Colours, banners, and standards (including eagles) generally combine both practical and symbolic purposes. They indicate the location and IFF of a particular indiviual or unit, and at the same time represent the prestige and spirit of the group to which they relate. Capturing an enemy standard is therefore not only a tactical but a psychological gain, and the display of such trophies is clear evidence of victory and courage. Conversely, the loss of a standard is considered a disgrace, so that standard-bearers and their escorts were regarded as men of the greatest honour and bravery, expected to sacrifice their lives in defence of their standards when necessary, and to set an example of valour at all times. Caesar records the standard-bearer of X Legion in the Roman invasion of Britain (55 bc) who, seeing his comrades reluctant to disembark, jumped into the surf and obliged them to follow him or lose their standard. The earliest standards took the form of simple poles carrying representations of totemic animals, religious symbols, or similar icons, a feature that continues in military heraldry to the present day. Textile banners, emblazoned with pictorial devices, were generally carried slung from a crossbar, for ease of recognition. In the medieval period, European armies gradually adopted the practice of flying them from a staff or lance, a form more easily managed by the horsemen who had come to dominate the battlefield. Central Asian riders mostly did without such flags, and preferred to use other markers, such as horse-tails, the Mongol nine yak-tail standard being the most famous—and fearsome.
With the regimentation of western armies from the 16th century onwards, military flags were codified into various types, each with their own special name. An ensign was the national flag flown (technically ‘worn’) by a warship. The same word was also used as the rank-title of the junior subalterns, whose duty was to carry the colours. These, the flags of the infantry, originally measured at least 6 feet (1.8 metres) square, so that they could be seen and recognized above the smoke of musket and cannon fire. At first allotted on a scale of one per company, their number had been reduced by the beginning of the 18th century to one or two per regiment. In the cavalry, smaller flags—rectangular standards, or swallow-tailed guidons—were used, and were in the same way reduced in numbers from one per squadron to one per regiment in response to changing tactical requirements. In the British army, standards were allotted only to household cavalry and regiments of horse (later converted to dragoon guards). Dragoons carried guidons. Light dragoons, hussars, and lancers ceased to carry guidons in 1834 and resumed their use in 1959. The Royal Tank Regiment adopted regimental standards of the heavy cavalry type in 1960. British cavalry standards and guidons are made of crimson silk embroidered with the appropriate regimental badges and insignia and battle honours. In the British infantry of the line, each battalion carries a royal colour (the Union flag with regimental differences) and a regimental colour (of the same colour as the regiment's full-dress facings, with the regimental badge and honours). In the US army, the regulations of 1861 ordered that each regiment of infantry or artillery should carry two colours, of which one was to be the national flag and the other the arms of the USA with the name of the regiment. For the cavalry, the same regulations prescribed one standard per regiment, and one guidon per company. By the end of the 19th century, regimental standards and colours were driven from the battlefield by the increasing range and accuracy of small-arms fire. Ornate, silken regimental colours, invested with a mystical or spiritual quality, were restricted to ceremonial and parade occasions. Their original functions were taken over by flags of various types outside formation HQs, over parade squares, on staff cars, etc. Ordinary bunting flags were also used in the symbolic role. Two of the most potent images of WW II were those of the US Marines raising the Stars and Stripes over the Japanese island of Iwo Jima, and a Soviet soldier placing the Red Flag over the German Reichstag in Berlin. Similarly, in the Falklands war of 1982, the image of a Royal Marine flying a Union Flag from his backpack radio antenna on the advance to recover Port Stanley received wide international coverage.
Eagles featured on the standards of Babylonian, Persian, Ptolemaic, and Seleucid armies. They were adopted by the Romans, and under the system introduced by Marius became the characteristic standard of the legion, with different devices being used for those of cohorts and centuries. In 1804, Napoleon revived the eagle standard, copied from a Roman original, including the representation of Jove's thunderbolt held in the eagle's talons. The original scale of issue, one per infantry battalion or cavalry squadron, was later reduced to one per regiment. The spirit of the standard was deemed to lie in the eagle, not the flag carried on the same staff. Napoleonic eagles were revived in the army of the Second Empire and carried until its defeat in the Franco-Prussian war. The German, Austrian, and Russian empires all included a double-headed eagle in their official arms. A single-headed eagle, grasping a swastika, was carried on German flags and standards between 1933 and 1945. The American eagle, part of the arms of the USA, is carried on the regimental colours of the US army. The RAF, whose badge is a soaring eagle, carries this device on its standards (awarded to all units after a continuous existence of 25 years) and colours (awarded to higher formations), with eagles carried on the finials of the latter.
Bibliography
- Davis, Brian Leigh, Flags and Standards of the Third Reich (London, 1975).
- Ketcher, Philip, Flags of the American Civil War (London, 1993).
- Johnson, Stanley C., The Flags of our Fighting Army (London, 1918).
- Milne, Samuel, The Standards and Colours of the Army (London, 1893).
- Wise, Terence, Flags of the Napoleonic Wars (London, 1978)
— Tony Heathcote
