First World War insignia

Overseas and wound stripes

While at Isobel Johnson’s Local History weekend I noticed a photo in the museum of a group of soldiers from the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.  There was a caption that said to note the wound stripes on the soldiers sleeves. I had never heard about these before so I asked Mr Fisher (who was manning the museum ) and he told that during the First World War Soldiers were given a stripe for number of times wounded and wore them on their left cuff.

They were also given stripes for each year they had been in service overseas. A red stripe if they were abroad in 1914 and a blue stripe for each successive year. He was kind enough to go home and fetch his fathers service stripes for me to photograph.

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