British Army Cap Badges of the Second World War

By Peter Doyle and Chris Foster

In their companion volume to British Army Cap Badges of the First World War, authors Peter Doyle and Chris Foster present an overview of the main cap badges worn by the British Army during the Second World War, which continued the rich and varied tradition of British regimental insignia. This book describes and illustrates, for the first time in high quality full colour, the main types of cap badge worn. With many amalgamations, war-raised units and special forces, British military insignia from the period have a surprising range that differs substantially from that worn by the soldiers of the previous generation. As in the first book, this volume contains contemporary illustrations of the soldiers themselves wearing the badges. Employing the skills of an established writer (and collector) and artist, it provides a unique reference guide for anyone interested in the British Army of the period.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Jul 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781782001027

Peter Doyle

Peter Doyle is a geologist and well known military historian specialising in the impact of terrain on the outcome of battle, particularly in the Great War, as well as the British experience of war. He is Secretary of the All Party Parliamentary War Heritage Group and visiting Professor at University College London. More details can be found at www.peterdoylemilitaryhistory.com.

Book preview

badges.

PREFACE

THE PURPOSE of this book is to describe and illustrate, for the historian and collector alike, the main types of cap badges worn by the British Army in the Second World War. It is intended as a companion volume to our earlier book, British Army Cap Badges of the First World War, and is illustrative of the great many changes that were experienced by the British Army in the run-up to the second world conflict in a generation.

The army of 1939–45 was significantly different from that of the First World War; the lessons of the latter’s closing campaigns underlined the importance of mobility, armour and artillery in conflict, a doctrine that would be adopted by most combative nations in the interwar period. For the British Army, the underemployment of the cavalry arm during the Great War gave birth to a new way of thinking, with the creation of a mobile army, the horsed regiments being transferred to the armoured services, or, in the case of the Yeomanry, the artillery. New equipment, new uniforms and headgear, and new philosophies for the wearing of insignia would all follow suit.

Illustrated in this book are the distinctive insignia of the main units that saw action during the Second World War; limited space precludes the peripherals, but most units are covered: with amalgamations, war-raised units and individual distinctiveness, the topic is a complex one. Wherever possible, we have tried to illustrate genuine badges, though recognising fakes and forgeries is becoming an ever more difficult task. As such, we hope this book provides a reference guide for all who wish to know more about the British Army in the Second Word War, and in particular the actions of their relatives in a war that shaped the world we know today.

Peter Doyle

Chris Foster

Slouch hat belonging to Captain David Jowett of the Royal West African Frontier Force; it is fitted with a chocolate-brown plastic cap badge – an economy issue.

Remembrance of war; souvenirs kept by a soldier of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps who served in the Far East with the Fourteenth Army.

Chapter One

THE BRITISH SOLDIER OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR

AT THE CLOSE of the First World War the British Army could claim to be one of the strongest citizen armies ever assembled. Yet, within just twenty years, the victorious army of 1918 had declined to a pale shadow of its former self. With only four regular army battalions that could be mobilised to meet the threat of war, the British government half-heartedly raised new battalions (the Militia) in April 1939, conscripted into the Territorial Army, doubling the army’s size to meet the growing threat from mainland Europe. At the outbreak of war, both Militia and Territorials were merged with the regulars to form a major part of the ill-fated British Expeditionary Force (BEF) of 1939–40.

When the German assault on the western Allies came, on 10 May 1940, its Operation Sichelschnitt stove in the French lines at Sedan and cut the Allied lines in half. With its flanks in the air, the BEF had to retreat in stages with the aim of disembarking from the port of Dunkirk. With a defensive perimeter set up, Operation Dynamo, the rescue of the BEF from France, was put in place on 26 May. Over 350,000 men would be rescued from the beaches – leaving behind ample evidence of their hurried departure. The ‘miracle of Dunkirk’ was complete by 4 June 1940. And though the proposed German invasion of Britain of 1940 was abandoned, throughout 1941 and into 1942 the British were to suffer severe tests of arms by the Germans both in Greece and Crete.

In North Africa, the Western Desert was the perfect stage for the armoured battles that raged in 1941–2, fought for possession of key towns in Libya and Egypt. With Montgomery’s defeat of Rommel at El Alamein in November 1942, the balance would move in the Allies’ favour, and the Germans would finally be driven out of North Africa by May 1943, opening the way for the Allied invasion of Italy, through Sicily, in July 1943. The fight up the spine of Italy would be long and bitter, from one fiercely defended strongpoint to another, and would not be over until May 1945.

With the war still raging in Italy, a new front opened in northern Europe – the greatest amphibious assault ever planned. Integral to the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944 were British armoured and infantry divisions, and special and airborne forces. From their landings, the British and Canadians would form the hinge of the ‘swinging door’ that would swing the front around and take on the Germans on a broad front, pushing them back through occupied France. After difficult times, by 20 August the way was clear to advance on Berlin, just as the Russians were doing in the east. Paris fell to the Allies on 24 August, Brussels on 4 September. There were tactical gambles on both sides – Montgomery’s Operation Market Garden of 20 September 1944, intended to capture intact an array of bridges across river obstacles in the way of the advance into Germany, and the crossing of the Rhine; and Hitler’s Operation Wacht am Rhein in the Ardennes during the winter of 1944–5, intended to punch a hole through the Allied lines and separate the British and Canadians from the Americans. Both gambles failed. But on 5 May 1945 all German forces in north-west Europe had been surrendered to Montgomery at his headquarters at Lüneberg Heath, near Hamburg, and by 7 May all German forces followed suit. The British Army had once again reached a peak of effectiveness.

Player’s cigarette card showing the uniform of the territorial soldier in c. 1939.

Fusilier Tom Stafford of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers pictured with a friend in Egypt, c. 1941.

Left behind – debris of the hurried evacuation of the BEF from Dunkirk in May and June 1940.

The distinctive cap and parachute qualification badges (‘wings’) of a soldier of the Parachute Regiment, first raised in 1942.

‘The Gang’, 1941. Men of the Suffolk Regiment preparing for the Far East with archaic khaki drill uniforms; most ended up working as prisoners of war on the infamous Burma Railway.

In the Far East there was another war against a determined enemy. With their attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, the Japanese intended to disable the Americans, aiming to seize the Philippines and the Far Eastern territories of the European powers. The first British colony to be threatened was Hong Kong, the day after the assault on Pearl Harbor. Attacked with overwhelming force, the British forces in the colony were compelled to surrender on Christmas Day 1941. These men, like so many others, had to endure a terrible captivity that was to be the signature treatment of all Allied prisoners of the Emperor.

Malaya was also attacked on 8 December 1941, and with it the British-controlled colony of Singapore at its tip. The advance along the peninsula was rapid, the attack on Singapore itself commencing on 7 February 1942. Unconditional surrender followed on 15 February – one of the worst defeats in British military history. In January 1942 the Japanese continued their assault against British territories with the invasion of Burma, meeting weak opposition from under-strength British-led troops on the Burmese frontier; as the advance gained momentum, Rangoon and Mandalay fell and the British forces withdrew to India, crossing the mountains at Imphal in May 1942. British strategy necessarily shifted to the defensive.

The invasion of Italy: souvenirs brought back by Second Lieutenant H. C. Watts, Royal Artillery.

The Badge from Your Coat by Annette Mills: the significance of military symbols finds its way to music.

In August 1943 South East Asia Command (SEAC) was created under Admiral Louis Mountbatten, and the British and Indian forces were united as the 14th Army under Lieutenant-General William ‘Bill’ Slim. In March 1944 the Japanese Army launched an attack on India, planning to cut off and destroy the forward Allied forces. These aims were not achieved, the Japanese withdrawing with heavy casualties. By the end of 1944 the Allies were ready to advance on to the central plains of Burma. Mandalay was captured on 20 March 1945; two months later Rangoon fell, with the Japanese troops retreating to the River Sittang. After intense fighting, the war in Burma was won.

Though the army would change through the five years of war, one thing did not – the ethos of the regiment. The British armies that fought in all these campaigns wore their badges in action. Worn on a range of uniform headdress, and made from a variety of materials, the cap badge was a constant in the changing atmosphere of total war. New regiments, corps and even ‘private armies’ were formed, many to be short-lived, and for each there was a set of distinctive insignia. Drawing on a badge tradition that stretches back to the identifying devices of the medieval feudal system, the cap badge represents a distillation of the military history of the regiment or corps. In the age of uniform khaki, the language of the cap badge was there to be read by recruit and civilian alike; it remains today as one of the most potent symbols of military engagement through the centuries.

The cap badge forms part of a set of insignia intended to inform the observer, and to identify the wearer as a member of a particular regiment or corps. During the First World War the soldier had worn a service dress suit of khaki serge in the field and at home. Though intended to be warm and serviceable, by the late 1930s it was deemed to be unsuitable for modern mechanised warfare, restrictive of movement during active service. Though service dress was worn by the BEF in France, it was supplanted by the uniform known as ‘battledress’.

Battledress was to define the profile of the British soldier throughout the Second World War and well into the post-war period. It was an innovative design that was copied to a certain extent by both the German and American armies later in the war. Officially designated as ‘Battledress, serge’, it comprised a suit of khaki serge cut as a short jacket and voluminous high-waisted trousers. The jacket had a closed collar but was worn open at the collar by officers with shirt and tie. Complex to tailor, with its concealed buttons, this pattern was supplanted by the ‘1940 pattern’, which had its plastic buttons exposed on the blouse front, and other simplified features. This pattern was to be the workaday dress of the British soldier in the later part of the war. In hotter climes battledress gave way to the traditional cotton khaki drill (KDs), which had been worn for at least a century in one form or another. Eventually developed into a universal ‘bush jacket’, jungle-green versions of this uniform were issued for wear in Burma. Both versions were intended to keep their wearers cool, and both would be relatively devoid of distinctive insignia, being worn with the outmoded Wolseley solar topee or rakish slouch hat.

Patriotic montage postcard of a soldier in the Royal Regiment of Artillery, c. 1938.

Battledress: a well-turned-out soldier of