A final goodbye to the 'A's of the RAuxAF: end of an era

Everyone Uniform and Drill
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11 August 2016

http://www.raf.mod.uk/news/archive/one-uniform-one-force-11082016

One Uniform, One Force

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From today, members of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force (RAuxAF), more commonly known as the RAF Reserves, will no longer wear identifying Auxiliary insignia on Parade and Mess Dress. The identifying insignia was removed from RAuxAF working dress over a decade ago.

The removal of the insignia is a clear recognition by the RAF’s senior leadership of the value that reservists bring to the Whole Force. Group Captain Gavin Hellard, Inspector of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force said: “This is tangible recognition of the value reserve service brings, and is a clear message to the reserve component of how much their service means to the Royal Air Force, it’s about reservists being part of the Whole Force”

With a strong history, particularly through WW2 where many reserve squadrons took part in the Battle of Britain, Reservists have been involved continuously on RAF operations. Currently RAF Reserves deliver capabilities in many trades such as medics and cyber specialists providing skills critical to Defence, providing resilience and additional capacity during operations, and at this time almost 100 Reserve personnel are mobilised.

Group Captain Hellard added: “What Reservists bring is quite exceptional. When you see a reservist, you may see an SAC, what you don’t immediately see is the middle manager working in ICT, who brings a different perspective on an issue and a wealth of knowledge.”

The symbolic removal of the Inspector’s insignia was carried out at Air Command by Air Marshal Reynolds, Air Member for Personnel, overseen by the Command Reserves Warrant Officer, Warrant Officer Shobha Earl. OC 600 Squadron RauxAF, Wg Cdr Andy Calame and other reservists from the squadron were present to witness the historic moment.

Air Marshal Reynolds said: “The removal of the RAuxAF insignia recognises that Reserves are a fully integrated component of one cohesive, effective force. Traditionally the insignia identified members of the Reserve from Regulars. Reserves today operate seamlessly alongside Regulars and are recognised not as a separate force but as members of the Whole Force."[ENDS]

I am very sad to see this happen. It’s the final end of a proud tradition. I can see the operational justification for the more-previous removal of the gilt 'A’s from Offrs working dress (auggies ORs were never really required to wear them on No2 dress) but losing them from best blues and mess dress for all RAuxAF Officers and ORs, forever…that is such a shame.

Comitamur ad astra

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I agree. Do the reservists actually want this?

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Cor blimey - I had to do the Two Ronnies sketch - "got any A’s? - when I had to order 150+ sets for the Oggies Royal Parade at Benson back in the 1980’s - Presentation of their Standard.

Can’t 'ave 'em, said the sponsor (Wg Cdr), need to write memo, blah, blah. Parade was in 10 days, so I asked if Air Cdre XXXX was his boss…

Minor explosion over the 'phone, how dare you, & anyway, who did you say your boss was…?

Air Chief Marshall Sir John Barraclough …

How many do you want? :grinning:

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What a load of tosh. Waste of time and effort. Probably too many officers wanting to Walt it down the mess.
Or can’t have lads feeling left out or different. We all have to be inclusive these days. Make everyone feel like a special snowflake.

Part time soldiers, full time banging on about it. It’s there for a reason, your a reservist. Your an add on asset.

The sooner the MOD and the Government drop this ridiculous push for a reservist force crap, the better. The reserves have a place to supplement, not replace.

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RAS, I’m not entirely sure the removal of the A’s was\is to allow people to walt around. I can’t speak for the Army Reserve but a lot of RAuxAF personnel these days are as professional in their approach as a regular serviceman. Perhaps not as knowledgeable but professional as they can be given the circumstances of their role. It’s perhaps worth remembering that reservists have served in every conflict and peacekeeping duty from Gulf War 1 right up to the present day.

The RAuxAF had the ‘Reserve Forces’ text removed from their MOD90’s some time ago so the removal of the A’s was the next logical step. That said, I know quite a few ex-Oggie’s who are absolutely furious about it so that says a lot about whether they welcome the opportunity to ‘walt it up’ or not.

Also, IIRC, the TA\Army Reserve never wore anything on any uniform to denote them as reserves so it’s probably a move designed to bring all three reserve forces into line.

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I wasn’t at that 80s parade, though it was during my earlier pre-auggie phases.

The contemporary loss of the 'A’s (whether brass collar ones for Officers, or the cloth arm ones for ORs) has now achieved something that neither the Air Ministry nor the Luftwaffe managed to do during WW2.

During mid-1943, the RAFVR was collectively-instructed to remove their 'VR’s from all orders of dress, which for them held an entirely-different significance than the 'A’s worn by AAF/WAAF personnel. The Auxiliary Air Force proudly wore it’s 'A’s right the way through WW2, right up until this month, whereas the RAFVR (of WW2) predominantly wanted rid of their “mark of Cain”.

Members of the VR (even the pre-1939 true volunteers, let alone the hundreds of thousands of conscripts) often received an extremely-frosty reception when they arrived at regular or auxiliary squadrons / HQ locations, and this was irrespective of the massive VR contribution to the Battle of Britain (history is a great healer).

During WW2, VR collar/shoulder badges were, unfairly, often not viewed positively, either by the wearers, or by the the rest of the Air Force (conversely, the general public fully-appreciated what the significance was of the badge).

It was mid 1941 before the RAF and the AAF began to properly-accept the VR in all areas, and some senior command positions were even starting to see VR appointments.

But the temporary WW2 demise of ‘VR’ badges was a done deal. There were repeated rumours of special bad treatment being inflicted upon VR downed aircrew, or VR PoWs in the Stalag Lufts, but all of my research (including first-hand accounts, I’m proud in my time to have met some of the very best) has never yet confirmed this. (Conversely, some wearers of the ‘Pathfinder’ breast eagle were on occasion shot, if captured).

It wasn’t until 1947 that the ‘VR’ collar badges reappeared (followed by the now-familiar new VRT badges).

And right the way through this, the brass and cloth 'A’s of the RAuxAF remained constant. Surviving even the massive cuts of 1957, when every reserve flying squadron was binned.

The ‘A’ badges continued right through the Cold War, Falklands, Gulf Wars, Balkans…and even (ironically) became pinned to the collars of the absorbed RAFVR in 1997.

But this month, the mark of “the A Team” has finally disappeared.

I suppose it’s also for tri-service equality. The TA/Army Reserve have hardly ever worn distinguishing badges, and now never will. The RNR/RMR got rid of their 'R’s years ago.

I suppose I’m just being a dinosaur, but I will be extremely sorry never to see them on Air Force uniform ever again.

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Having served in the reserves before I went regular I can relate.

It just seems like some caviar munching officer has sat around and got a pay rise for wasting his time on it.

There’s more important issues of the reserves to worry about, discipline, pay and housing, jobs, skill sets, injury and rehab, pay benefits for buying a house.

All this reserve push is just a massive penny pinching, desk jockey, caviar munching, shiny [BUMMED] load of tosh.

I bet which ever orifice came up with the idea got a pay rise too. The doorknob.

Want to save money in the MOD? Axe half of those caviar munchers made up ranks, pawn the officers mess, and you could probably fund 3 more carriers.

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It is somewhat ironic that in light of the big push to recruit reserves (you regularly see adverts), to essentially gap fill for the loss of regulars, that something that indicates their status is removed or not even used. There maybe other issues for reservists, but something to indicate that they’re doing the same as those they are with but also doing a full-time job, has to be visibly recognised.

I do agree that however everywhere public money is spent, not just the MoD, jobs exist that just suck up money with no perceivable use or output that could be put to much better operational use, just because someone somewhere wanted to make up a job, mostly in administration. Every management role will spawn several lesser jobs all looking to be more important than they really are and huge amount of belly-aching when they are lost or changed. I saw this when they changed support jobs from full-time to term-time at school, God knows why they complained, who doesn’t like the holidays you get working in a school. I’d never go back to a 52 week job, with 4/5 weeks off a year. I choose to work a few days in the summer holidays to ensure I can do some prep work that’s so much easier without the kids here.

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I can see both sides to the coin on this, if you are trying to create an inclusive workplace which says “you are all the same regular or reserve”, then I can appreciate why this has been done. But at the same time you have to look at the history and ten tradition that goes with something like this.

I think that what they had before, the removal of the A from working dress but the retention on 1’s & 5’s was the ideal compromise.

They are doing similar things in the Police now with many forces doing away with Special Constable Insignia.

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Interestingly, the opposite is happening in Ireland and its causing a great deal of anger…

Ireland has recently taken on the ‘one Army’ concept, got rid of seperate regular and reserve forces and really gone down the single force concept road with no outward indication on uniform of who was regular and who was a reservist - which reservists really liked, they had finally get rid of their ‘bagger’ epithet (derived from their most regular role as filling sandbags during floods and clearing snow in the winter…). However, some bright spark decided that this isn’t good enough and designed a badge like a TRF to ‘signify the sacrifices made by reservists’.

They hate it. The thought is quite nice - though they’d prefer boots, uniform, ammunition and training days - and the badge itself is fine, but it’s that idea that despite all the work done to bring single force into reality, someone can’t handle the idea of reservists looking exactly like regulars.

There’s a difference between celebrating your units history, and being made to wear a lepers badge…

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Some cloth 'A badges reprieved for now - if their removal would damage the No 1 jacket, for example, where it would leave a dark patch while the surrounding material has faded or, heaven forbid, where the badge has been glued on! :grinning:

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I remember years ago seeing a female RAuxAF Cpl from the Kinloss DF, who’d been issued with a proper airwoman’s jacket, but for which the station tailor had incorrectly fitted Offrs’ pattern brass "A"s onto the lapels and stitched a pair of proper 'A’s at the shoulders.

I understand she was told by the SWO not to remove the brass 'A’s, as it would’ve meant her best blues were a bin-job.

There are also official photographs of the SVRO taken around the time of the 1997 RAuxAF/VR merger (was it Wg Cdr Dickson?) who proudly wore “holey lapels”…mind you, he went RAFVR(T)-RAFVR(GD)-RAuxAF-RAFR-RAuxAF, so in some respects he was lucky to have any lapels left at all. An amazing gentleman for whom I have the highest respects…