[Toby Purcell]

Although visually very similar they were quite different caps in their construction, the Guards pattern forage cap having no flap, a leather bound bottom edge, and being ‘set up’ (stiffened) to give a markedly smarter appearance more like the special (again unique to the Guards) tall pill box type forage cap that it replaced. I think because the two caps were issued over a similar period (but with the Guards pattern first) they have both become synonymous with the descriptive term Brodrick cap, but the cap certainly never seems to have been known in the Guards by that name and the differences between them seem sufficient to make the catch-all description questionable. Nevertheless, so common has the description become that to avoid confusion we used it in the uniformology.com series on the round forage cap. Notice in the group photo with a Wolfhound how tall the body of the cap is relative to its top, more so than the line cap.