Crye G3 Combat Shirt – Woodland Camouflage Pattern

As I’ve mentioned here before, I have always felt that G3 Combat cut apparel showing up in US Woodland camo  was the catalyst for almost all the current trends we see today in terms of uniforms and other gear.  While those first items were in an FR fabric and were initially like the proverbial hen’s teeth to get hold, the demand in the market was heard loud and clear (eventually) by retailers and by Crye.  The full G3 line, to include shirts and trousers in both combat and field cut, is by comparison now easy to get a hold of.

My particular shirt here is a purely commercial item with no features to differentiate it from any totally standard G3 combat shirt in, for example, Multicam, which was has been available for many years now.  While items such as this can sometimes cost even more than the standard G3s, making them an expensive proposition, they are actually far cheaper than any equivalent items would have been many years ago.  Not to mention that the few G3 cut items in woodland that initially came up for sale for often absolutely wrecked; washed out, threadbare and torn.

All such collector concerns aside, what I will say is that I’ve always felt Woodland is a great looking camo pattern.  While I have a much stronger personal connection with DPM, I also grew up seeing endless amounts of US Woodland in films, games and TV shows.  As a kid I thought ‘a soldier’ of any type always wore Woodland BDUs, a PASGT with extra goggles on top, an ALICE rig with right angle light clipped on one shoulder and carried an M16.

I purchased this particular shirt in late 2019 so I can’t recall where it came from truth be told, but packaging is pretty standard as you would expect.  Again something I have mentioned previously, but the fact that Crye use ‘NATO WOODLAND’ for the naming of this pattern is pretty interesting.  Perhaps the fabric they use isn’t exactly the military palette or pattern in some small way?  Possibly the DoD has a copyright on the name Woodland Camouflage?  Could just be that the full name is too long for the labels, or some other similarly highly innocuous reason, hard to say.

I would be somewhat interested to see the machine I presume is employed to fold G3 shirts in to these neat squares that present the front upper torso area with the zip to the front and centre of the plastic packaging.  Considering there is very little brick and mortar retailing of Crye uniforms, this sort of packaging consideration is actually a little surprising and unusual all things considered.

I do occasionally get messages in various places asking ‘is xyz crye item I’ve bought/am going to buy a fake?’ and the most relevant item in this regard is the G3 combat set in Woodland.  The only Crye knock-offs I’ve ever seen that were genuinely trying to fool people were a batch of G3 combats in woodland and they have spelling mistakes in the labels, so you can check my guide here (scroll to the bottom) if you’re at all unsure about a potential purchase.