Hi guys,
I've been looking through various ref. material,books and on the net and i'm a little stumped.
What colour is correct for the British Infantry's W.W.2 coffee/drink mugs?
I have some colour pics from N.Z and they are red,yet on the net they are displayed as being white(as seen on the Tamiya box art),others a light blue colour!
So which colour would be appropriate for in Normandy?Were there different coloured cups for different regiments?
Also,which colour were they base coated in?This would come in handy to add some chippings/scratches to the mugs.
Thanks in advance,
Cheers,Shay

Hi Shay,

To the best of mu knowledge they would have started life white.

They were made of enamal and would probably have had a blue rim so chips would be black/blue. Some folks may have painted them green as they do stand out and were often carried on the straps of the webbing and most soldiers would have marked them in some way to identify them as their personal cup, so a red mark or whatever would be fine and these may have been on the base of the cup.

Cheers

Al

Hi Shay. Im looking at "Histoire & Collections" books now ... From D-Day to VE-Day ... The British soldier vol I, and it shows 2 mugs .. one is a wine or wine-brown colour and the others is a white enameled mug with navy blue rim, like Alan described. Chips would be black or a dirty dark brown metal colour.
It talks about diferent web patterns ... 1937, then changes made in ´39 and ´42. The wine and wine-brown enamelled cups all appear on the ´37 webbing images, and this mug was part of the infantry´s battle order.
It also later includes a B&W image of the "men of the 8th battalion, rifle brigade" Normandy June ´44. This image clealy shows a white mug with the handle broke off and some scratches. the mugs were stowed on the outside, and held with the closing strap of the haversack.

Hi,
Alan and Frank,
Thanks very much for your replies.Think i'm going to stick with a white coloured mug and give the rim tops a dark blue colour ,followed by wear and tear..maybe even as Al suggested a marking of a small red cross on one of them to break the monotony of things!
Will post some pics soon of the near completed figgies.
Thx once again,
Shay