Webmaster's note: Be sure to also take note of the sharp crease in the pants the newly commissioned Officers are wearing in the attached photo, and especially the perfect way in which the pant leg breaks just above the top of the cuff and shoe. As a kid, I remember my Dad, a WWII Vet, telling me how important it was for a gentleman to have his pants properly tailored so that they broke properly 3.5 – 4.0 inches above the top of the shoe, and were neither too long, nor so short that they looked like high water "floods." He also taught me that when a gentleman sat down he hiked his pants up an inch or so, so that he didn't end up with a bulge at the knee from the fabric being stretched. When looking at the class picture for 44-40, it's obvious these newly commissioned Officers were properly tailored by someone who knew what they were doing. Unlike the butt-crack, baggy pants one sees on the youth of today, these guys epitomize why girls used to swoon when they saw a man in uniform. By the way, back then a gentleman would never refer to a lady wearing slacks as wearing "pants." That would have been an insult. A lady's pants were her, well, unmentionables. Those long things she wore over her legs when she wasn't wearing a dress or a skirt were referred to as slacks, thank you. Calling them pants in the 1940s could easily earn you a slap in the face.