Here’s a picture, worth a thousand words, eh?
So what’s the strap under the freakin’ lower lip all about? Tradition, I know. But what’s the origin of that tradition? Was there ever a practical reason to wear a heamet in such a fashion? Looks? Yeah, right. And it’s pretty universal among ceremonial military garb!
My first, and lasting, impression is that it looks stupid. Partly because if the wearer were to lose the hat, it’d likely take his lips and nose with it. I’m pretty sure the thing didn’t originate in battle, but battle doesn’t often make sense anyway so who knows.
The gist of my question is, why would anyone wear a (chin)strap under their lower lip, fer crissakes?
Peace,
mangeorge
Now this one makes sense.
I’m all worked up over this because it;s been bugging (not buggering) me since I was a little kid.
Maybe the strap is a size too small and he can’t put it under his chin 
Now that’s just silly, Dog80, and not ay all in keeping with the spirit of the inquiry.
We’ll have no more of that.
My mother told me that it was so that if the hat were knocked off it would not take the head too, but it does help keep the hat on.
I’m pretty sure she’s talking about the type in the 2nd example.
It’s a myth that combat troops didn’t wear their “brain buckets” chin strap because of fear that it would “take their heads off”. At least with the Marines in Vietnam.
But in WWII there were constantly letters to the editor of Stars And Stripes by GI’s complaining that they were required to fasten the chin strap which could lead to neck injuries by nearby and otherwise harmless explosions.
I have no idea whether or not the writers had actually seen such incidents or were merely responding to a type of ‘urban legand.’
At one time I had a WWII-vintage American helmet – it had some sort of pop-bead mechanism on the chin strap so that one could use the strap for its intended purpose, but the helmet would pop off with little effort should a nasty German try to garrot the soldier with his own chinstrap.
I don’t know much about explosions, but it seems like if you were close enough for that to happen you be in deep poo-poo anyway.
I was in the “gator” navy during the Vietnam war and saw a lot of Marines come back from combat. I also saw quite a few dinged helmets. One was dinged by a friendly (M79?) grenade launcher, uh, grenade. It was an accident. Marines don’t do that shit. Most of it, though, was shrapnel damage.
Ok, I can take a hint. I’ll try and put goofy-looking lip straps out of my mind. 
I can’t argue the point. All I’m doing is reporting what infantryment wrote to the newspaper.
I think it is done that way simply to be decorative; it’s the same configuration with the bearskin helmet.
These are dress uniforms, that’s all - they aren’t intended to be practical.
The legend about chinstraps causing neck injuries dates back to WW1. The old “soup-plate” helmets supposedly would catch the wind from an explosion like a sail, and break your neck even if no shrapnel came anywhere near you.
The “steel pot” helmets of the WW2-Korea-Vietnam era were supposedly much safer. Although many GIs still hated to wear the chinstrap.
As for the “lipstraps” on the fancy-dress headgear, my wild guess is that it provides just enough leverage that if you feel it starting to tip over, you can move your jaw to adjust it. Hopefully without making enough movement for your NCO to notice. But I suspect that its purpose is 99.999999% useless decoration.
Or particularly attractive for that matter. He looks like stepped off the set of Wizard of Oz…
It provides enough support for your lower lip so that you can focus on maintaining a stiff upper lip… 
I don’t doubt that it’s decorative, I was wondering where someone got the idea that it looks good in the day, and why they still do it. I’m not of a military mind, mind you, so maybe I just don’t see it. Some think camo (we call it break-up now, huh?) looks cool. I think it makes your legs hard to see in the back yard. “Hey, mom, Mr. Johnson ain’t got no legs.”
Anyway, older military uniforms weren’t always practical. Armies actually went into combat in “dress” uniforms. I guess lookin’ sharp was pretty high on the kings’ priorty list in Europe back then. Especially the french kings. Look at Bonaparte.
Unless 18th and 19th battle artists were having us on.
Oh they hated them, all right. I hated my hard hat when I worked construction, but I wore it.
That helps explain the famous British “stiff upper lip.”
Perhaps it’s one of those ostentatious shows that the guy doesn’t actually need the chin strap, because Birittania’s so dominant that no one would dare fight them. Kind of the “bring 'em on” Victorian-style?
I’d hazard a guess and suggest that it is a legacy of a chin guard from the days of armoured helms.
We don’t need swords and have not needed them for a long while now, yet we still have them used in ceremonial rituals.
Plenty of uniform parts such as epualettes, a row of buttons at the cuff, long coat tails, navy overcollars etc serve no useful purpose nowdays but once did and still appear on ceremonial outfits.
It provided slightly more protection if you were hit in the face by a slashing sword.
It also emphasises their cheekbones and you should never underestimate the deliberate homoerotic elements in the design of ceremonial military uniforms, especially those that date from the nineteenth century. Seriously, such uniforms were often designed primarily to make the wearer look sexy.
Both pictures are of soldiers from British Guards regiments. The Bristish army has a lot of traditional uniform touches that were once functional and are now only decorative, such as the fancy braid around the buttonholes, which once was plain cloth tape reinforcing the cloth to prevent stretching or tearing. The Guards seem to carry this sort of thing to extremes, though, apparently mainly as a “We’re the Guards and you’re not” statement. I think the chinstrap worn under the lip is one of those extremes. The original purpose was to keep the headgear from falling off, with the metal scales serving to both add a bit of class and protect against sword cuts.