Our small group came about by
accident; it started in May 2004 when Dean the founder member bought a
battledress from e-bay to wear at 1940's events. When it arrived it was found
to have a divisional patch unknown to us above the royal artillery arm of service
badge.
The uniform was going to be
re-badged as a paratrooper anyway so we thought nothing of it, however about a
fortnight later a small booklet simply called red eagles was posted on e bay
and had the same eagle on the front as our battledress so we made a bid and
bought it out of curiosity.
The opening lines of the book
had us captivated, "it was fitting we should wear red eagles on our
shoulders for only birds could have visited so many lands or reached the
heights we did". Reading the booklet we learnt that the division had been
the only infantry division in North Africa at the outbreak of war, there only
comrades being 7th armored division. They were to see action in Egypt Ethiopia,
Syria, Egypt again, Libya,Tunisia, Italy and Greece.
The group wear khaki drill as
most of the division's fighting was done in North Africa and the Mediterranean
and we thought that KD's would get us noticed more in the sea of green and
browns you usually see at events.
On our display we talk about
the division and about it's battles, we recount stories of their actions and
try to show what life in the desert was like, our display is a conglomerate of
photographs we have seen in books about the desert war,books about the division
and at the imperial war museum.
As a group our aims are
simple, to bring to people's attention the sacrifices and actions of the Indian
army during world war two.