"Powder Blasted" Cap Badge UPDATED

From the author's collection; Photo by Do-Ming Lum, Tiger Mountain Studios

UPDATE 17 FEBRUARY 2019:
It turns out just about everything in this post is incorrect. I have posted a correction that tells a more accurate story and tries to explain how I got everything so wrong.

This image is of a First World War cap badge worn by my grandfather at some point between late 1914 and late 1918. The badge is that of the Royal Horse Artillery, and you will note considerable wear: only small amounts of the original polished-metal coating are still visible.

This wear was not caused by age: the badge looked this way while my grandfather wore it. Rather, the wear was caused by a tradition I believe to be peculiar to the RHA: powder blasting. According to a typewritten note that was pasted to the back of the frame in which I received this badge:

This was a custom in the R.H.A. when Batteries went into action many of the "Gunners" placed their badges in front of the firing guns and this caused a sand blasting effect which cannot be obtained in any other manner.

The badge is mounted on a piece of fabric from one of the sandbags used to protect gun emplacements in action. According to the same note, this fabric is now "very rare."

The badge is a bit of a family curiosity. The problem is, we have no verifiable evidence of my grandfather's ever having served in the RHA. We do know that he joined up (under-aged) in 1914, as a private in the Dorsetshire Regiment (I have a photo of him wearing a cap badge that is almost assuredly that of the Dorsets, and most definitely not of the RHA). He was mustered out, in 1918, from the Royal Army Service Corps, in which he worked with ammunition columns supplying shells to various Royal Artillery units. What happened between 1914 and 1918 is a mystery, at least outside of family stories.

There is only one existing record mentioning Private Sidney Skeet: the Medal Card on which were listed his enlistment and mustering-out details and the medals for which he was eligible (and which I also now possess; more on this later, perhaps). His service records, however, no longer exist.

In this he is not alone: in summer 1940 the Public Records Office held service records for 6.5 million people who had served in the British Army between 1914 and 1918. In September 1940 a Luftwaffe incendiary bomb exploded in the War Office Record Store in London's Arnside Street; by the time the resulting fire had been extinguished over 4 million of those records were gone (and the survivors were badly damaged by fire, smoke or water). So for any given British soldier of the first world war, the odds are 3-2 against a service record's existing.

As a writer, though, I can always come up with a plausible story describing my grandfather's war. His badges and medals are more tangible to me than any service record ever could be.