Quote:
Originally Posted by cbuehler
You have answered a LONG standing question of mine! These officers had to purchase their insignia and other items according to regimental custom, so I can only guess what their parents or whomever provided for them must have thought; commissioned into one regiment, but serving with another.
Cheers,
CB
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At the beginning of WW1, It really wasn’t that strange to the officers concerned, as they largely came from wealthy families for whom the cost of just the OSD insignia and a tailor’s bill for a particular jacket meant little. By 1916-17 however, things became significantly different, as men from the lower middle classes began to receive commissions, as well as smaller numbers of experienced rankers from the working class, and the government began to offer kitting out grants from public funds for the first time. For the old class of professional soldiers and their families, though, it was a practice that had existed for many centuries. When examining the biographies of regimental colonels of the turn of the century, it is a real eye opener, as one finds that in almost every case they had served in two or more regiments during the course of a career, with many switching between line and Foot Guards, or visa versa, and some even ordinary line regiments to Scots Highlanders, purchasing their promotions (in actuality the ‘difference’) between one rank and another along the way. Unlike WW1, that involved the purchase of several orders of dress, insignia and often swords too. Prior to 1902, levee order, with its copious amounts of gold lace was also required, and many officers, or their families went into debt for some years to support the expense. It was in effect the cost of an officer corps whose family fortunes, were invested in the state and the maintenance of the establishment status quo. This was a deliberate ploy on a national, state level, to ensure that any mutiny against the crown would utterly ruin families that participated, a deeply embedded system that had evolved following the restoration of the Monarchy and establishment of a Standing Army in 1660. It entirely underpinned the Army.