The Lizard pattern is a kind of military camouflage

Military camouflage

Military camouflage is one of many means of deceiving an enemy. In practice, it is the application of colour and materials to battledress and military equipment to conceal them from visual observation. The French slang word camouflage came into common English usage during World War I when the...

 pattern used by the French Army

French Army

The French Army, officially the Armée de Terre , is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces.As of 2010, the army employs 123,100 regulars, 18,350 part-time reservists and 7,700 Legionnaires. All soldiers are professionals, following the suspension of conscription, voted in...

 on uniforms beginning in the 1950s (in 1947) up to the late 1980s.

The Lizard pattern and its descendants

A Lizard pattern has two overlapping prints, generally green and brown, printed with gaps so that a third dyed color, such as a lighter green or khaki, makes up a large part of the pattern. In this, it is printed like earlier British patterns used on that country's Paratroopers Denison smock

Denison smock

The Denison smock was a coverall jacket issued to Special Operations Executive agents, the Parachute Regiment, the Glider Pilot Regiment, Air Landing Regiments, and other Commonwealth airborne units, to wear over their Battle Dress uniform during the Second World War.The smock was initially worn...

s. Lizard patterns have narrower printed areas than the British patterns, and have a strong horizontal orientation, cutting across the vertical form of a man's body.
Other patterns descend in turn from Lizard patterns, either by direct imitation such as Cuba's Lizard pattern, or innovation, such as the tigerstripe patterns produced during the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

.
Tigerstripe patterns (French experimental development during the Indochina war which was based on the TAP47 pattern and which became the South Vietnamese Marines pattern ) differed from Lizard patterns in that their printed areas are interlocked rather than overlapped, and they use smaller areas of dyed background color.

Users

Northern Alliance

(32 Battalion - Buffalo Battalion) (in 1979)

In popular culture

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  wears a Lizard camo smock in a promotional shot.
• French Paratroops in the movie The Battle of Algiers
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• French troops at the start of the movie We Were Soldiers
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• French Paratroops in Lost Command
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• Cuban and Nicaraguan troops in the movie Red Dawn
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• Cuban Troops in the movie Red Scorpion
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