10th (County of London) Battalion, London Regt O.C.A lapel badge.

Gilded brass and enamel Old Comrades Association lapel badge of the 10th (County of London) Battalion, London Regiment (Hackney). The design copies the battalion cap badge: eight-pointed star, King’s crown, the Hackney tower in the centre with the motto “JUSTITIA TURRIS NOSTRA” (Justice is our tower), and a scroll reading “TENTH LONDON HACKNEY”. The tower comes from the Arms of Hackney, and this badge pattern was in use from 1913 until 1937 , which brackets the likely date of your OCA piece to the interwar years.

The battalion

Raised in 1912 when Hackney split off from the 7th Essex to form its own battalion, taking the 10th numeral from the disbanded Paddington Rifles. Headquarters was The Grove, Hackney.  It was nicknamed the Hackney Gurkhas or Cockney Gurkhas, often put down to the men’s short stature from a poor East End upbringing. The men took it as a compliment and the name stuck through both wars.

First World War service

• 1/10th: sailed from Plymouth for Gallipoli in late July 1915, landed at Suvla Bay on 11 August 1915, evacuated that December and moved to Egypt.

• 2/10th: formed September 1914, went into 175th Brigade, 58th (2/1st London) Division, and landed at Le Havre on 4 February 1917.  This is the battalion that fought on the Western Front.

Battle honours (First World War)

Ypres 1917, Menin Road, Polygon Wood, Passchendaele, Villers Bretonneux, Amiens, Somme 1918, Albert 1918, Bapaume 1918, Hindenburg Line, Épehy, Pursuit to Mons, France and Flanders 1917-18.

Worth flagging for a listing: those honours all date from 1917-18 on the Western Front, so they were earned by the 2/10th in 58th Division, not by the 1/10th at Suvla. Gallipoli does not appear in the honours list.

Afterwards the battalion became 10th London Regiment (Hackney), The Rifle Brigade, then in 1929 the 5th (Hackney) Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment.  In 1944 it landed with 3rd Canadian Division at Juno Beach on D-Day as part of No. 8 Beach Group.