Identifying Cap Badges

Book excerpt: This book is an invaluable 'tool of the trade' for anyone trying to identify or interpret photos. - Peter Hart, Military Historian Identifying Cap Badges is the book that has been missing from the bookshelves of family historians, military enthusiasts, and badge collectors alike. It is quite easy to find an erudite book on military cap badges, but you could spend hours, if not days, plodding through hundreds of pictures to find a match for the one you hold. Sometimes you may not find it at all! These learned badge collector's books have one major flaw; they are pictured and discussed in 'order of precedence', that is to say, from the earliest formed regiments to the latest, with separate sections on medical, engineers, cavalry, infantry, etc. This can be most confusing to those uninitiated into the 'dark arts' of military badges. Thus, if you do not know the name or 'original number' of your regiment in this order of precedence, you can be flummoxed! This, combined with all the different crowns, laurels, animals, mythological beasts and castles, can prove more than a little daunting, even to ex soldiers themselves! In this book you will find badges ordered by what is on the badge itself; be it a dragon, sphinx or castle, horse, lion or tiger. This is badge identification in minutes, rather than hours, with added information on dating badges and many comparison photographs alongside all the pictures of the badges. Added to these pictures are short histories of the regiments and 'family trees' plotting the antecedents of today's units.