World War II Database

Although fascinated by all things military since the age of eight, I had only realized that I knew absolutely nothing about the cap badges of the British Army. While the cap badges of the armies of the Republic of China and United States, my birth country and my current home country, respectively, were generally standard and uniform (the blue sky and white sun and the eagle, respectively), the British Army cap badges varied greatly from unit to unit. How I learned this was through British Army Cap Badges of the Second World War by authors Peter Doyle and Chris Foster. After some introductory material about the British uniforms of the WW2 era, they presented the history of cap badges through British history and the material and methods of construction of cap badges during this era. The bulk of the book was dedicated to the presentation of hundreds of cap badges. While the cap badge of the 1st King's Dragoon Guards featured a two-headed eagle, the personal arms of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary, the Welch Guards' cap badge was the leek plant, an echo from Welch Middle Ages tradition. While the Lincolnshire Regiment's cap badge was a look back at the unit's experience fighting the French in Egypt, the cap badge of the Royal Armoured Corps represented the mobile nature of a revolutionary form of warfare. Flipping through the full-color book, I felt as if I was going through the display cases of a virtual museum. This book would definitely cater to memorabilia collectors and I probably would pull this book from the shelves from time to time to help me identify the units of British servicemen in period photographs.