On 'Allyness'

The British military, what makes you look competent, and it's pitfalls

Professor Andrew Groves is one of the few true academic experts on menswear. In fact, it was his work as the Director of the Westminster Menswear Archive that inspired me to pursue my Costume Studies MA. Recently, he has started a weekly Substack that is well worth checking out. Last week, he wrote an essay on ‘Ally,’ a British military slang term. What exactly ‘Ally’ is can be hard to nail down, as it has no comparable terms in the US military or civilian cultures. Broadly, it can be described as a language of visual signifiers that denote a soldier as “having been there,” or at the very least, wanting to come across that way, usually by modifying pieces of kit, or wearing it in a particular fashion.

As Groves puts it, “The quiet discipline of looking ready. It is a system that emerges precisely when regulation lags and consequences move faster than command…Allyness was awarded horizontally, not issued from above. It was recognition from peers who knew what to look for.” Groves continues:

That recognition lived in detail, but it was never a checklist. Allyness was built through small, cumulative acts, field-smart adjustments passed down through units, not rulebooks: cutting down webbing to reduce snagging, taping over buckles to kill shine, shaping berets tight to the temple, sewing in map pockets, blacking out brass, marking kit discreetly. None of this was required. All of it mattered, because it signalled experience rather than purchase.

While the origins of ‘ally’ definitely had roots in field-wise functionality and competence (the widespread adoption of Bundeswehr boots by British Paras or the ‘norgi’ baselayer adopted by RM Commandos come to mind), by the time the GWOT generation were forming their own sense of ‘allyness,’ much had devolved to style. I am going to quote from Simon Akam’s wonderful book The Changing of the Guard: The British Army Since 9/11, on the evolution of ‘ally’ in the 21st Century:

‘Ally’ is rifle magazines taped together— it draws inspiration from films as well as finding exhibition through the same medium. Ally is beards. Ally is non-regulation scarves and shemagh cloths. Ally is belts of 7.62mm link machine-gun ammunition draped over shirtless muscled torsos. Ally is liberal use of sniper tape on bits of kit, scrim netting pulled taut over the issued helmet, or ‘hero sleeves’ — sleeves rolled only halfway up the forearm. A strong influence, ironically given the outcome of that conflict, is Vietnam … Of course, the two quantities of violence and ally are entwined. Fighting is ally. It seeps into Iraq, too: Major Stuart Nicholson, a Fusiliers officer serving on an exchange post with the Anglians in Basra in 2006, sees one sub-unit who keep one set of totemic combats [field uniform] to wear every time they go out on patrol, regardless of how dirty and disgusting they become. Nicholson catches one of this crew deliberately driving a Warrior armoured vehicle over a helmet cover to make it look already battered.

Later in the book, Akam recounts the ‘ally’ origins of the British Army’s adoption of a Crye designed varient MultiCam (named Operation Peacock). The need for a new camouflage pattern was practical: British troops in Afghanistan found their DPM uniforms coming up short, and it was also based on seeing American SOF using MultiCam. I think that best illustrates the push and pull of what makes something ‘ally.’ Some ‘allyness’ traits can be seen as battlewise modifications to equipment, like taping down loose straps or added helmet scrim to help break up the silhouette, while others can be affectations that soldiers think look cool. And often, a bit of both.

(British troops in Afghanistan, 2008, looking very ‘ally’)

Akam seems to zero in on the influence of Vietnam War visual cliches as an important origin for what would become ‘ally’ early on in the GWOT. It is a pretty interesting glimpse into the culture before it was so heavily dominated by operator aesthetics. It is also interesting that a small, all-volunteer force with little institutional memory of combat operations on the scale seen in Iraq and Afghanistan would turn to 1960s-era American military culture.

Groves’ write-up is great, and happy to see others engaging in contemporary military culture like this. At one point, he writes, “Allyness is often misunderstood as style or vanity. It is neither. It’s the visible residue of competence, accumulated over time.” I don’t think these things are mutually exclusive, especially in a highly uniform and disciplined organization where having personal style can be in direct violation of regulations. By pushing the boundaries of regulations, be it by wearing more comfortable non-issue boots, adding knit cuffs to smock sleeves, or draping belts of 7.62mm across your shoulders and growing a scruffy beard, the willingness to bend the rules denotes a certain level of comfort born from experience — or at least that is part of the idea.

These kinds of regulation-flouting practices can be interpreted as signs of a breakdown in unit discipline, which, in turn, can lead to more serious issues. It isn’t exactly “broken windows” theory for military units, but it also kind of is. It’s why, when Akam tells a story of an American officer who visited a British base in Afghanistan in 2006 and remarked that the British soldiers “look like our army at the end of Vietnam,” It was not meant as a compliment. Elsewhere, the desire to be ‘ally’ led to armored vehicles flying English flags (despite its local connotations to the Crusades being an issue) and SS decals on other vehicles. ‘Allyness’ can be a sign of the unit culture going rogue.

The result was a crackdown on the excesses of ‘allyness.’ As Akam writes, “the ally clampdown is also a knee-jerk response to a realisation that something had got out of control. Some elements of ally survive, in particular the Paras’ interest in taping up bits of their gear. That is harder to stamp down on.”

( 2 PARA machinegunner, Helmand Province, 2008)

Groves argues that ‘allyness’ survived because it worked. It let soldiers read competence without ceremony.” I think there is no doubt that there is something to this, which is why as soon as something becomes fully legible as ‘ally’ it seems to lose its status. Like any other subculture, once a style becomes too legible or adopted by the mainstream, it can no longer act as a sign of belonging to the group. For it to truly work, it can’t be fully identifiable.

I think it is important to understand ‘ally’ as “not decorative but declarative,” as Groves writes, but also the product of young men, and that “young men have always, intimately and perpetually, shown an elaborate concern for what will make them look cool,” as Akam writes. I think the true high watermark of ‘ally’ was the 1970s-1980s, which should be a topic for another day. Does ‘allyness’ save lives? Debatable, if anything, some of the GWOT traits may have done the opposite. But what is true is that since the beginning of organized warfare, soldiers have looked for ways to denote their competence or hide their lack of experience from their comrades. They have looked to perform their roles for their fellow soldiers, to dress as the wise veteran until they become one.

Till next time,

C.W.M.

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