Length of Shirt Tails

[An t-Ileach]

I think it might have been last year, or earlier this, but we had some discussion on the merits or otherwise of the "under kilt" that drifted into a discussion - led by Ranald, I think - on the length of shirt tails, past and present.

Quite fortuitously I came upon some old shirts that illustrate the point. There's a bit of a narrative attached to how this came about, so please bear with me.

There's a lane that runs down behind my flat, intended I think for the emergency services. People regularly dump stuff at the entrance for the Council to collect on a Thursday (when they're in a good mood, I think, as it isn't exactly a fool proof system): it seems to be one of a diminishing number of amenities that we donate increasing amounts of our money to the Council to provide. Anyway, at the end of last week somebody had dumped quite a large quantity of stuff.

I'm inveterate poker around in skips to see what useful things people are throwing away - especially nice bits of good timber.

The contributor of the pile seems to have been clearing out a flat after someone had died, as there were lots of personal mementoes - rather sad, really. There were two British Army 1937-pattern Battle Dress blouses, vintage 1940s, complete with medal ribbons from WWII, together with the Divisional Symbol and the shoulder flash "Poland" - I suppose that whoever was clearing out couldn't find any relatives here, or contact details for his relatives back in Poland (I wan't to presume they tried).

With the two BD blouses were three new (as in 'unworn') British Army issue shirts dated 1944, which I washed and model one of them below to show the "length of shirt" point.

[I managed to crop out the chaos with GraphicConverter - or, as Sean O'Casey says in Juno and the Paycock, "state of chassis" - which seems to be the normal condition of the sitting room at the moment; but I remain neatly framed by my mother-in-law's trophy wall hanging papyrus she presented us with after a trip up the Nile in Egypt. End of apologies, except for my scruffy appearance. :rolleyes: ]

Front view:


The bottom edge of the shirt clearly reaches down to just below mid-thigh.

Rear view:



Here one can see that the bottom edge is about two to three inches above the back of the knee/selvage edge of the kilt.

[davedove]

What an interesting find! I would suggest that such a find of the WWII era uniforms could be donated to a museum of some sort.

[An t-Ileach]

I shall certainly give it a go.

The Poles set up an ex-pat community here at the end of WWII, complete with an ex-servicemen and women's association (in fact there are pockets of quite large Polish communities all round the country, mostly in the vicinity of former air bases and barracks. In the 70s I worked on a project in Hereford with a Maria-Helena Sapieha - a very anglicised offspring of one such (quite distinguished) family). They have a large and flourishing community centre in Hammersmith, not far from me, which has become the hub of a very large Polish population since the end of the post-war system.

Of course, they may already have plenty of examples of that particular division and campaign ribbons (I kept the BD blouses too out of an ex-serviceman's sentimental solidarity).

I'll get round to talking to the Imperial War Museum, too, at some point.

[kiltimabar]

I shall certainly give it a go.

The Poles set up an ex-pat community here at the end of WWII, complete with an ex-servicemen and women's association (in fact there are pockets of quite large Polish communities all round the country, mostly in the vicinity of former air bases and barracks. In the 70s I worked on a project in Hereford with a Maria-Helena Sapieha - a very anglicised offspring of one such (quite distinguished) family). They have a large and flourishing community centre in Hammersmith, not far from me, which has become the hub of a very large Polish population since the end of the post-war system.

Of course, they may already have plenty of examples of that particular division and campaign ribbons (I kept the BD blouses too out of an ex-serviceman's sentimental solidarity).

I'll get round to talking to the Imperial War Museum, too, at some point.

Probably there are a lot of examples of these items in British museums, but they are probably much rarer in Poland, where some museum there might be interested.

Also as I understand it, there are quite a few WWII re-enactors in the UK; these might be just the sort of things someone might need to complete his impression.