Talk:Australian Army unit colour patches

Monash quote
Introduced in early 1915 by a divisional commander of the A.I.F. as a simple but secure means of identification for units of his own formation, the system had by 1918 spread throughout a force which had expanded to comprise almost seven divisions, with additional corps, army, and L of C units, and had assumed such a status amongst the members of that force that Lieutenant-General Sir John Monash, GOC Australian Corps, was to record in mid 1918 that "...The badge is highly prized by the individual soldier as the only means of identifying him with his Unit or Service, and is a most powerful factor in esprit de corps and the pride of the soldier in his Regiment .... [it] is a most important factor in the maintenance of discipline and also in training .... organization before and during battle, and reorganization after battle are greatly facilitated .... The loyalty of the Australian soldier to his regimental badge is to be experienced in the Field in order to be fully appreciated. See note

Note. From HQ Australian Corps Letter No. 20/75, 17.7.1918. AWM 25, item 187/4. Lt-Gen. Monash to the Commandant, AIF HQ, London, dealing with the unsatisfactory position regarding the supply of colour patches by the British authorities and their apparent misunderstanding of the importance to the AlF of this nature of distinction.

from - http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-badges/patches/0-all_units.htm

Enderwigginau (talk) 07:55, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Horizontally spreading images
I can't seem to find how to spread images across the page.... I'd like to spread the 1, 2, 3 Bde HQ patches across the page and then drop the Battalion patches in columns below each HQ. Enderwigginau (talk) 09:55, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Gday - yes I think that is a good plan. There is some information here about how to do these sort of things Picture tutorial. Anotherclown (talk) 10:28, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Alternatively you might need to go for a table - see pls here for some guidance on how to do that Help:Table. Anotherclown (talk) 10:30, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Also just so you know there are already a whole heap that have been created - they are stored in Commons here. (this might save you creating them all from scratch if that was your plan!) Anotherclown (talk) 10:35, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Haha yeah, I did go through what was in Commons, not alot when there are 300 AIF and 800 2AIF patches - not adding them all though! And many in the commons are current colour patches, not historical. I might put together 1st Division and create a table then do some random ones for other shapes/colour combos. Enderwigginau (talk) 10:41, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, there's a start. Have to look through and see if I can widen the columns or centre the table. Enderwigginau (talk) 11:07, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Signals section
Tried to add a Signals section into 2AIF specifically to display the NGAWW colour Patch as it is an "odd" but couldn't get it to work.Enderwigginau (talk) 05:30, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
 * G'day, I think that I've fixed this for you (there was a missing line in the html code). Please let me know if there are still issues. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 06:10, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks mate. Been a while since you've had to chase me around fixing my stuff ups. Looks good. Enderwigginau (talk) 06:25, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
 * No worries at all, thanks for your efforts on this article. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 07:47, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Significant Changes
Lots of changes and looking good. I would suggest the that the Independent Coys section be moved to BEFORE the Commando section, and include ALL independent coys. Then mention those units in the other sections as having changed from Independent status.

Puggarees should also be shifted to a new article, as this is Unit Colour Patches, not Pugarees.

Enderwigginau (talk) 22:01, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

A radical proposal
The current article is, as nicely pointed out, way too large (it's larger than, for eg., the article on the current global situation... This appears to be mainly due to the excessive amount of images and extraneous detail about the history of the relevant units. What I suggest is: Anybody disagree with this? RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 15:19, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Remove most of the images and keep only a few representative ones (a few from each conflict, representing different kind of units); the current amount is merely WP:INDISCRIMINATE and distracting, see MOS:IMAGERELEVANCE.
 * Move the various histories of military units / persons to relevant pages, if they are not already there.
 * Move, if appropriate, some of the images to the relevant pages (for example, 1st Brigade (Australia) - where the patch already is present), if not already there
 * Keep the lead mostly as is (there are some improvements that can be done, but that better wait for this other major problem to be fixed).
 * I agree. If people want listings of various nations patches, then perhaps they can put them in list articles, not dump their favourites here. (Hohum @ ) 16:42, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * See the hatnote I added for clarification. This is not about multiple nations, it is in fact just about Australia (which makes this even more nonsensical...) RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:51, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * So, this is an Australian only term for formation patch? (Hohum @ ) 17:25, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Aye. You can take a look at the page history to see why it ended up at this specific title... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 18:06, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Given that two of us have already misidentified the subject of the article, perhaps the lead needs to prominently communicate that. (Hohum @ ) 19:38, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I've tried to improve that. Should we also bold the "Australian Army" in the lead, for clarity? RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:55, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * No need to bold it IMO. Just counted the images - over 1,900 of them. That's insane. (Hohum @ ) 19:58, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * And that's not the least bit; some of the captions are also quite 'insanely' long; often relating related but excessive anecdotes, eg.

3rd Australian General Hospital patch, 1918 version, with ANZAC "A" badge, as worn by Sister Muriel Burbury. From Jericho in Tasmania, when Burbury enlisted on 18 May 1915 she was already a qualified nurse with experience in medical wards, surgical wards and operating theatres, including time as Sister in Charge. She embarked almost immediately for the war, on 20 May 1915. She served with 3rd Australian General Hospital on Lemnos Island from 9 August 1915 until 11 January 1916. She then served at Alexandria from January to August 1916, then later at Abbeville, France and in England. As was very common among the nurses, because of their exposure to sick soldiers in crowded hospitals[233][234], Burbury was hospitalised several times herself for sickness, including thirty two days in July–August 1917 for what was written in her record as 'influenza', although diagnoses were not often confirmed with laboratory analyses.[235] Sister Burbury embarked for Australia on around 9 August 1919 and was discharged from the Army on 16 January 1920.[236]


 * I mean, a regular caption would include only the first sentence (and then, only up to the final comma)... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 20:08, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Agree 100%. This article is a massive WP:NOTGALLERY violation. b<b style="color: White">uidh</b><b style="color: White">e</b> 20:59, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I'd just like to hear the opinion of the main contributor of this here (left a message on talk page but so far no reply). Courtesy ping: RandomCanadian (talk / contribs)  00:09, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Ok so given how the above is going, I have started with this; I removed most of the tags in what I have checked so far; move some stuff to relevant articles. I kept a rather haphazard but hopefully representative portion of the images which can be trimmed down further. I'll keep working on it over the next few days since this will obviously require a good amount of time... Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:20, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Agreed. It appears that the Australia content here needs to moved or split to an article on the First Australian Imperial Force or other relevant Australian article. This article needs a more specific title that includes Australia, imo. -Fnlayson (talk) 18:12, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Completely agree and fully encourage. I've also boldly updated the title to reflect what this article is about. Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:43, 24 May 2020 (UTC)


 * G'day, Gjw9999 asked me to offer some opinions about the topic. I have a few ideas about how this topic could be handled going forward, although it appears some of this process has already commenced: AustralianRupert (talk) 11:08, 25 May 2020 (UTC)


 * (1) reduction of this page to only show examples (rather than every item in a series), with the focus being more on text/narrative rather than images outlining broad themes, and history of the topic
 * (2) creation of a Commons page to display the patches in more detail (potentially split by era e.g World War I, World War II etc). An example might be the New Georgia campaign.
 * (3) adding the images to Commons Category:Colour patches of the Australian Army or some of its subcategories such as Battalions of the AIF. Potentially some more sub categories would need to be created to improve the sorting of that category
 * (4) moving the battledress shoulder flashes as these aren't exactly specific to the UCP topic -- possibly it could be an article by itself, or it could potentially be covered in the Formation patch article? Not sure about this, though.
 * (5) moving some (or just one) of the pugaree images to an article about that topic (I don't think Wikipedia currently has an article on that, yet, though, although maybe it could go on the Slouch hat article?)
 * (6) reducing the size of some of the images
 * (7) reducing the length of some of the image captions


 * I probably don't have the energy or time to help too much with this, though, at the moment as I am working on other topics at the moment, I'm sorry. I will try to help with adding the category to the images on Commons, though, when I get a chance. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 11:08, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I've started work on 1 and 7. I may have already removed some of the images covered under 4 and 5 without a second though; in any case this should be easily (with the caveat that the article is large so depending on your device it might not be that fast) salvageable through the article history. 6 seems related to 7 as the very large images are those that usually also have the very large captions (see the one I posted above in the collapsed section). Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:16, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * When I first started working on this page, there was no need to make it as big as it was subsequently made. There was also no need to change it from Unit Colour Patch to Australian Army etc......It needs to be reverted back to basics with sections regarding each country's usage. Originally it had just a basic table of different patch designs, with particular specialised patches (WWII Commando and Independent Coy, Tobruk patches) noted. That's where it needs to be. Pugarees need to be pulled out into a separate article. The bulk of images can probably be dropped straight into LIST page so they are all still available and together. Enderwigginau (talk) 21:38, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Back to its Original Form
It is good to see the article taken back to almost its original form. I would suggest adding some indicative sections for unit tyoes not already included, and "Odds" such as Commando, Tobruk and NGAWW to show how colour patches changed to represent non-traditional usage. Enderwigginau (talk) 23:06, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the long delay - had to get ArbCom involved to solve an unfortunate incident. Enough on that - I'll get back to continue and finish this (with suggestions in mind) shortly. Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 18:38, 21 January 2021 (UTC)