Quote:
Originally Posted by Hawthorn
Toby,
To your knowledge is there a formal time period laid down as to how long an attachment would be for an Officer to wear the Badge of the Regiment he is attached to. I only ask because when serving with The Coldstream Guards on a South Armagh tour we had a Captain from the 17/21st Lancers attached to us, apparently following a misdemeanor involving his tank and German civilians in BAOR. He remained with the Battalion for some time after the tour and always wore his own Regimental Motto and uniform distinctions.
Simon.
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Simon I know exactly what you mean, I served at a similar time and had a platoon commander from the Intelligence Corps who retained his cap badge throughout. He was with the battalion during pre-tour training and stayed for a short time afterwards. At that time there was an official programme for non-infantry to be attached to infantry battalions to gain experience of commanding soldiers on operations in a way that their own corps could not offer. They returned to their parent regiments subsequently. This also suited the infantry as it enabled them to release their own officers on key career courses.
At the same time there were also officers from other regiments who were usually attached for a 2-year tour to make up shortfalls in the regiment’s own established roll of officers. They usually came from the same infantry division. Again this was an official scheme used as and when necessary. In my case one came from the RRW and one from the Queen’s Regiment. Both wore the cap badge of the regiment that they were serving with, but wore their parent mess dress, which is how it was first noticed by the soldiery that they came from another regiment (whereupon the ‘rejects’ jibing began). There was nothing new about any of these protocols, that had existed since WW1 at least.