JG & KD Suppliers

What Price Glory or Soldier of Fortune for KD. It's essentially the same kit, you just have to do the sums on postage and possible import fees to get the best price. Now WPG are shipping from the UAE you tend not to get hit for duty. You might try Pegasus Militaria for KD trousers.
I cant bring myself to recommend the only accurate supplier of JG as he is notoriously unreliable and 99% of the rest of his kit is utter junk.

I see, who would get what as there's a nice variety from jackets to shirts & shorts to trousers, who would get what?

KD is a minefield.

For a start if you want it for 're-enacting' and you're not huge there is bagloads of orginal stuff out there, often for less than the repros.

I picked up some 1942 dated shorts for a tenner at war a peace a few years ago, i picked up a early 50s KD jacket for £8 from a charity shop etc.

SOfs repro KD is ok, i know WPGs repro JG *used* to be the 43 pattern stuff that wasnt issued until the end of the war in any quantity (most early JG was just redyed KD)

sean avoids mentioning 'replicators' as hes right in that they have a dire reputation for not honouring orders... however their KD/JG is pretty spot on and is probably made using the same factories the originals were as its hard to tell the difference. It was also (circa 2005) dirt cheap when i put in my order.

I had trousers, two shirts (one KD, one JG), a BD blouse and a bush jacket made up to order to my size and posted to me for £58!!

As for what to wear it depends entirely on theatre and year.

For example is you're doing early desert war 'bombay bloomers' and a KD shirt is more appropriate (bloomers often cut down into shorts) but if you're doing Italy it might be more probably to have KD trousers and an aertex jacket.

Early far east and again its KD shirts and shorts, move on a year to the first chindit ops and its dyed KD trousers and similar.

Army of occupation airborne forces in the far east and its 43 and even 44 pattern stuff.

Depends what you want to do really.

However KD trousers and a aertex KD shirt is good for the sahara in the 40s through to sicily through to suez in the 50s!

Also more practical for skirmishing.

Equally dont worry about bush jackets, there sort of an officers and other ranks 'best' sort of thing.

Like i say though its a minefield, exasperated by the fact that egyptian and indian tailors were so cheap that even a private soldier could afford to have his own uniform tailor made so that you find a lot of odd variations. Dress standards were non existant in many units in the western desert (caused a lot of problems when units came back to europe and were used to wearing all sorts of local and ad hoc stuff) and its perfectly normal to see someone in full kd or full bd or a mix anywhere in between. A *lot* of captured kit was used as well as the supply depots were constantly changing hands, this is more a case with the germans who preferred UK KD and used it a lot but you do get pics of british lads in german and italian desert clothing.

Locally in South Africa a lot of the kit is hard to come by, but we recently discovered one of the bush shirts locally made, will make a fairly near copy of a KD type shirt, with half buttons, epaulettes and pleated pockets.

Yes, with those pocket flaps, it does lok rather like the "Australian Pattern" 2-pocket KD shirt.