EXACTLY a century ago, back in August 1915, one of the hottest topics of discussion in Southampton to dictate the idle chit-chat on the streets and occupy the column inches of the Southern Daily Echo was the debate as to whether our soldiers would be allowed to wear beards.

With the war rumbling on and a winter campaign in the trenches looking ever more likely, there had been much talk as to whether our officers and soldiers would be allowed and, perhaps, even encouraged to embrace a growth of whiskers as a defence against the bitter elements on the Western Front.

The question was raised in several letters from the Front, according to various newspapers at the time, with the writers, especially the most thoughtful and experienced officers, arguing forcibly that all who wish should be left free to allow their beards to grow. It was declared that observations made in the trenches last winter left it beyond doubt that soldiers suffered considerably as the result of leaving the throat unprotected.

“Of course,” wrote one smart young subaltern of the Expeditionary Force, “it would be something of a break from the traditions of the British Army if most of us were to wear the ‘hirsute appendage’, but appearance doesn’t matter a jot compared with health and fitness.”

It may be added that evidence as to the practice in other armies, in the shape of pictures from the various fronts, is to the effect with our Russian Allies the wearing of the beard is almost general, and that many, if not most, of the German officers and men appear to go unshaven in the winter.

For many years prior to the First World War, the wearing of a moustache was encouraged in the British Army with uniform regulations in the British Army between the years 1860 and 1916 stipulated that every soldier should have a moustache. Soldiers were instructed that the hair of the head must be kept short, while the chin and the under lip will be shaved, but not the upper lip.

Although the act of shaving one’s upper lip was trivial in itself, it was considered a breach of discipline. If a soldier were to do this, he faced disciplinary action by his commanding officer which could include imprisonment, an especially unsavoury prospect in the Victorian era.

The military moustache, which was believed to have been adopted at the tail end of the 1700s from the French, who also demanded their soldiers to display similar follicular fashions, was deemed as a display of virility and aggression. Beard and moustache growth was championed amongst troops in India and the Arab countries where bare faces were scorned as being juvenile. It was these origins within Britain’s Empire that resulted in moustaches becoming compulsory for the troops of the East India Company’s Bombay Army after significant campaigning in 1854.

Whilst not yet compulsory, moustaches stared to grow in popularity amongst British troops during the Crimean War and continued to adorn the tops lips of soldiers for many years, reaching their peak with the fulsome display of Lord Kitchener’s handsomely cultivated moustache, which was forever immortalised on the famous Great War recruiting poster.

In 1916, the regulation was dropped and troops were allowed to be clean-shaven again. This was largely because such a superficial requirement was getting ignored in the trenches of WWI, especially as they could sometimes get in the way of a good gas mask seal. It was also alleged that change took place to accommodate the Prince of Wales, whose growth was less than manly. The change was also embraced by the man who signed the order to abolish the moustache requirement – Lieutenant-General Sir Nevil Macready – who also intensely disliked his own moustache, which he described as “a bristly affair resembling the small brushes with which kitchen maids and others clean saucepans”.