Today we start a short series of postcards over the next month depicting various soldiers in oilette postcards from before the Great War. This was a golden age for the colourised military postcard with printing techniques allowing fantastic colour images coinciding with the regular wearing of Home Service Dress in its bright and regimentally distinct colours, ideal material for the postcard makers to draw upon.

We start then, with a fine image of a Gunner in the Royal Horse Artillery:

This gunner wears on his head the forage cap, with its red band and piping, leather peak and highly polished brass cap badge:

His jacket is made of dark blue wool, with red facings on the collar and extensive gold worsted braiding making up the elaborate frogging across the chest and the Austrian knots on each sleeve. The jacket secures with a single row of brass buttons and a gold braid aiguilette on the left breast:

He wears tight fitting ‘overall’ type trousers with a red stripe down each seam, these are worn over highly polished boots, worn with spurs:

This uniform was particularly flattering to the physique of the young gunner, enhancing what was considered a manly shape in Edwardian England, it is easy to imagine an impressionable house maid being swept off her feet by this particular chap in his fine uniform!