BRITISH ARMY
An Illustrated History of the Embroidered Silk Postcards is the standard reference book on embroidered silk postcards. It contains references to over 2600 different cards with over 270 illustrations. The section on British Army lists 894 cards. The cards listed below are additional cards discovered since the book was published. The latest additions are shown in RED.
Embroidered silk postcards showing the badges of British Army Regiments, Army Corps and other military units are keenly collected. Most of these are derived from the cap badge and date from the World War 1 period (1914-1919). There are a few cards that do not show a badge and use a patriotic card of Allied flags with the regimental name.
Many designs are known: over a dozen for the larger Infantry Regiments such as the Middlesex Regiment, which had 49 Battalions at its peak strength in World War 1. Over 100 cards exist for the Army Service Corps, the largest Army Regiment, with over 500,000 men.
Regimental cards exist for all units of the Cavalry, the Brigade of Guards, Regular Infantry and Artillery Regiments, and many Territorial Regiments - about 130 Regiments in all. Cards are also known for most Army Corps, about half of the 57 Yeomanry Regiments, some individual Divisions and Battalions. It would be an impossible task to collect every one. Some are extremely rare (even for the largest Regiments and Corps).
There are also cards for military units from Australia, Canada, Egypt, New Zealand, South Africa, and the West Indies - these are listed as Empire Forces (under Overseas Forces). The French, Swiss and United States forces are listed as Foreign Forces (under Overseas Forces). These cards are listed on separate pages on the website.
In general, a greater amount of embroidered silk postcards were published for the larger regiments and less for the smaller ones. This gives a good indication that the cards were aimed at the soldiers within the regiments to buy and send home to their loved ones. There are plenty of examples where the sender's message refers to (something like) "this is the badge of my regiment" . Equally, it is clear that many regimental cards were not sent by members of the regiment but just as a prettily designed card.
The listings are of the wordings within the badge and the captions on the cards, excluding any Latin mottoes. They are arranged in alphabetical order of the military unit to aid searching, which follows the arrangement used in the book.
Names of Regiments have changed in the past and I have kept to the full names of the Regiments in use at the time the card was published. For example: the Regiment commonly referred to as the Middlesex Regiment is listed under its full title: The Duke of Cambridge's Own Middlesex Regiment.
The listings are printed in the upper case, which is the most common on the cards, although many are in lower case. The wordings are reproduced exactly as they appear on the card, some are misspelt and the Latin word "sic" after an entry indicates that it is a known spelling mistake, which are rare but consistent. Some cards do not have any wording or need a some additional information and this is given in brackets.
It must be borne in mind that there is often more than one design associated with a particular wording or caption on a card. Also, the same caption can be on both vertical and horizontal cards - about 80% of military cards are in the vertical format.
Images of a representative selection of cards are shown beneath the listings.
Information and images on this site are © Ian Collins 2022.
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