Favourite Pastime?

I did collect german items at one time, but mostly my collection is British (&Welsh) headgear, also medals and insignia, but also some uniforms and ephemera etc

 

I brew my own beer to, in a smaller way, ( plastic buckets).

 

A couple of pics of most of it

 

Nice collection, almost wanted to start singing Men of Harlech at the top one

 

Thanks, I often do! Got it on cd in the car

 

What’s the bright orange helmet from?

 

RAF Falcons parachute display team

 

some pics

 

@JerryBB - Very cool, who’s the jumper? I didn’t expect it to be tape...

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Bourne

 

We were running an event at the Birmingham Hilton and the Harlem Globetrotters were staying there as they had a match at the NEC.
My sound man and his brother got a couple of them stoned - and they lost their match the following day!

 

all the original falcon's helmets seem to have been done this way. The pic of the jumper is from the net

 

Youngest SNCO in the army at the time. Turned down the VC in favour of a DCM with a view to a commision, as I recall.

 

I'll post up a pic when I get back to home base of an item I wouldn't mind an opinion on. An "Urkunde", or sports pass belonging to a member of the SA which my dad liberated from its owner.

Funny thing, a lot of clothing items, like bd trousers and blouses were the kind of thing I used to wear for going to school in winter, and at work after that. They were just old surplus stuff then, now they are collectible. I wore 1944 dated ammo boots to school!

 

wartime bd trousers in particular are hard to get, hence somewhat pricey these days

 

There is an interesting subtext to Rorke’s Drift which is about the social and political context of the period. The entire plan to use mealie bags and the construction of a defensible perimeter was probably James Dalton’s. He was a Warrant Officer (not commissioned) and ex infantry was the only one to have done a field defences course...... the two Lieutenants Chard and Bromhead however got most of the credit.
However, the entire haul of VCs - without taking anything away from the combatants - owes a huge amount to the speed of news from South Africa and the very recent disaster of Isandlwana. You would not be entirely wrong to think of it as a Victorian way of burying bad news.

 

Hardly surprising. Have you ever worn them?!

 

yes, but only to try them on, not old enough to have worn them officialy.
I assume the trousers did get used a lot post war and that is why they are not so common to find as the blouses, though of course the blouses were also commonly worn after the war and only went out of service in the mid 60's

 

Military Dayglow kin stuff gets everywhere

 

Always reminded me off potato sacking and they itched like f#ck