Military

Earning it: A complete history of Army berets and who's allowed to wear them

While it’s true that President John F. Kennedy authorized Special Forces soldiers to wear a rifle green beret in 1961, the soldiers had been wearing them off the books for the better part of the previous decade — and they weren’t the first to do that.
It turns out that all of the Army’s berets — from green to maroon to black, and the tan that replaced it — were first worn as an unauthorized morale booster.
The first instance of a colored beret in the U.S. Army was in 1943, Army Historical Foundation chief historian Matt Seelinger told Army Times.
The commander of the British 1st Airborne Corps gifted the paratroopers of the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion — now a regiment, the unit is now part of 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division — the deep red berets worn by British airborne soldiers.
“It was a relatively small part of the American airborne contingent,” Seelinger said, and they stopped wearing them after the war.
By 1954, American Special Forces soldiers had adopted an unauthorized beret of their own — green, like the British Commandos who’d begun wearing them during World War II.