31 May 2016

Scary military images I came across while researching things on the interwebs

Some unusual military images I came across while researching on the interwebs thingy


On my latest tangent I came across some rather unusual (and sometimes startling images when typing in search terms related to my searches for recent posts.

First off I was looking at Zeltbahnen, the German shelters used in WW2, which led me off on a tangent to the SADF Bivvy, and the cadet forces. I was thinking how, in some senses, it was not really unlike the Hitlerjungend in philosophy, a feeding conduit for the army, and them OMW!

These pictures from the late 50s appear:




 Good grief! Where did the inspiration for the uniforms come from? The DAK or Hitlerjungend? 

By the time I got to high school, and had to wear the cadet uniform to school every Wednesday, it was quite different. We wore brown berets. It appears this was the uniform for most of the 1950s through the early 60s. 

I remember my father remarking how they wore "caps"  when he was in the school cadet shooting team in the mid to late 50s, but I never realised it was a feldmutze peaked cap. I had envisaged a cricket-style English school boy cap!

These other disturbing images came up when I googled cadet:

From the US:



From the UK: 




2 comments:

  1. The cadets look very much like conversions from the Airfix Afrika Korps set, though the trophy-wielding officer in the first photo seems to have sneaked in from the 8th Army set. Photo 2 looks to be later than the late '50s, going by the car parked outside the Good Hope Restaurant. I'm not sure what it is - an Opel perhaps or something American- but I'd say it looks more late '60s or even '70s. Scary stuff indeed.

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    1. Hi Tim. I agree with you about that car, and the poster too. I had a trawl around the internet.(Not an easy feat, had to use several languages and multiple search terms) I have come across school photos showing Cadet bands as late as 1973 still sporting the uniforms shown. It looks as if the German style hats were around for a while, and the SADF uniform I knew were slowly phased in through the 60s and 70s. Most photos that are dated seem to date from 1956-1958, some 1960. The South African Military was pretty much indistinguishable from their British counterparts until the mid 1960s. Often the equipment also dated back to WW2. The Bren and Vickers gun was used well into the 1980s for example

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