The shirt that John Lennon wore was a U.S. Army OG 107 Type III fatigue/utility shirt, and when asked how he acquired the jacket on the Dick Cavett show he said:
“It’s very funny, I was in the German Airport, I had an American Army mac on and a guy came up and said, I just got out of the Army in Vietnam and if you’d like these clothes I’d love to give them to you, ‘I said alright’, and he sent me all these Army clothes in the post, A few years ago it was.” – John Lennon – September 11, 1971.
Badges on the shirt are:
- Reinhardt name tape.
- U.S. Army name tape.
- 2nd Infantry Division shoulder patch on the left shoulder.
- 2nd Infantry Division Imjin scouts Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) pocket badge.
- Sergeants rank stripes on both the left and right arms.
On the shoulder, is a distinctive Indian shoulder patch that belongs to the United States Second Infantry Division. The patch relates to their mission of defending South Korea from North Korean invasion. A role the division still has today.
A soldier wore the “Imjin Scout Regiment Patch” (right pocket) after twenty patrols missions in the DMZ, north of the Imjin River.
The man that offered John Lennon the army shirts was, Peter James Reinhardt. He had been a sergeant in the U.S. Army and served in South Korea. As a civilian, Peter worked for Delta Airlines and was entitled to free travel. One day on his way to see his mother, Peter met John Lennon and got talking.
It could be surprising that John Lennon would choose to wear an army shirt because he was anti-war. I’d suppose a difference is between appreciating the ex-soldiers gesture and being anti-war. John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono held two-week-long, Bed-ins-for-Peace, at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam and the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal. These protests in 1969 were nonviolent and against wars like the Vietnam War.
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