North Vietnamese Officer’s Tunic – Green Gray

This is a cotton twill NVA officer’s tunic in the mid 1960s green gray color.

It has the loops for the shoulder boards but none of collar tabs, they were not needed when going South.

Four pocket tunics, like this one, were documented as having been captured in RVN by the Combined Material Exploitation Center in Saigon in one of their monthly circulars.

We have shown this tunic next to a matching color NVA pith helmet with early bamboo sweatband we have for sale here for comparison.

FINAL PHOTO

The final photo illustrates the wide range of color variation in NVA issue uniforms. We believe that the cotton used to make uniforms came from surplus stocks held in storage by the ChiComs. The ChiComs first made NVA uniforms the older colors like khaki and olive brown. These colors had been worn in the 1950s and early 1960s by the PLA. They also simultaneously used various color cottons that were being used to make clothing for the PRC civilian population who wore Mao Style uniforms in the 1960s. These “civilian” colors included various shades of gray, gray-green, blue, etc.

As the war progressed into 1965, all these different colors were being worn by the NVA heading South to RVN. As the war moved along in years, the Chinese began to produce uniforms for the NVA in green hues.

The PRC ultimately switched to making most NVA uniforms in the standard reed green cotton twill by some time in 1967. This was easier for production as it was the same color being worn by the PLA. Scaling up to make more of the same cotton cloth in that color was not a difficult task.

This does not mean that the odd colors being worn by the NVA disappeared by the end of the war. They were just being worn by NVA moving down South less frequently. Think of NVA uniforms on a color spectrum from very light colors to darker shades to finally standardizing on reed green. By 1973, for example, you see the NVA in RVN wearing almost nothing but reed green uniforms.