As the weather is heating up, and I find myself switching increasingly to khaki shorts, hiking socks, and boots, this image seems fitting.
Official caption: A battalion of the Manchester Regiment in the Far East is busily engaged in preparing for anything the future may have in store and the art of camouflage is not being overlooked. Photo shows – a Vickers gun in use during an exercise, circa 1941.
For the record, the 1st Battalion, The Manchester Regiment, was stationed in Singapore in October 1938, following overseas service since January 1934 in Jamaica, Egypt, and Palestine. Fighting the Japanese in Malay until Singapore fell in early 1942, “The battalion marched from Singapore Town to the Prisoner of War concentration area at Changi on 17th February, led by Lieutenant Colonel Holmes carrying a large framed photograph of King George V strapped to his back.”
The war was not kind to the Manchesters. Of the 1,003 officers, NCOs, and men of the regiment at Singapore on 8 December 1941, 438 failed to return from Japanese POW camps in 1945.