INTRODUCTION

The later 1930s saw significant changes to the structure and purpose of the CCC.

Prior to 1937 the Corps was a temporary program, an expedient to address the national unemployment crisis. Even its name was unofficial: the words "Civilian Conservation Corps" appeared nowhere in legislation, but were simply the 'brand name' of what was legally the Emergency Conservation Work program.

With the passage of Public Law No. 163, 75th Congress, effective July 1, 1937, the Civilian Conservation Corps was established by name as an independent Federal program. Funding was extended for three more years, to 1940. The focus of the program also changed. The eligibility criteria no longer required that enrollees be on public relief; now, they need simply be "not regularly in attendance at school, or possessing full-time employment." Each camp was further mandated to afford enrollees a minimum of 10 hours per week of vocational and academic training. "The new emphasis," historian Alfred Emile Cornebise concludes, "was therefore away from relieving distress and poverty and placed upon providing work experience and training."

The CCC's independence proved to be short lived. Seeking to consolidate the unwieldy sprawl of New Deal agencies, in 1939 Roosevelt and Congress folded the Corps into the newly-formed Federal Security Agency, a headquarters organization for a grab bag of New Deal domestic programs. Under the same reorganization the Army formally withdrew from providing reserve officers as CCC camp commandants. In practice, most CCC commandants continued to hold military reserve commissions, but their CCC appointments no longer represented active duty and their camp rank was no longer a military rank.

This demilitarizaton of the CCC would be symbolized by the adoption in late 1939 of a new, purpose-designed CCC dress uniform which decisively broke from Army patterns.

Paradoxically, administrative demilitarization of the CCC in 1939 was followed by a pragmatic re-militarization of the program to meet the needs of national defense in the face of the worsening world crisis. In the final Congressional reauthorization of the program in 1940, the number of camps was reduced to free up manpower for direct military service. The education component of the remaining CCC camps was overhauled yet again to train enrollees in industrial skills needed for national defense such as shop mathematics, automotive maintenance, blueprint reading, basic engineering, cooking, and first aid. Under the "5-hour-10-hour" program, adopted in January 1941, youths in selected camps were excused from work for five hours a week to take national defense training provided they would devote 10 hours a week of their own free time to this training.

After the attack at Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into the war, the remaining CCC camps were reoriented from conservation to direct support of the war effort. Many camps were physically relocated to military bases where the enrollees constructed new barracks and military training facilities. Reduced in numbers and tucked away out of sight working at military bases, the CCC was now a shadow of its former self. In summer 1942, on June 30, the last day of the Federal fiscal year, the Corps quietly closed up shop for good.

CCC DRESS UNIFORM, 1939-1942

The final CCC dress uniform was a three-part ensemble comprised of a spruce green wool coat cut on civilian lines, paired with matching spruce green wool trousers and a new garrison cap. The shirt remained the same standard olive drab "Pattern 1937" Specification 8-108 discussed earlier in this handbook.

Though the specifications for the new spruce green uniform items all date to 1939, the uniform was not actually issued until late in the year, beginning with camps in the 3rd Corps Area covering Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia in October 1939. Companies in most other corps areas did not receive the "spruce greens" until sometime in 1940.

The origins of this first and only purpose-designed CCC dress uniform are obscure. One commonly cited story, which first appears in John A. Salmond's influential 1967 study The Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942, attributes the impetus for the new design to Franklin D. Roosevelt himself:

Upon arrival at camp, enrollees were usually given two sets of clothing, a blue denim work or fatigue suit and a renovated Army olive drab uniform for dress purposes. In 1938, however, Roosevelt ordered that a special, spruce-green dress uniform be issued to all enrollees. The President, while visiting a camp at Warm Springs, had been disagreeably surprised by the poor quality of the dress uniforms. Shoddy clothing, he believed, weakened morale, and he immediately asked the Department of the Navy to design him a special CCC uniform. These were in widespread use by 1939.

COAT: WOOL, SPRUCE GREEN, NO KNOWN QM SPECIFICATION

The 1939 tunic was a spruce green single-breasted three-button wool sack coat. The front had a large, flapless patch pocket on the left breast and two flapped pockets on the lower front panels. The rear of the coat was distinctive, having four pleats symmetrically placed across the lower back at the natural waistline, and a half belt with two buttons across the pleats. The coat was issued with the new CCC green and yellow crest already applied on the left shoulder.

Like the CCC itself, this coat fused civilian and military influences. From the front, the sack cut presents a clearly civilian profile. From the rear, the pleated and half-belted waist is more like a military tunic (though more similar to a military Mackinaw coat than to the actual contemporary US Army tunic).

Frustratingly, little further information on the origin of this coat is readily available. As a purely civilian item, it is not covered in the standard reference works on military uniforms of the era.

This is also among the most scarce items of surviving CCC uniform wear. It would appear that most of the coats were returned to inventory when the CCC was wound down in June 1942. The wartime Combined Chiefs of Staff ordered that the former CCC spruce green coats and pants be held in reserve for potential issue to Axis prisoners in POW camps; it is unclear how much if any of the stock was actually released for this purpose. When and how the remaining stock was actually disposed of is currently unclear. Be that as it may, I have seen only one original example of this coat offered for sale in recent years in the secondary market, and the coat has never been reproduced for either the military replica or the boutique workwear market.

TROUSERS: ENLISTED MEN'S, SERVICE, CCC SPECIFIC SPRUCE GREEN COLOR, QM SPECIFICATION 8-83B DATED 9 NOVEMBER 1937

To complement the dress coat the Quartermaster issued standard "Pattern 1937" 8-83 wool trousers, albeit now dyed in a matching spruce green color.

Though new to the Army itself in 1938, the 8-83B trouser would have been familiar to any CCC enrollee, for it was a lightly modified descendant of the the 8-83A trouser which had been standard issue to the Conservation Corps since 1935. Changes incorporated in the 8-83B specification were subtle, confined largely to longer belt loops to accommodate a wide leather garrison belt and revised spacing of the loops around the waistline.

The CCC version of the 8-83B appears to be of the same lighter 18-oz serge wool which had become the Army standard, dyed spruce green to match the new coat.

As with the matching coat, original CCC 8-83B trousers are vanishingly rare in the secondary market. Though replicas of the 8-83B in the military "mustard" light olive drab shade are ubiquitous, this color is not accurate for the CCC; no replica has been offered to date in the correct CCC spruce color.

SHIRT: COAT STYLE, WOOL, OD, QM SPECIFICATION 8-108 OR 8-108 AMENDMENT 1

As noted above, the only garment not updated in the new spruce green suite was the service shirt: the same Army standard olive drab "Pattern 1937" Specification 8-108 shirt issued with the prior CCC dress uniform carried over to the new suite. Below is a fine example of a late-issue 8-108 service shirt with the post-1939 style of rank stripes as worn with the spruce green tunic and trousers.

Four images of a late issue 8-108 service shirt with post-1939 style CCC patches: CCC crest patch and three thin rank stripes for an enrollee Leader. The shirt is also ornamented with the late style collar diamonds, an unusual accessory for an enrollee: CCC on the right collar and 4th Corps Area (covering the southern states from North Carolina and Tennessee through George and Florida and west to Mississippi) on the left. Note fine details such as the prewar style non-convertible collar and the fabric backing on the placket. For more information on patches, rank insignia and collar ornaments see the Accessories section of the Handbook. Source: collection of Mark Ragan, private communication to the author.

GARRISON CAP

CAP, GARRISON, WOOL, QM SPECIFICATION 8-114 DATED 12 APRIL 1939

CCC SPECIFIC SPRUCE GREEN COLOR, QM TENTATIVE SPECIFICATION DATED 3 OCTOBER 1939

To finish off the new uniform the Quartermaster Corps provided a spruce green garrison cap.

Garrison or overseas caps had been a part of the CCC uniform from the earliest days of the program. Initially these were actual World War I surplus M1918 caps. Once these stocks were depleted the QMC supplied the CCC with new-manufacture caps in a similar style.

In the early 1930s the garrison cap was distinctive to the CCC; the US military continued to outfit its own enlisted men with the "Smokey Bear" campaign hat. With the incorporation of mechanized equipment into the Army in the 1930s, however, the campaign hat became impractical, as the wide brim proved awkward in the close confines of a truck cab or a tank. Accordingly, sometime around 1935 the Army reintroduced the overseas cap -- now termed a garrison cap --as an optional item. The mid-1930s version was made in 18oz. wool serge, and had a trimmer side flap and more symmetrical profile than its Great War ancestors. In 1939 the garrison cap became a standard issue item for all troops under Specification 8-114.

The spruce green CCC version of the 8-114 follows a tentative specification dated October 3, 1939. Likely the only change in the tentative spec was the spruce green dye. The cap was issued with the new green-on-yellow CCC logo patch already applied.

Paradoxically, original examples of this cap are as ubiquitous as the matching coat and pants are rare. It seems likely discharged enrollees were permitted to take their caps home as a "walking away" item -- i.e., a souvenir of their service-- resulting in a plentiful supply in the vintage collectibles marketplace.