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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

Maddison's War


DCLI

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Not sure if this is the right place for this. However, have just watched Maddison's War, very good too. However the continuity people need a telling off.

See here, Maddison's WW1 ribbons or not. Sometimes they were correct, then upside down, then gone altogether.

Sometimes gone altogether.

post-3297-002424900 1284935444.jpg

post-3297-042439800 1284935527.jpg

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Ha! So I wasn't the only one puzzled by them jumping about then?! LOL!

Did it enjoy the play though.

Cheers,

Mark

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I suspect this was due to them filming a whole load of the scenes at Beamish or similar in one go, where some of the time he needed the ribbons up, and others were they weren't required, and so the ribbons had to go on or come off as required, and it wasn't always done right - still sloppy work mind, but probably down to some overworked costume assistant without quite the militaria background most here have... :innocent:

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I suspect this was due to them filming a whole load of the scenes at Beamish or similar in one go, where some of the time he needed the ribbons up, and others were they weren't required, and so the ribbons had to go on or come off as required, and it wasn't always done right - still sloppy work mind, but probably down to some overworked costume assistant without quite the militaria background most here have... :innocent:

The pic without the ribbons, shows he is a corporal and should have had his ribbons up. I was under the impression ribbons had to be up all the time.

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What you have been seeing is the M Knife, a weapon issued to some of the Home Guard for a short while. It was a very thin but sharp folding knife disguised as a medal ribbon bar and was intended to escape detection should any Home Guard be taken POW when it could be used as an escape tool. Believed to have been invented by a Capt Mainwaring it was not popular as many believed it to be a pretext to allow men to wear ribbons to which they were not entitled. By general agreement it was quickly abandoned - as one old soldier was quoted as saying "we don't like to see em up on them"

:whistle:

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The pic without the ribbons, shows he is a corporal and should have had his ribbons up. I was under the impression ribbons had to be up all the time.

I think the rank stripes were the same - there was one point at Joe's wedding were one of his RAF son's sergeants stripes was gaping, like it had only been pinned in place.

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For all it's faults, I still enjoyed it. I think it brought together very nicely the two world wars and how it affected some of them.

I took it for what it was, a dramatisation, not an historically accurate documentary.

.............. and I like Robson Green :lol::lol:

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Also, the RAMC Major who didn't serve abroad was wearing a ribbon bar for the BWM and VM.... I thought you had to serve abroad to get the VM ?

Neil

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On the same subject I've just watched the whole of the Blackadder Goes Forth series on DVD and all the ribbons were pretty accurate.

I think the only error I spotted was in the episode where Blackadder is facing a firing squad and the corporal in charge of the firing party

has a Military Cross ribbon.

Apart from that most of it seemed spot on.

I'm sure there will have been a thread on this previously!

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I found the ribbons dancing about a little distraction from what was a nice entertaining drama. Seems he may have had three different blouses to wear and the continuity/wardrobe were being sloppy. Not what you expect these days! It's not just nit-picking because the ribbons were on Khaki and the bright colours do stand out against the plain background so being on/off was noticable unlike some other continuity gaffs which you have to rewind/look closely for. Nice script and performances, could be made a series.

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