NEW HERALDRY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 94, 21 August 1942, Page 5

NEW HERALDRY

BADGES OF THE FORCES

| MANY IDEAS NOW IN USE Modern Avar lias its heraldry just as had the war of King Arthur's Iknights, but now the heraldic blazons are carried on the shoulders of the fighting men instead of on thenshields. At a recent troop broadcast in England, with men on leave from all regiments, units and countries of the British Commonwealth, every man present bore on his shoulder a different, mystical badge that had apparently no relation to his regiment. One superbly healthy young man, for instance, bore on either shoulder a red witch riding her broomstick across a cloudy sky. On the shoulder of another was a sign which, in the language of the old heraldry, would probably have been described as a poisson rouge on a' field azure —in modern language, a red porpoise gallivanting on a blue and white sea. An officer of high rank sported the emblem of the green bay treethough it might have been an oak tree. Someone must have quite a job thinking up new ideas for badges.