Now KD is yet another area where some 3* or 4* must have had a deal with a cloth manufacturer.
My first 'set' bought in UK was a complete hotch potch. I remember buying the shorts at an outfitters in Sleaford - RE City? - which came below the knee and had cross over waist straps. The shirts were a different cloth and a different colour.
Then had a 'proper' set made in Aden. Of course the Malta uniform was different from the Cyprus and Cyprus from Aden and Aden from Singapore.
My next set was from Butterworth. The Australian CO had decreed that the RAF and RAAF would have different coloured KD. I managed to persuade the tailor to make me an Aussie set as it was the same colour as the RAF Singapore items.
Airmen were issued with an entirely different colour and pattern. Then that was declared obsolete and a new set came out without shoulder patches, Then not long after it went Stone.
Around 1972 we were given buckets of cash (in Akrotiri) for buy shirts, shorts, bush jackets, No 6s etc but of course there was no cloth. The enterprising Mess then sent to Hong Kong for bolts of cloth which were dropped off on the home bound trooper.
Not content with this revolutionary re-issue from KD to Stone there was another plot in 1984. I had had to buy a new set of Stone from Au Wai Lam that were delivered to me VAT-free in ASI and naturally a different pattern to the others
We were then visited by a WRAF Blunty Wg Cdr who told us that we were going to have blue tropical kit. We laughed, oh how we laughed. She assured us that the shelves in stores at Lyneham were groaning with the stuff.
I wonder what happened to that pipe dream?
Now, in Cyprus, the preferred rig seems to be desert combats and not shorts. We couldn't wait to get in to shorts in the summer.