The RWF Flash - a brief analysis
 

Apropos nothing, and in an idle moment I decided to do a brief analysis of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers Flash as worn by officers on their service tunics during the First World War. I took as my (admittedly small) sample some of the RWF officers tunics in my collection. I believe it was Graves in 'Goodbye to All That' who commented that young officers were wearing their flash rather long and I though it may be useful to see what variations there were in the field. The three tunics I've used are all named and provenanced and were used in the field. The flash on the Staff officers tunic is of finer quality silky cloth (of course!) All flashes on the tunic conform to the five ribbon format. Lengths are measured from the top of the collar to the lowest point of the flash and the widths are those of the flashes at their widest points. Any comments or other examples out there for comparison would be interesting to see and perhaps build up a picture (if there is one...)

Tunic 1: A well worn tunic to a 13th Bn RWF officer. Length - 180mm. Width: 180mm

Tunic 2: A tunic worn by a staff officer in the 38th Welsh Division (GSO4). Length: 198mm. Width: 150mm

Tunic 3: A tunic of an officer in the 4th RWF who was captured: Length 215mm. Width 115 mm.