More on shorts!

The nice thing about doing these web posts is that sometimes people reply to them and so it has been with last week’s post on the shorts worn by the BSF.

I was delighted to hear from SCS member, Tim O’Neil, who contacted us about his grandfather – James O’Neill – who served in Macedonia with B Company, 9th (Service) Battalion, Border Regiment (Pioneers), the pioneer battalion of 22nd Division on the Doiran front. James was with them in Salonika from 1915 to 1917, when he returned to England on promotion to Second Lieutenant, serving for the rest of the war with the Devonshire Regiment in France.

Having looked at the Christmas card image that I included in the previous post, Tim realised that he had a photograph of the “elusive” shorts with flaps which I was so keen to see. He explains:

It shows my grandad (on the far left of the group) wearing ‘normal’ shorts, but the third man from the left of the picture appears to be wearing the shorts with flaps. His shorts are folded up and if you enlarge the picture you should be able to see what appears to a round object on his right side that I take to be the button that holds the folded lower half up. The man second from the left may also be wearing similar shorts but it is difficult to be sure.

And here is the splendid photo:

And here is a close-up of the flaps on the shorts which, I think, makes it clear than the man, second left, is wearing them too:

I don’t know when the name ‘Bombay Bloomers’ came into use, but if it was back then, I don’t think you’d laugh at these chaps for wearing them – they are a tough looking crew!

Thanks so much to Tim for getting in touch. It would be good to see more photos of these shorts being worn so, if you have one, do please get in touch. It’s not possible to upload images when adding a comment to a web post, but if you mention that you have an image you would be willing to share, Andy or I will get in touch and tell you how to submit it.