HOLD ON TO YOUR HATS!
I am, of course, as many of us are, a long-time This England subscriber. This one is ninety years old plus. The Spring edition is, as we expected, right up to scratch all the way through.
I wondered if perhaps your readers may be interested in the subject of my military service in
H.M. Coldstream Guards, immediately postwar in 1946-7. Our battalion (2nd) was based at Wellington Barracks, Birdcage Walk, London. We were guarding both Buckingham Palace and St James’s Palace.
In possibly late 1946 we were issued with scarlet tunics and bearskin caps. The caps had been in cold storage since 1939. We were asked (not ordered) to treat them with great respect. They were waterproof and required no maintenance, just a good shaking and hardly ever a combing. We treated them with respect for the reason that the previous wearers may well have died on the battlefields of World War II. They never wear out, so today’s Guardsmen are almost certainly wearing the same ones that we wore all those years ago.
My point is that in today’s world I doubt if any persons shoot bears, so why all the fuss about bearskin caps? Tradition is tradition; long may it prosper. Bearskin caps for ever, say I!
Ronald W. Miles, Jackfield, Telford