For the average CCC boy, historian Joe Hermolin writes, "The day began with reveille and flag-raising at 6:00 am. After a round of calisthenics, a hearty breakfast, and barracks and grounds cleanup, enrollees left for their work assignments at 7:45."

Five days a week, the boys worked steadily from about 8:00 am to about 4:00 pm; lunch was usually served in the field. Most of the work was done with hand tools and their own muscles. If you've ever been on a trail crew or a reforesting project, you have some idea of just how long eight hours of steady manual labor can feel. If the enrollees were not tough to begin with, they toughened up quickly.

BACKGROUNDER: WHAT ARE "FATIGUES"?

"Fatigue duty" is the Army term for physical work around the garrison. Throughout the entire period between the Civil War and World War II, the enlisted privates of the "Regular Army" -- the tiny, standing peacetime professional army of the United States -- did most of the physical labor required to cook their food; care for their horses, vehicles, and equipment; and maintain their barracks, posts, and facilities. Rather than have the troops soil their service uniforms with dirt and grease, the Army issued soldiers "fatigue clothes" to wear while performing these duties.

The word "uniform" may conjure up images of spit and polish, but fatigues are the antithesis of this mental picture. They were basic work clothes for hard labor, closer to farmers' or mechanics' coveralls than anything you would see on the battlefield or parade ground. Generally they were cut very oversized, as they were intended to be worn as a coverall layer on top of service uniform shirts and trousers.

The CCC denim work uniform was a three-part ensemble: jumper, trousers, and hat. The garments all had World War I or pre-WWI antecedents, but conformed to a final specification adopted in 1919.* Denims in this pattern remained standard US Army issue from 1919 to 1940.

* NOTE: Reproductions of these garments are universally referred to online as "M1937 Fatigues." In 1937 the US Army adopted a new uniform system; when it came to fatigues, however, the new system retained the 1919 specifications with no changes. "M1937 pattern" fatigues are thus correct for any date from 1919 to 1940.

The CCC work jacket's design traces its lineage to an ancestral brown denim jumper adopted by the Army in 1908 as part of its first suite of denim work clothes.

From the beginning, the pullover "jumper" design was controversial. Soldiers complained that the jumper top was awkward to get on and off and was easily torn. For a few months in 1917 and 1918, the Quartermaster Corps addressed this complaint, producing instead a three-pocket denim coat as the fatigue top. Under the pressure of wartime production, however, the QMC abandoned the improved coat in 1918 and reverted to a spartan brown jumper designed for easy mass production.

This 1918 wartime economy design is the direct ancestor of the ubiquitous CCC denim top. In 1919 the World War I design became a peacetime Army-wide standard, Specification 6-125. The only change from the wartime predecessor was a switch from brown to indigo blue dye.

The 6-125 Jumper was a loose-fitting pullover with a three button half-placket front that ended in a pointed bottom. It had a falling collar and split cuffs closed by a single button. The coat had two large, rectangular patch pockets on the chest. These pockets had no buttons or flaps, and were “side opening”: the entrance to the pocket faced inwards towards the placket and buttons. The buttons were made of zinc and were cast with the letters U.S. Army.

On the left is a pristine original jumper made for issue to the CCC. The tag reveals that this example was made I & C Spivak of Philadelphia under Quartermaster Corps contract number W669-ECF-462 issued on January 10, 1935. The letters ECF mean this contract was paid for out of the Emergency Conservation Fund -- i.e., the CCC budget.

Period images suggest that the overwhelming majority of CCC enrollees received the standard 6-125 denim pullover. However, fully-opening coat-style denim tops do appear in a minority of CCC images.

While the military remained stubbornly devoted to the pullover style denim jumper until 1940, civilian workers demanded a more practical coat-style chore jacket, and manufacturers were happy to oblige them. By the 1930s the fully-opening denim chore coat was a standard item of American work wear, available from scores of manufacturers in a variety of patterns.

It seems that whenever supplies of the 6-125 jumper ran low, regional QMC procurement officers were empowered to go into the market and purchase civilian denim chore coats in any number needed to get the CCC enrollees into the field on schedule. Lucky indeed were the men who received these superior alternatives to the much-disliked Army denim jumper.

The CCC work trouser traces its ancestry to a denim fatigue pant developed in 1908 for the Army's Coastal Artillery Corps. After several rounds of changes to minor details, this pattern became the basis for Specification 6-124 in the 1919 denim fatigue suite. In 1933 the trouser pattern was updated to 6-124A; again, changes seem to have been very minor.

Notable features of the 6-124A Trouser include a full but straight leg without bell bottoms and capacious "patch" pockets. ("Patch" pockets are fabricated by sewing a separate patch of fabric to the exterior of the garment, and are visually distinct from the more common "hanging" pocket, in which an internal pouch is sewn inside the pant leg and attached to a slit in the outside fabric.) The 6-124As had two rear and two very large front patch pockets with pointed bottoms. The large front pockets have a diagonal top entrance. A small watch pocket, also patched rather than hanging, is behind the right front pocket.

The rear of the pants had a buckle attached to two straps of fabric below the beltline; as the fatigues were issued in general sizes like "Medium" and "Large," the buckle helped tighten the seat for individual fit. Around the time of the 1937 uniform system revisions, this archaic back buckle was deleted from the specification, but otherwise the pattern remained unchanged.

The trousers had a five-button fly with concealed buttons; the buttons themselves were made of zinc and were cast with the letters US Army as on the jumper.

The CCC denims were topped off with a floppy cap.

This cap style would become a staple of 20th century fashion or, perhaps, anti-fashion. It is familiar to moderns as a fisherman's hat or "Gilligan cap," so-called after the beloved 1960s TV sitcom character. During the 1930s it was best known as a "Daisy Mae," after a female character in Al Capp's Lil' Abner comic strip.

The ancestral military version of this ubiquitous cap was introduced in 1908. It had a four piece crown, white cotton lining, a faux leather sweatband and a reinforced brim with a folded and sewn edge. Simplifications during World War I saw the deletion of the cotton lining and the replacement of the leatherette with a denim sweatband.

At some later point, perhaps concurrent with the adoption of the 1919 specifications (presumed by the author to be Specification 6-3), the crown construction switched from four to six pieces.

Caps for the CCC seem to have been made to a Quartermaster Corps Tentative Specification dated February 27, 1934. A new final specification, 6-3A, was adopted in 1937 as part of the uniform revisions of that year. There appear to be no meaningful distinctions between the 1919, 1934 and the 1937 models.