Thread: div sign
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Old 16-01-05, 01:50
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Tony Smith Tony Smith is offline
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Max, there is no Wallaby listed as a divisional tac sign, although there is just about everything else! I thought that this might be a corrupted or hand painted sign, but it certainly looks like a Wallaby. Other similar shapes are Koala for 3rd Div (militia Bn's in New Guinea), Penguin for 2nd Div (militia units in NSW and WA), Kangaroo for 6th Div, or Emu for 8th Div.
Your tac sign appears to go outside the borders of the background colour, so is possibly painted on at a later date.
There are also incidents of units altering the tac signs for humour or other reasons. The 7th Div's sign was usually of a Kookaburra perched on a Boomerang. After operations in the Markham Valley in New Guinea in 1943 when the 2/4 Field Regt parachuted their Guns and Gunners into action alongside the US 503rd Parachute Regiment, versions of the tac sign appeared with the Kookaburra in flight! As you are familiar with the 6th Div sign being a Kangaroo on the hop (like the QANTAS logo), perhaps this "Wallaby" sign is from a unit of the 6th Div who were posted to some place out of the action and were standing around and doing nothing!

While we're on this topic, the sign below appeared on a Chev Blitz water tanker (original) near home. It is a red diamond outlined in white with a white lightning bolt in the centre. Any thoughts?
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