Paddyflage

Paddyflage Smock

AKA Irish DPM. Because it looks absolutely nothing like British DPM it is confused a lot with the French CCE. Superficially it similar to CCE to the un-initiated, in reality it shares roughly the same colours – and that’s about it. Paddyflage is the Irish Army’s answer to how to hide their ½ regiment of men in between topping up their tans on Peacekeeping duty somewhere nice and safe like Cyprus, topping up their tans somewhere not so nice but still fairly safe like the Lebanon or not nice but hot and safe like the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Irish army only wear Blue Battle Bowlers; so they might as well dress in shinny clothing so they can avoid the dangers of being knocked over by an African taxi taking their fellow UN soldiers to the nearest child brothel. Ideally they should wear UCP because the stuff is luminous both in daytime and at night, but somebody might shoot at them in the mistaken belief they are Spams.

The interesting thing about Irish DPM is the rarity of it. It’s the Howard Hughes of camouflage; holed up in Las Vegas hotel room twitching and taking about germs and Freemason plots. Rare as rocking horse shit not only because the Irish Defence Force struggles for enough men to knock up a decent Polo team; but also because it is illegal to sell it in The Republic. The Irish government was rather reluctant to present the British with a Jus ad bellum by allowing the Provo’s to be caught cutting around the XMG in Irish Army uniform they bought on a market stall in Cork. In the 1960’s and 1970’s they thought it far more sporting to give them training camps and weapons instead. But since we’re all friends again, and the Provo’s started robbing Post Offices down South they’ve kept the ban.

The result of all this is that Airsoft nerds will pay an absolute frikkin fortune for it, from some dodgy Belgian surplus geezer, with a back room suspiciously full of semen covered Hitler Youth uniforms, Zyklon B canisters and a dodgy camera shy old man like Father Fitzpatrick in the “Are you right there, Father Ted” episode. Why is a complete mystery to me. The whole point of Airsoft is to Walt it around dressed up like somebody who actually sees some action. They might as well dress up as a Mess Tin repair unit in Swiss camouflage instead, it would be a great deal cheaper.

It is manufactured by Seyntex of Belgium in case you can produce the level of motivation to care.