I notice, a time back, a discussion about SAS Beret colours during WWII. Where they the sand colour or maroon?

While watching some documentary on National Geographic about Arnhem, I glimpsed this:



Just two or three seconds of footage. You can clearly see the colour of the Berets, the SAS emblem on the Jeep, Italeri Commando Car here I come!

The beret's worn by SAS troops in North Africa were sand coloured when they were deployed to Europe they adopted the maroon beret. That said some SAS veterans that had been with the service in Africa wore thier sand berets in defiance of standing orders. So its not uncommon to see both mixed together but by the time they were deployed in europe the "old guard" was probably quite thin and limited to senior NCO's and Officers. HTH
Cheers,
Bryan

Going from what I read in Gavin Mortimer's book 'Stirling's Men' the sand coloured beret was replaced with the airborne red beret by the time the SAS were operating in France. Late in the war, the SAS were supposed to use the Royal Armoured Corps black beret as a sort of cover since captured SAS men were being murdered as a result of Hitler's 'commando order'.

Not sure how much use the black beret saw.

How sure are you that is an SAS badge, and not the Polish Piast eagle? Footage looks like the dreaded colourising process has struck again.

On the TV it's much clearer and is definitely the SAS emblem (Wings and dagger), also the Jeep is clearer too. Yeah, the colorization process is pretty bad.

those look like the extra fuel tanks as well.

Were the SAS @ Arnhem? I wasn't aware. The only armed jeeps I thought were @ Arnhem were those of the reconnaisance unit of 1st Airborne, led by Major Gough. They were supposed to be a "coup de main" force to speed ahead & grab the bridge, then hold it until the rest of the Div came up, but they were caught in an ambush, & most of them knocked out.
When commercial TV companies use wartime footage you have to be careful how accurate it is. It's quite possible this is an SAS jeep, but may be part of the "Bulbasket" ops in the south of France before D-Day. This is the kind of vehicle the Italaeri kit is supposed to represent.
BTW there was an itnial issue of white berets to early SAS men in the desert. They weren't very popular.

Hi Steve, no SAS in Arnhem that I’ve every read or heard about. I assumed that it was understood that WWII film footage and the subject of the documentary usually have very little in common.

From the mismatch of footage there was everything from Ferdinands/Elefants, Jagdtigers right down to the odd Panzer IV Ausf D.

There was obviously the ubiquitous, almost mandatory and oddly correct footage of the firing Demag 10/4 of (if memory serves) SS-Flak-Abteilung 9 (9th SS Hohenstaufen).