Great Britain Collar Insignia

[UK_IN_US]

I have an old photo of an ancestor who served in the Infantry in World War One. He has a patch or badge on his collar (hard to tell, the photo is somewhat fuzzy) which resembles an upright spade (like the card suit) on some form of horizontal base.

Interestingly enough, the comic character Lord Henry Baltimore has a similar insignia:

Edited August 4, 2014 by UK_IN_US

[UK_IN_US]

Any help would be much appreciated.

[Jerry B]

Vaguely resembles the collar badges worn by Royal Engineers or Royal Artillery.

[Mervyn Mitton]

Jerry - thhat was who I was thinking of when I saw the cartoon. Not very often we get asked about cartoons..........

UK in US - welcome to GMIC and use a first name if you are posting regularly - unless it is Batman ? Mervyn

[IrishGunner]

UK-IN-US, welcome to GMIC. We could give a better answer if you could post the actual picture of your ancestor.

It is quite possible the cartoon drawing takes some artistic license. What I know of the back story of the comic, Captain Baltimore was in an infantry regiment. So, while the drawing looks like Royal Artillery or Royal Engineer bombs, they may not actually be such. We don't know what was in the artist's mind since I haven't found a reference to a specific regiment for Baltimore in a Google search.

Does anyone know of an infantry regiment with similar shape collar dogs for officers?

[Jerry B]

It might be one of the fusiler regiments perhaps, though nothing else that looks like a spade springs to mind.