there should be a really good and simple ‘elevator sales pitch’ for the most basic concepts of military life – e.g ‘we wear headgear for the following reasons, these are the benefits and this is why we do it’.

If the default response when some very basic challenge is put forward by supporters of the military is to go on the defensive and rely on emotion, then this is counterproductive. Relying on the raw heart of emotion to make an objective case without the evidence to underpin can weaken arguments and reduce the likelihood of success. For example, if in the Integrated Review the MOD was asked to make savings, a reasonable case could be made that the removal of headgear as a uniform option, save some small stock for state ceremonial purposes held in common use would actually generate savings accruing long term that could considerable – there would be a significant reduction in the need for contracts, headgear issue, badges being made and worn, tailoring services and so on.

The cost of equipping new recruits would fall slightly, and the overall savings to uniform budgets could be considerable, and at no cost to the operational outputs to the front line – after all, this isn’t a safety critical piece of equipment, it doesn’t cut ships or capability and it just means people won’t wear a hat to work anymore – much like the rest of society.

Doubtless there are readers now convinced that the author has totally lost the plot. But equally if you are getting outraged at the loss of headgear, ask yourself this – what is the objective case for its retention with all the emotion, subjective views taken out – can it be made?

This matters because so much of what defence does is about emotion and people and the human instinct. It needs to be able to quantify this though in a way that people who have never worn the uniform can understand, and make a case for it that is so compelling that few would be left in any doubt of its merit.

In the case of headgear the argument that is so powerful is that actually, yes headgear is of practically no day to day operational value to the way that the Royal Navy does business. Wearing it contributes no operational benefits, and no money is saved by its being donned of a morning.

But, this entirely logical view misses the human factor, the indefinable golden thread that turns that cheap piece of fabric into something which represents more than just an item and turns it into a human story that bonds the disparate groups together into a cohesive fighting force.

Wearing uniform bonds us, it brings us together and it makes us of one ships company. We wear it because it is part of a uniform identity, that links our predecessors and their glorious history with our modern identity as a ships company, friends and oppos. The beret speaks to a story of being worn with pride, and of being donned for reasons good and bad.

You cannot put a numerical value on the sense of pride that comes from changing the badge as you progress through the ranks. You cannot by itself explain what it means to own one that is battered, bruised and slightly torn. The authors beret is torn in places, slightly stained from sweat and has seen better days – but it has accompanied him around the world, in good places and bad. It travelled on his head across Afghanistan and is as much part of him as it is his own flesh.

It may not look like much but it helps define our identity as part of something bigger, it brings us together as a Ships Company. For the Royal Marines, the ethos surrounding the ‘Green Lid’ and its near magical bulletproof powers are priceless. The cost of the Green Beret is peanuts, but the lifetime of loyalty it inspires, the sense of belonging that comes from it, and the fact that men and women will willingly put their lives on the line to fight to the death alongside others who wear it, as one body shows that you cannot put a price on some things.

If you want to recruit people, to inspire them and to give them a sense of belonging then that means diving deep into peoples psyches and making them feel part of something bigger and better. There is a need to be able to keep this part of identity, to help build a more cohesive fighting force.

That isn’t to say that we should now go all dewy eyed and move on. The military needs to be able to ruthlessly show how the moral component of fighting power, the sense of belonging and ethos is absolutely as critical as possessing tanks or aircraft carriers. But it must be able to make this argument in a way that makes sense.

If your default argument for spending billions of pounds of public money each year is ‘but we’ve always done it this way’ then that is the wrong argument to make. It is vital that people can and do justify what they do with good objective logic, data and metrics, and be able to put forward relevant arguments for their case, not just say ‘but how else can we salute if we don’t wear a hat’?

There is doubtless a strong argument to be made for looking at when and where headgear is worn – realistically the Royal Navy could probably stop wearing headgear in a lot of circumstances (e.g. at shore bases or offices) and no one would really notice that much of an effect in output. But it should not be backward in coming forward to robustly stand up for, and defend, why that simple piece of cloth should not be sent to the scrapheap.