OK, I know this has been discussed before and I went thru a similar bout of drugs and booze trying to nail this down for my 1864 Danes, but here we go again.
I get that Belgian TUNICS in this period were either VERY dark blue or VERY dark green. However, the first plate in Mollo and Turner's Army Uniforms of World War I (the one where they colorized actual photos) seems to show an infantry GREAT COAT as absolute black. I don't have the book, so I don't know what the commentary for this plate says, but it looks like its legitimately black.
Soooo, looking back at my Danish great coat experience (and references most appreciated), my questions for this august body of scholars are:
1. What did the Belgian uniform regulation say the color was?
2. Was the official color – say dark blue, for example – so dark that it it was indistinguishable from black, or was the official color some weird shade like UMBRA. When researching the Danes I noted that some armies of several nations described Navy Blue as a (quote) "shade of black."
3. Is there something I might have missed on this, like maybe Mollo and Turner are simply wrong?
Bottom line is that if the plate referenced is Mollo and Turner's interpretation of dark blue, then the great coat seems something darker, so what is it exactly?