The Lapel Badge
AWM REL35824 – Frontiersman Sidney Joseph Cossart’s Legion of Frontiersmen membership badge from the collection of the Australian War Memorial. According to our records, Boer War Veteran Cossart enrolled in the Legion in Queensland on 22JUN1912 with membership number 6159. Queensland Detachment are actively researching the early Queensland Frontiersmen and Legion of Scouts personnel, so expect to hear more about Frontiersman Cossart in the future.
Every member of the Legion was issued one of these brass enamelled membership badges upon joining, and their Legion number was engraved on the back.
Before a hat badge had been designed for the Legion, members often wore the membership badge on their leather hat band. Later, it was worn variously on the collar of the shirt, as a button or or as a shirt pocket button.
LF-A are actively looking for a workshop to produce identical enamelled brass lapel badges using mine pictured above as a sample. These will be issued to the new generation of Frontiersmen in Australia.
The Legion Motto – God Guard Thee
According to several sources, the engraved motto “God Guard Thee” is in honour of British Major General Charles George Gordon CB. Gordon wore a ring engraved with the Persian words “Khuda Hafiz e Shuman bashad” which he translated as “May God be your Guardian”. The ring pictured below is attributed as the ring taken from Gordon’s body after his killing by the Mahdi Army.
Gordon was seen by many at the time as a martyr for the British Empire, so the motto was shortened to the more succinct “God Guard Thee” as used in the motto of Newfoundland, and adopted as the motto of the Legion of Frontiersmen. We Frontiersmen still use it to this day to sign off written correspondence in honour of General Gordon’s dedication to duty and his ultimate sacrifice.
For a complex dive into the intricacies of who introduced the “God Guard Thee” motto to the Legion and why, see this post on the Frontiersman Historian website.