Hello Rob
You’re most welcome, even though I think in this instance we disagree on even the possibility that the badge in question could be an exception. Though you are quite right and there are exceptions out there that do not conform to the official line, something I did acknowledge in my second posting where I said “there are undoubtedly genuine badges that would fall into that category”. It is also true that in the absence of the testimony of the servicemen and women about the badges they wore, we do have to rely on contemporary photographic evidence; particularly where a badge appears to contradict the documentary records.
In this case perhaps there is someone out there that can say, “yes I wore a badge like this, without a top scroll, during the War when I was in the TA”, maybe even with a photo of them wearing such a badge. However, until this happens my personal feeling is that I can see no reasonable cause for a plastic Leicesters’ badge from the Second World War having its “Hindoostan” honour removed, in imitation of a metal badge that was in wear more than twenty years previously! But like I’ve said, this is just my own personal view on matters.
In any event, I thought it might be opportune here to post up this badge (kindly supplied to me by a fellow Forum member), which is the one I mentioned has been deliberately altered from a regular Leicestershire ORs badge with a top scroll so that it resembles a scroll-less TF one:
Apart from having the “Hindoostan” honour removed, it has had its tail voided, as this particular maker’s type invariably comes with an unvoided one, and a crimp mark scored across the top of the vertical shank (slider), again this maker’s type don’t normally have such marks, it has even had false braze holes drilled into it; which should be evident from the image below where the drill has ruptured the front of the bottom “Leicestershire” scroll:
This badge is, without doubt, a ‘fake’, in the sense that it has been doctored to change it from a common one into something a little more scarce. In a strange way, of course, it means this particular badge is probably quite rare, as I can’t see anyone going to all this trouble to change hundreds of such badges, but there could be a handful out there like this?
Best regards
Martin