GREMLINS IN ITALY
How an advert for a world-famous beer inspired the insignia of the British Army’s 21st Tank Brigade as it fought up Italy’s spine
Tucked away in the war diary of the 48th Battalion, Royal Tank Regiment, is a half-sheet of foolscap that reveals the intriguing story behind the 21st Tank Brigade’s adoption of a radical new badge in the summer of 1944.
You might expect that the British Army would be quite staid when it came to the design of its badges and insignia. After all, the cap badge is the main symbol that soldiers display to attest their membership of any unit and engender pride and loyalty – much more so than the formation signs typically worn on one or both sleeves to signify a unit’s parent corps, division and/or brigade.
Changing insignia is quite a common occurrence, usually due to earned battle honours or to signify mergers and amalgamations, but sometimes these changes are a little more ‘on trend’. Take the jerboa that, from 1940, appeared on the badges of the 7th Armoured Division, a cheeky nod to their famous reputation as the Desert Rats.
So how did it come to pass that the 21st Tank Brigade adopted a gremlin as the symbol of their unit?
A rare event
Formed in 1939 a…
