The Ford Files: The Cheese Cutter

The Cheese Cutter

Scribe: Robin Ford

Iwonder if this anecdote will resonate within the band of ex-boys who served in the Army Apprentice Schools. Before the Colleges, in the 50’s, the days of Service Dress uniform, SD caps and polished buttons.

For many the SD cap, known as a ‘cheese cutter’ due to the wire stiffener in the crown, was smartness itself and a great deal of care was taken to embellish it. A super spit and polished chin strap with button and buckle gleaming, the crown material brushed in circle form, the peak slashed and a piece of wooden ruler inserted at the under front to give a rigid front appearance. All this was done so as to look like a Guardsman or a goofy recruit.

Being posted as a REME Electrician with RASC Water Transport in 1958 I witnessed sacrilege! All the deck crew were issued with ‘cheese cutters’ for general wear on the LCT. But what a difference –firstly they hated the cap which brought little respect for it. To a man the wire was removed, giving it a crushed fruit cake look, the shape was deliberately beaten into something unrecognisable and whole thing was covered in grease, oil or paint splash.

RSM ‘Busty’ Baker, Grenadier Guards would have jailed every one of them, but they would have just laughed and pleaded that it just would not have gone with their oil ingressed brown boiler suits of the day – got a point I suppose. But then, not everybody loved a ‘cheese cutter’.

As issued, the Service Dress Cap from the 1940s-50s era

Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM) F Perkins MBE, with his slashed look SD Cap, often referred to as Cheese Cutter, photo supplied by https://rememuseum.photos/