Hi all. Hope someone can help me with this. My recently purchased Austin Champ has these two badges fitted front and rear. The square divided blue over yellow IIRC is Royal corps of Transport, but I don’t recognise the crown with the arrows and can’t find it anywhere. It may be a TA unit or area. Can anyone help?
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54th (East Anglian) Infantry Division
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Just a thought but is there nothing in the vehicle’s registration that could give you a hint?
As to the topmost badge, for much of your vehicle’s service life I suspect, it would have belonged to the Royal Army Service Corps not the RCT; the latter wasn’t formed until 1965 (depends when it was built of course).
I think your supposition about being a TA unit for formation is probably right; the crown reminded me of LONDIST, and I just wonder if there was a supporting unit within London that did provide or rather augment London District’s transport demands, and the TA unit concerned, incorporating other historical baggage, utilised the crown as well and devised what you have, but all supposition I assure you.
Someone though, somewhere, may have the definitive answer.
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Er, reference my last: can I ask if you checked around even a bit? A modicum of Googling brings me this up:
which is the formation badge of 54th Division; all I did was enter the search engine with “Formation badge - crown and arrows” Anyway, Wikipedia will take it from there!
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Point taken! Lateral thinking helps, all I had googled was “post war British formation signs” which was inconclusive. The wartime (WW1 and WW2) formation signs for 54th Division were completely different to my badge, being variations on “JP” (WW2) and J with an upturned umbrella (WW1). This is what Wikipedia says about 54th Division post war - “The formation became known as East Anglian District[21] when the Territorial Army was reformed on 1 January 1947.[22] In 1961 it became a district headquarters as 54th (East Anglian) Division/District,[23] and it was disbanded on the reduction of the TA into the Territorial and Army Volunteer Reserve on 1 April 1967, when many individual TA units lost their identities.[24] The district headquarters itself formed the core of the structure for the creation of Eastern District under HQ UK Land Forces in 1972.” So, I was on the right track with a TA formation and the timeline looks right for my vehicle. Interestingly Eastern District HQ was at Hounslow Barracks, where my wife comes from, so maybe full circle!
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Sorry - I didn’t mean to nag - but did (!)
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No, it’s OK. I did wonder if it was a TA regimental badge for a Yeomanry unit, but couldn’t find anything down that route either. The obvious solution frequently eludes me…
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Stephen, I assure you, it does me too, all too often!
It was me who went skirting around the rabbit hole of LONDIST just because they have a symbolic fortification in their badge, so this one sent me completely in the wrong direction, although both of us would have ended up pursuing the TA I reckon, as you did before me.
Lateral thinking - not my strongest point!
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