Below is a quote from another thread on how the British Army decided the service chevron and wound stripe issue during the War. It's taken from the book
Badges on Battle Dress (2019) by Jon Mills, who posted the thread.
It may also explain why the Canadian Army went to red service chevrons and moved them to the right sleeve mid-war.
Quote:
|
War Service Chevrons and Wound Stripes
In February 1944 the Army was told that two First World War dress distinctions abolished in 1922 were to be reintroduced. Three years earlier the Army Council had turned down a suggestion from Australia’s Military Liaison Team in London that wound stripes and service chevrons ‘similar to those worn during the Great War’ should be introduced as the involvement of civilians ‘dealing with enemy action against Great Britain’ made it difficult to discriminate between military and civilian services. With labour and materials needed for more essential tasks, the Council concluded their revival was not desirable.
Discussions in April 1943 on the introduction of war service medals noted the Prime Minister’s suggestion that ‘the issue of chevrons for every year of service abroad…would be greatly appreciated by the soldier’ a proposition the Admiralty robustly opposed and neither War Office nor Air Ministry favoured, all stressing the administrative difficulties involved. Strongly advocated by Winston Churchill ‘War Service Chevrons’, accepted by the Army Council as preferable to a home service medal, were approved in June 1943. On 27th July COD Branston was told to issue a manufacturing contract as soon as a design for the chevrons, one for each calendar year of war service, was finalised. Dismissing as open to criticism the use of different coloured chevrons for service in each theatre of war as operations in very many theatres had ended in evacuation, the final design, a khaki background with scarlet inverted chevrons of a ‘hue similar to the gorget patches worn on the khaki uniform’ was approved in August. As woven chevrons could not be produced quickly it proved ‘necessary to rely entirely on printed chevrons’, to be issued as single or sets of two, three or four chevrons ready to sew on rather than cut from strips. The Army’s initial order for 9.9 million sets, approximately half of which were three bar chevrons, was to be delivered by November 1943. Following their February 1944 introduction a War Office telegram to all Commands instructed that priority for issue was to be given to units of 21st Army Group. Three months later Branston was instructed to arrange provision of five bar war service chevrons, service up to 2nd September 1945 qualifying for their issue. Privately purchased embroidered and woven chevrons were widely worn. Wound stripes, introduced at the same time consisted of a one and a half inch length of gold braid worn vertically on the left forearm to indicate each wound received were not liked, one regiment noting that ‘These advertisements were no more popular …than they had been in the First World War’. A single red braid stripe worn to the rear of the gold strip indicated wounds sustained in previous wars.
|