43. Day, December 30, 2015
Before I begin tomorrow to paint the shirt, at first a little research.
The summer uniform shirt of the Russian soldier was at that time still called "kittel" and was white ...:
The group in the picture, however posing for a photograph after a after receiving an order (they all wear the St George cross on the chest) ...
... and - maybe - they had given it back afterwards.
The reality was quite more confusing!
In the Russian army, the field force from the depots was delivered not finished uniforms but bales of cloth, buttons, etc., from which the regiment taylors then made uniforms.
Although there was a formal regulation...
... but the floodgates were by this system for deviations, preferences and "fashions" opened - hardly a "kittel" was like the other one hundred percent.
In Addition:
Russia had the Russo-Japanese war indeed provoked and were told at the casinos and wrote grandly in the media: "Let them come, this little yellow monkeys. We cover them alone with our caps!"
When the war was there he found Russia completely unprepared in truth!
Every bit of supply of uniform fabrics, food, ammunition and soldiers had to be transport with the Trans-Siberian Railway to easterrn asian theater of war.
Only the Trans-Siberian Railway was not yet ready at this time!
It lacked the stretch to Lake Baikal - the trains ran only to Irkutsk, then everything was unloaded and loaded onto ferries (some units even had to march around the lake!). Then was reloaded onto trains and it went to the theater of war.
The "Transsib" was also by then only one lane expanded - and alone completely overloaded by troops and ammunition transports!
So you had to take in the units on the battlefield for uniforms etc. often, which was to get on the spot - which contributed not a little to the different appearance of the uniforms.
Actually that should have "kittel" two buttons at the collar and two more on the placket. Had no buttons, was spared such a way that one of the "kittel" a button sewed to the collar.
On top of that the white shirt was unspeakably impractical! It made the soldiers on the ground to an ideal "target" for Japanese shooters, resulting in huge losses.
During the war, they went quickly to the Russian side about spending more practical Shirts on brown fabric and the caps finally miss a screen which protected the eyes of the soldiers from sun and rain ...:
The different look of the "kittel", (later called "Gymnastiorka") incidentally, was after a nine-year period of peace at the beginning of World War 1 the same.
On the next picture - taken in August 1914 - shows three soldiers of the same unit wearing all different shirts with different buttons. The standing man in hunter base wears the - 1910 actually abolished! - peakless cap...:
And anyone who thinks that was only at the regiments with the "high house numbers" so, you are wrong!
The next picture shows a soldiers of an guard unit (indicated by the colored braid on the placket) - and each one carries a different shirt ...: