Earlier tonight my FReeper friend informed me that the guards in England with the tall, fuzzy black hats are called the Grenadier Guards. I never knew that! My mom is English! How pathetic is that?
Because they are wearing the bearskins hats taken from the French at Waterloo.
I dont remember if I ever knew the name :) And I consider myself a history buff lol. But mostly WWII. And not even the battles or weaponry really. Gee, what the heck DO i know!!
Time to buy some books. Even buying books is outdated lol.
And I had NO idea that those guards even had a name!
Well, seeing your are learning history and seem to be enjoying it, I'll add to that.
Some of the guards in England with the tall, fuzzy black hats (called the Bearskin, sometimes mistakenly called the Busby (which is a smaller hat)) are Grenadier Guards.
Others are Coldstream Guards, Scots Guards, Irish Guards, and Welsh Guards, and together they make up the five Guards Regiments or the Foot Guards (for a brief period during the First World War, there was a sixth Foot Guard Regiment, the Machine Gun Guards).
All five regiments wear the same red coat and bearskin uniform as their dress uniform, although they have slight differences (different badges, different coloured plumes in the bearskins and famously the buttons on the front are worn differently - Grenadiers wear their buttons singly, Coldstream Guards in pairs, Scots Guards in groups of three, Irish Guards in groups of four, and the Welsh Guards in Groups of five.)