The Dress of the Regiment: Scots Guards, WW2

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    From The Scots Guards 1919 - 1955, David Erskine, pages 592-4:

    Appendix F, The Dress of the Regiment, by Major J. Swinton, Scots Guards

    WW2

    The declaration of war in 1939 found the Second Battalion of the Regiment in Egypt dressed equally well for peace or war in khaki drill.

    At home, as in 1914, all forms of Full Dress clothing were handed into store and the Regiment prepared for active service in Service Dress, which was almost immediately replaced by the new Battledress. Throughout the war, Officers, Warrant Officers, the Regimental Band, Pipers, Drummers and individual Other Ranks continued to wear Service Dress on appropriate occasions.

    Cloth shoulder titles, which had been worn during the First World War and which had been authorised for wear with Service Dress in 1936 but never used, gradually made their appearance in 1939. On mobilisation, however, these blue and gold shoulder titles were scarce and for some time the white metal thistles and brass "SG" which had been worn between the wars on Other Ranks Service Dress were used on Battledress. At one time pieces of khaki cloth designed to slip over the shoulder straps, embroidered with the letters "SG" in black, were also issued but were most unpopular and seldom worn.

    Polished buttons and badges of rank continued to be worn on Service Dress, but Officers were ordered to wear bronze badges of rank on Battledress.

    Battalions did not adopt the First World War practice of wearing numerals on their sleeves and after a Regimental Order dated 11th November 1940 had said: "All Officers of the Regiment will now wear a patch of Royal Stuart Tartan on the side of the S.D. Cap", there was no way of telling to which battalion an Officer or Other Rank belonged, unless he was in Battledress and wearing a formation sign.

    Throughout the war individual Scots Guardsmen wore on their sleeves almost every formation sign in the British Army. Signs worn by battalions or by Independent Companies of the Regiment were, however, few, and the list is as follows:

    1st BATTALION
    24th Guards Brigade - An heraldic pinion in red on a dark blue background
    1st Division - Small white triangle
    6th South African Armoured Division - A yellow triangle within a larger green triangle
    56th (London) Division - A black cat on a red background


    2nd BATTALION
    Never wore a sign until they joined the Guards Armoured Division in February 1945 - The ever open eye


    3rd BATTALION
    Guards Armoured Division - The ever open eye
    15th Scottish Division - Scottish lion rampant, set in a yellow circle with a white border, on a black square
    2nd Army - A blue cross on a white shield with a crusader's sword on the upright of the cross, hilt uppermost
    6th Guards Tank Brigade - A gold sword, point uppermost, set in the centre of a white shield and superimposed on a bend of Household Brigade colours.


    4th BATTALION
    32nd Guards Brigade - Eight-pointed star of eight diamonds, four red, four blue alternatively
    Guards Armoured Division - The ever open eye


    S COMPANY
    6th Armoured Division - A clenched mailed fist in white on a square black background. N.B. This Company also wore the red numerals II of the 2nd Battalion Coldstream Guards of which Battalion it formed a part. (See attachment taken from cover of A Pilgrimage of Remembrance, Michael Curtis)


    X COMPANY
    Guards Armoured Division - The ever open eye.


    Since there was little scope for Regimental difference on the universal Battledress, what innovations in dress the Regiment did make were mainly with head-dress. The standard head-dress for all ranks during World War II was the khaki Service Dress cap and as has already been noted the First Battalion custom of wearing a Royal Stuart tartan patch on Officers' caps soon spread to the whole Regiment. Other Ranks were issued with a stiff S.D. cap but many of the old pre-war soft variety, or privately bought copies with rings of soft stitching on the soft peak, survived until the last month of the war.

    For a fatigue cap, the Regiment was first issued with a universally unpopular khaki "fore-and-aft", designed for wear on the side of the head and therefore very liable to fall off during drill. The Fifth Battalion found them particularly unsuitable for skiing.

    In due course these were replaced by khaki or black berets or by an ungainly beret-like headgear made of several pieces of rough cloth stitched together, called a Cap G.S.

    The Third Battalion wore black berets throughout the time that they were armoured, the officers even wearing them with Service Dress.

    In Italy berets were more an item of dress than of uniform.* At first black was the only colour procurable, and the Officers and many Other Ranks of the Second Battalion wore these, but later on all ranks of the First Battalion and of S Company did their best to acquire khaki ones, which were on issue to Motor Battalions in Armoured Divisions. Nevertheless, some black ones were still to be seen as late as 1945.

    The stocking cap was often worn in the line, particularly before the advent of the beret, which was eventually replaced for Other Ranks by the hideous Cap G.S.

    When the Second Battalion reformed in Scotland in 1944, they were issued with Caps G.S. for all Other Ranks, and in order that the Officers should be able to appear on parade dressed similarly to their men, special Caps G.S. of a fine khaki cloth were made for them. These hats, which became known as Killwhillies, had a patch of Royal Stuart tartan as a backing to the cap-star but they were not worn for very long and were soon replaced by khaki berets.

    This practice of wearing a patch of tartan-backing on Officers' berets found favour in all battalions except the Third, and in many cases the metal cap-star was replaced by an embroidered star taken from the shoulder strap of a then unwanted blue "jumper".

    The Guardsman's cap-star remained the same throughout the war. In 1945 an attempt was made by Ordnance, no doubt with the laudable intention of saving metal, to foist on all regiments a plastic substitute for the usual brass. The plastic star was very ugly and extremely unpopular, and it was worn only at the last resort, when no brass ones were available.

    Transfers of forage cap diceing, three red and two white squares, were worn on each side of the steel helmet by all battalions throughout the war; after any time in the line these distinctions became few and far between.



    *On 3rd February 1944 the following variations in head-dress were noted by an Officer of the Second Battalion:

    (1) "Tin Hats" - with or without diceing, and with or without camouflage nets.

    (2) Service Dress Caps - usually threadbare and dirty. Some Officers had lost their silver stars, and had Cairo imitations in base metal which did not shine.

    (3) Berets
    (a) Small black, with tartan flash
    (b ) Large black, Chasseur-type
    (c ) Small brown, with or without tartan flash; some with proper silver stars, some with embroidered stars. "X ____ has a brass shoulder star on top of a flash, which is terrible!"
    (d) One man, who had been in the Commandos, wore a green beret.

    (4) Stocking Caps - worn by some with a silver star.

    (5) Blue Fatigue Caps.

    (6) "Fore-and-Afts" - the khaki Cap F.S.

    (7) Service Dress Caps - Other Ranks - some still of the old soft variety

    (8) American Stocking Caps - made of wool with a little peak

    (9) Balaclava Helmets

    (10) Glengarrys - among the Pipers, very ragged.

    (11) Balmoral Bonnet - "just creeping in" among the Pipers.
     

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