Green beret
U.S. Special Forces wear the green beret as a distinction of excellence and uniqueness within the Army.
United States Army Special Forces in popular culture
The 1st Special Forces Group on Okinawa provided a number of troopers to act as extras in director Samuel Fuller's "Merrill's Marauders" (1961) and were credited at film's start. On U.S. television, a March 1962 episode of "Surfside 6" titled "The Green Beret" featured SF training. Henry Fonda appeared in, and narrated, a 1962 "Special Forces" episode of "The Big Picture" series of U.S. Army-produced films that found their way to U.S. television. In 1963, a Green Beret appeared in the episode "In Praise of Pip" of "The Twilight Zone" though the U.S. Army told the CBS television network to not name the Southeast Asian country where the story occurred. The Green Beret's first Hollywood appearance is in the futuristic thriller film "Seven Days in May" (1963) wherein Andrew Duggan is a Special Forces officer loyal to the U.S. President, not the traitorous JCS Chief Burt Lancaster; the film also gave the U.S. filmgoer a first glimpse of the M16 rifle.