Came across this letter that I have transcribed from an old issue of Pegasus. From. Maj.Gen.Frost Liphook Hampshire Sir. Maj. David Mayfield asks why the maroon beret has become the red beret. Various dictionaries describe the colour maroon in various ways and they are ,on the whole ,rather indeterminate and not very suitable to describe something so very definite as our coloured beret. Maroon also means an explosive firework-and we had quite a few of those among our ranks in the early years! Or again to be marooned is to be abandoned in a desolate place,and this has happened to many of us;so perhaps the word maroon is not so inappropriate after all. When this beret was first introduced it was not all that popular and many preferred to go on wearing their old Regimental headgear .I well remember the struggle I had to part an Ulster rifleman from his “Corbeen”.despite all my efforts ,he was still wearing it when he was killed in Tunisia long after we had persuaded everyone else to adopt the beret. After we heard that the Germans were calling us “Red Devils”no member of the Parachute Brigade would refer to his beret as other than being red..No one thereafter wanted any other form of headgear One could always distinguish our wounded in the hospital because they continued to wear their berets even in bed ,Indeed one sister told me that they insisted on going into the operating theatre with them on. John Frost
Above is copied from the Mail Bag of Pegasus Jan. 72 Number1,Imagine the original document is in the Pegasus Archives
