SA Artillery Volunteers...
 

Just acquired. 😊

This s a nice scarce badge. Nice find. Regards Andrew

Nice one.
Tony.

thanks gentlemen! Stumbled into it quite inadvertently. Dumb luck is a fair companion!

Certainly not getting any easier to find these days, was there anything with it?

A Lovely badge, but, as far as I am aware it is nothing to do with the Volunteers.

I have it as the pre-1915 cap badge of the SA Field Artillery.

regards

Hi Frank,

Yes, in fact. Came w/ a pair of RGA tags, which would appear to be clearly unrelated.

Interesting, it's ID'd in Cox' book as Vols.

Mark,

Cox has it as SA Field Artillery at #3145.

It is under the "grouping" of Volunteer as opposed to Permanent Force or Active Citizen Force but "Volunteer" is not in the units title.

For a better viewpoint look at Owen, # 820 & 823, although OWEN has the dates incorrectly recorded agianst both of these as well as 826.

820 & 823 are both pre 1915 whereas 826 is 1915 - 1922.

regards

thanks, Simon! I'll recheck Cox later today (you've got me doubting my memory now...). Don't have Owen's, sadly.

Hi Simon,
I Have to disagree with you regarding the dates of the SAFA badges. I have done some research in old copies of the Nongqui magazine. There was a good article written on the Artillery Units of SA in 1943 which shows some of the badges worn. This information was subsequently used in both Curson's books in the 1950's and Sam Foote's articles in Commando magazines of 1968.

The Nongqui also showed some interesting pictures of the early SAFA in 1922.

From what I am able to ascertain both #820 and #823 in Owen was the badge worn by the Imperial Service unit 'South African Field Artillery' between 1915-1919 in German East Africa and Palastine.

A new 'South African Field Artillery' was formed in 1922 from the 3 permanent force batteries of the SAMR Artillery Brigade. Owen #826 was the badge adopted in 1922 by this unit (As seen in pictures in Nongqui 1922).

This badge was however very soon replaced with the 'Ubique' badge, Owen #829 with 'Zuid Afrika' scroll. This was then used by the SAFA as well as SAPGA until replaced mid 1920's with the Afrikaans title 'Suid Africa'.

Regards
Steven

Steven,

Great to read your input.

The dates I quoted were as a result of another very similar discussion on here a couple of 3 years ago when a few SA collectors agreed on the dates I quoted. This site is very difficult to search and I cant find the thread now.

From what you say in your post it does leave a gap from 1919 - 1922 where #820 & 823 ended and #826 begins. Can you explain which badge you believe was worn then?.

Hopefully other SA collectors will add a little more to this thread. Always open to new information on this subject.

regards

Hi Simon,
As far as I am aware the 1st SAFA unit was an Imperial Service unit raised for the First world war and existed until 1919.

The 2nd SAFA unit was a local South African unit raised in 1922.

So I would have to say that there was no SAFA between 1919 and 1922 and therefore no badge would be worn.

Steven

Steven,

Thankyou. I hope someone can find the old thread so we can compare views.

All good stuff.

regards

This is my understanding of the situation too, give or take a year.

According to my notes :

1915-19 : SA Field Artillery (5 x batteries) as a war service unit

1922 : SAMR artillery batteries detached from their parent regiments and renamed 1st, 2nd and 3rd Permanent Batteries SAMR.

1923 : Permanent Batteries renamed 'SA Field Artillery' when the Permanent Force was reorganised into branches.

1934 : SAFA amalgamated with SA Permanent Garrison Artillery, the ACF field artillery branch and the SA Garrison Artillery to form the 'SA Artillery'.