Digure 1.--

HBC readers in connection with the subject of pajamas might be interested in my experience as an 18-year-old boy being drafted into the American Army in 1945 at the very end of World War II.

Induction

On the first night of our induction at a camp in central Pennsylvania, we hadn't yet been issued our uniforms and were still wearing our civilian clothes. We got all our official gear the following morning.

My Pajamas

But the first night we had to get undressed for bed in the barracks, and I changed into a pair of white pajamas with blue piping around the collar and the breast pocket. The pajamas had been bought by my mother at Brooks Brothers and were what I had been wearing just previously as a prep school boy at a rather upper-class boarding school. It never occurred to me that all boys didn't wear pajamas to sleep in. But when I appeared in the communal barracks washroom to brush my teeth in these white pajamas I instantly became of victim of harsh ridicule for wearing such sissy, snooty sleepwear.

Underwear

Most of the inductees, many of them from working-class families, were accustomed to sleep in their underwear. Some wore their union suits (both short and long-legged ones), and some wore two-piece underwear (sleeveless shirts and knitted briefs). It depended, I suppose, on whether they came from well-heated homes or not.

Army Convention

Of course I instantly abandoned the pajamas, which got sent home along with my other "civies," and I took to wearing army-issue underwear to sleep in for the rest of my army experience. All our army underwear was olive drab, both the winter long johns and the summer undershirts and the broadcloth shorts with drawstrings at the sides and button flies. Enlisted boys never wore pajamas in the service. I think perhaps some officers did, but sleeping in underwear was the standard military custom.

Mother's Reaction

One time when I had a short leave and took some laundry home to be washed, my mother expressed surprise that there were no pajamas to be washed. When I told her that boys in the service didn't wear pajamas, she reacted with dismay: "How uncivilized!", I recall her saying. But the custom of sleeping in one's underwear became pretty widespread around the country for boys who had had any military training or experience. Sleeping in one's underwear ceased to have the original lower class economic connotations.

Created: 7:32 PM 12/26/2004
Last updated: 7:32 PM 12/26/2004