Why were the camouflage uniforms (green, brown, yellow) adopted so late? When it seems that it would be pretty obvious that a soldier would die less often in the field if he’s harder to spot? Even in WW1 French were still wearing bright blue and red uniforms?
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Before the 1900s, the gunpowder everyone used burned very inefficiently and produced a lot of smoke. To avoid friendly fire accidents, European armies issued bright, distinctively colored uniforms to their regular troops. Since their main fighting tactics consisted of lining up in an open field and shooting each other with short-ranged, inaccurate muskets, it didn’t matter that the enemy could see you in actual combat. If the army needed stealth, they’d hide in the smoke or pick a foggy day to move. The exception to the rule was rifle-equipped skirmisher units, who wore uniforms with more muted colors to make their job of sneaking around easier.
Then in the years leading up to WWI, the field of chemistry became sophisticated enough that scientists were able to create a formula for clean burning smokeless gunpowder. However, the tactics hadn’t caught up yet, so neither did uniform design. After sending millions of soldiers to die in droves, armies slowly learned that machine guns and standard-issue rifles made mass infantry assaults in open terrain suicidal, forcing all soldiers to adopt skirmisher tactics. That meant adopting uniforms with more muted colors, and eventually, camo patterns.
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