[Bruce Parker (RIP)]

Rather than a piece of communication equipment, I thought this week I would talk a little bit about the insignia used by troops in the Royal Canadian Corp of Signals during the Second World War.

The Corps was formed in 1903 out of the signalling section in the Canadian Engineers and was the first stand alone signal unit in any Commonwealth army. The ‘Royal’ was granted by King George V on June 15, 1921 primarily for its service in the Great War.

Troops of the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals in WW2 were embedded into army divisions, brigades and in battalions down to the company level. Specialized division, corps and army units existed solely for communication between these higher formations and back to headquarters and home.

At the beginning of the war signal troops followed the existing method of unit markings, that being a khaki ‘Canada’ on each shoulder and removable slip on titles for the epaulets with the abbreviated corps title ‘R.C.C.S ‘ embroidered on them. The idea for the slip ons was that they could be removed so the enemy could not easily determine the identity of a body of troops. Photograph 1 is an example of this as worn on a Canadian battledress blouse marked to the British 49th Division when it had Canadian troops attached to it in Iceland in 1940-41.

When divisions of the Canadian Army began arriving in Britain in 1940 they soon abandoned their slip-ons for regimental shoulder titles above coloured divisional flashes sewn on each arm. The exception was non regimental troops such as the Royal Canadian Engineers, the Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps and the Royal Canadian Signal Corps. These troops wore the initials of their service embroidered on the flash of the formation they were attached to. Photographs 2 and 3 are battledress blouses of a Signalman in the 2nd Armoured Brigade (a unit that landed in Normandy on D-Day) and a captain in the First Canadian Army. Note the R.C.C.S. on their respective formation flashes and the blue backing on the captain’s rank ‘pips’.

Canadian home defence divisions followed a similar system of having R.C.C.S. on their divisional flashes; however Atlantic and Pacific Command signallers and those not assigned to a division wore a unique white on blue shoulder title that said simply “R.C. Signals”. Photograph 4 is an example of this being a WO1’s (Warrant Officer Class 1) khaki drill tunic marked to Canada’s Atlantic Command, as indicated by the dark grey lozenge flash.

Lastly is a standard Canadian khaki beret as worn from 1942 to the end of the war. It has the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals cap badge with ‘Jimmy’ smartly in the centre. The blue backing tended to be a late war ‘walking out’ addition to the badge that would have been dispensed with on actual operations.