Broached badges
 

Hi,

Are standard issued badges that have had a brooch applied necessarily an inexpensive sweetheart badge or just a local repair sometimes?

Thanks

I suspect that the answer is yes, it could be other of those. I have even seen a record in the Royal Army Clothing Department record of changes that o/c 1 RDF had all the forage cap badges iin his unit locally fitted with broach fittings as being more suitable for fitting to the pagri while in India.

John

Where the badge is silver, an individual Officer may feel inclined to have a brooch fitted to the reverse of a headdress badge to facilitate its easy removal for cleaning. Whether he would "get away" with such a practice would I suppose depend upon his rank and the time period in which he served.

Dave.

I have often seen broached badges described as 'sweetheart badges'. However I have a medal trio and set of badges, cap, collars and titles and other items that belonged to a WW1 member of the NZ Engineers Corps. His cap badge has been broached. I assume that it was the original badge he had been issued with from which the lugs had broken off and he had it broached to secure it firmly on his cap. I know that I would prefer to have had my cap badge broached rather than attached by blades which are incredibly brittle.

John

Thanks for the reply’s, brooches would have certainly saved many tunics and caps etc, even a jacket that’s been rebadged twice is in a sorry state.

I have a brass 3rd Auckland and a 12th Nelson collar badges, both with Gaunt tags, and both have been converted to pin backs.
I would class both badges as association or patriotic badges.

Thanks all, I have a broached badge to my grandfather in law - 2nd Battalion Taranaki Regiment, another question? Were the 2nd Battalions of each of the 17 NZ Regts the formalised HG or were there additional HG units supplementing the Territorial Force Regts? i.e 2TARA plus the Patea HG Battalion?

Cheers