Signals Equipment and the UP Saddle

During the Great War, signals was an element of Royal Engineers with some parts devolved or shared out to different cap badges including the Cavalry.

Now signals are not a particular interest of mine but they do have some very particular elements of equipment that link into the Mounted Units or have resulted in some interesting horse and saddle equipment.

I will confess that the idea for this post came about when I came across an interesting photo that was unusual for a couple of reasons.

The reason that I first look at this image as it is so unusual to find a rider of a horse in the Great war to be wearing 1908 Equipment (Webbing). The next thing was that item that was strapped next to the rifle bucket, I’d never come across that before and my initial curiosity thought that I may well have been a trials piece of kit or something linked with the Hotchkiss Machine gun, but I couldn’t find anything that related to that.

It was purely by accident that I came across another photo with a similar set up and it referred to it as “Signals Flags Bucket”.

With a little bit more digging and research I found out that this was partially true. The reality is that they form part of a set that are fitted to a saddle and they are for the Heliograph signals equipment. The buckets are fitted to each side of the saddle and are designed to carry the heliograph tripod, signals telescope, and signals flags, thus allowing a Cavalry Regiment to carry signalling equipment in the field.

I went looking to get some more information on the heliograph equipment and manage to track down the information on the buckets in the List of Changes (LoC) and as part of that it had 2 excellent images of the buckets loaded with equipment fitted to a UP Saddle.

The mirrors and the “headset” of the heliograph would be stored in a leather case with a leather or webbing strap and were carried by the signaller while mounted.

I found that there is a very good facebook group that deals with the Heliograph equipment, of which there are a couple of posts about the use of the Heliograph by mounted units and even some images of the buckets, the photo below is a brilliant image of the two buckets, in what looks like excellent condition. They are owned by a chap called Jonathan Paynter and he states that they are stamped 1914. The Facebook group is the British Heliograph Club https://www.facebook.com/groups/776510812960897/

The left is for the telescope stand and signals flags, the right is for the Heliograph tripod. The Straps/loops at the top of each bucket would have gone around the rear arch of the UP Saddle, allowing the bucket to hang down, in the same way as the Rifle Bucket and the RE Tool Bucket does. On both you can see the leather steadying strap (in the centre of the buckets) that would have reached across to the Girth strap of the saddle and leather loop at the end of the strap would have allowed the buckets to be secured/tied by having the surcingle strap pass through the loop.

On the left bucket the strap at the bottom of the bucket is a short retaining strap to help tie the flag bucket to the Rifle bucket next to it. On the right hand bucket centre strap you will notice a smaller loop, this is to allow the scabbard of the Cavalry Sword to pass through and again this also adds to the stability of the equipment on the saddle. Admittedly that is quite hard to see in the LOC photo above as that has the picket peg secured above the sword scabbard (as it should be) but also over the top of the leather loop on the heliograph tripod bucket

The heliograph was an excellent piece of equipment and was used through out the army from the Victorian period and the Survey Squadrons of the Royal Engineers were still using it through to the 1980s when they were out doing large scale survey works.

The size and weight of the equipment also made sense that Cavalry units should have access to it and that it should be available in the field rather than being in the unit baggage/ stores wagons. From what I can find it was issued at the rate of 2 heliograph sets per cavalry regiment.

So to come back to my original puzzle, I still don’t have an answer as to this rider wearing 1908 equipment but I have at least learned about what the additional equipment is, and also learned that whoever loaded the kit put the heliograph tripod in the wrong bucket! Oh well everyday is a school day and it is always great to use old photos to broaden your knowledge through investigation and research.