Word: beret
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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There was a bald spot now where his familiar blue beret used to be, but his thin face, jerky, stiff-armed strokes and debonair air were unmistakable. It was Jean Borotra all right, back on the same Manhattan courts where he had four times won the U.S. indoor tennis title (1925, 1927, 1929, 1931). The occasion: an exhibition match with an old rival, the U.S.'s ex-Davis Cupper Francis X. Shields...
During the war (he was abruptly drafted in 1942 while beating the drum for a second front) Owen served as pressagent to his old friend Mountbatten. He edited the cheesecake-laden SEAC in Lord Louis' South East Asia Command, wore a Monty-style beret but never the insignia of his rank (lieutenant colonel). When he came home last summer, he no longer seemed so positive that Socialism had all the answers. His "Good Morning!" column in the Daily Mail didn't exactly hew to the Tory line, but it sometimes took a micrometer to measure the difference...
...night before Field Marshal Montgomery left, the love feast was climaxed by a Kremlin banquet at which Stalin himself kept filling the teetotaling visitor's glass for repeated toasts. Just before the banquet, Monty had been given a caracul cap to replace his famed black beret, and a long grey dress overcoat of a Soviet marshal-reportedly lined with $8,000 worth of sables-to replace the dramatic white sheepskin he had worn to Moscow...
...lining in Monty's new coat seemed to be merely "brown fur." Said the gallant Monty: "Anyhow, it's a beautiful coat." Wearing it and his caracul cap, taking his white coat with him, he boarded the plane. When he landed in England, he had on his beret...
Crestfallen, the little man in the big beret made for the exit. As he reached the door, the official shouted after him: "One thing more. If there are any fleas here, they must have been brought by delegates...