This is the story of how soldiers, faced with a deadly problem, created an iconic and unofficial camouflage adaptation: the field-dyed Desert DPM.

After nearly a half-century of nearly exclusively LARPing against the Soviet Union, the 9/11 attacks and subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq opened the armies of Europe to actual (though asymmetrical) combat. Nations like the Netherlands finally got the chance to test their equipment in the field.