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A British Troops in Norway Patch(also worn by US personnel)


Patchcollector
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Patchcollector

Happy Friday all,
Today I would like to share this interesting patch that I recently picked up.First,a bit of a backstory about how I acquired it.I came upon this piece quite by accident.When browsing eBay I usually don't pay much attention to the groups of patches,but when I saw the group that this patch came in,something caught my eye.The photos weren't very good,but one of the patches looked familiar to my old memory banks.
I then went to the Forum,did some searches,and sure enough,found a patch with the same general design.
I was tempted to ask the seller for better pics of that particular patch,but then thought better of it as I didn't want to alert him/her of what they potentially had.I would just take a chance on it in the hopes of picking up a bargain.

I threw a fairly modest bid on the group and waited,hoping that no one else would notice the "gem" among the "rough".
Fast forward to the auctions end;I won the group but one other person bid against me.I think that they too had seen the patch and realized what it was but thankfully,in the end I prevailed and got the piece for what I felt was a reasonable chunk of change.
During and after the auction I consulted with someone that had much more experience with these pieces than I did.After consulting with his circle of experts,I was informed that what I had was more than likely a seldom seen variant of the British Troops in Norway patch,sometimes called the "Norway Liberation" patch.

My thanks goes out to everyone involved that assisted me with the ID of this piece.

Now,back to the patch.It is more of a "Royal" blue color than the scans suggest,with a slightly darker blue stitched edge.The back is black,and has remnants of,for lack of a better description,"tailors paper".There are also leftover OD colored threads from when it was sewn onto something.The white stitching of the Viking ship,sun and waves is nicely done,and has that "theatre made" appearance.The patch doesn't glow under UV light,and the cloth has an "open" weave.
I and the person I consulted with have no idea where it was made,but if I were to venture a guess,I would choose France as I have seen this type weave on some other French made patches,most notably,the "Red Ball Express" pieces.There is also an image of a US Flag patch that I found online which was used by the 99th for a very short period while in Norway.It is said to have been made in France and appears to have the same cloth "weave" as my patch.

I did the best I could with the images.The patch is sort of "crumpled",and will not lay flat from having been folded for a long period of time.

 

Any and all comments,opinions,etc.. are welcome and appreciated.

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Interesting construction. I have a printed version and have seen an embroidered on felt, both of these being British made. I had seen an US Intell officers uniform that had the printed version sewn on. In fact you could see where it was two patches folded over and sewn. These were issued in pairs to British troops but the U.S. officer just folded the pair in two. Nice patch

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Patchcollector

Interesting construction. I have a printed version and have seen an embroidered on felt, both of these being British made. I had seen an US Intell officers uniform that had the printed version sewn on. In fact you could see where it was two patches folded over and sewn. These were issued in pairs to British troops but the U.S. officer just folded the pair in two. Nice patch

 

 

Thanks Irish.I found some more variations here on the Forum and I wanted to post them here along with mine to show the differences.

 

First is the printed version.These are the ones that I believe most people think of when it comes to this patch.

 

 

 

 

 

Front

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Patchcollector

 

 

Thanks for posting the link here.Yours is a nice example of the printed type.Looks like someone "framed" it when it was sewn on.Very cool!I hope that you don't mind if I add a copy of your image to my thread so that all the examples can be seen in one place.

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Patchcollector

Great looking patches. First I've ever seen!

 

Thanks for your comment 1SG_1st_Cav.I found a spectacular bullion example that was auctioned off as part of an OSS grouping on eBay.I believe that the group fetched around 10K!

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