Most of us are familiar with the headgear worn by U.S. Army Special Forces. The iconic green beret.

There is, of course, a story about the wearing of this famous head cover, and there’s a story behind the story as well.

Space limitations don’t allow for a full and complete telling of the story, but let me share with you just a bit.

The green beret was unofficially adopted by the Special Forces in 1954 after “searching for a piece of headgear that would set them optically apart,” so says Wikipedia.

The article goes on to note that “Members of the SFG began searching through their accumulated berets and settled on the Rifle Green color of British Rifle Regiments . . . Captain Frank Dallas had the new beret designed and produced in small numbers for the members of the 10th and 77th Special Forces Groups.”

We learn that “Their new headgear was first worn at a retirement parade at Fort Bragg on 12 June 1955 for Lt. General Joseph P. Cleland, the now former Commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps. Onlookers thought that the commandos were a foreign delegation from NATO.”

Then came the rub. General Paul D. Adams, the post commander at Fort Bragg, banned the wearing of green berets, although “some members of the Special Forces continued to wear it surreptitiously.”

In September of 1961 the prohibition was reversed, and the green beret was designated as the exclusive headdress of the Army Special Forces.

The following month President John F. Kennedy was scheduled for a visit to the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg. Earlier that year he had authorized them for use exclusively by the U.S. Special Forces. The following year the President called the green beret “a symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom.”

A Special Forces company was slated to pass in review before the President, so it was decided to have the company do so wearing green berets. However, due to the prohibition, there weren’t enough of them available.

What to do. So . . . since the berets were supplied by a manufacturer in Canada, who couldn’t get more to Fort Bragg in time, someone came up with a solution.

Ivey’s department store in downtown Fayetteville had just received a shipment of green tams (berets), which had a large feather from the front, back over the tam.

The tams were purchased, the feathers removed, and the hole covered with the Special Forces crest.

During the parade a Colonel Yarborough asked the President what he thought about making the green berets the regular headgear of Special Forces. Kennedy thought it a great idea.

And the rest, as they say, is history. The now iconic part of the uniform was here to stay.

This story behind the story was told me by a lifelong friend who was a junior officer at Fort Bragg who happened to be privy to what transpired.

And that’s the way it was.

And still is.