Researching early Boy Scouts as part of my Wide Games gaming project, I came across these two original photographs for sale at a very reasonable price.
They are WW1 era c. 1915, Surrey based, possibly in the Ewell area (from a brief description in a photographic album) and the seller said they illustrate Scout drill and protecting a road (?!?) from a WW1 era album.
They appear to be guarding H S Philpots Tea Rooms (?) Surrey?
Whilst Scouts did valuable work for the war effort in WW1 and WW2, this young bunch of determined boys with staves might not stop the whole German Army.
What I liked about them was the mixture of home made uniforms, floppy brim hats and some of their lively expressions.
Their Scoutmaster and some of the Scouts reappear I think in other photos in my collection, the Scoutmaster in fetching light or white cape or trench coat.
These are a few of the photographs of early Scouting in its first decade* that I have collected as uniform research for the Scouting Wide Games for the Tabletop project (* Scouting for Boys was first published in sections in 1908). https://tabletopscoutingwidegames.wordpress.com
More of these Surrey photos and my early Scouting photographs published here:
https://tabletopscoutingwidegames.wordpress.com/2020/02/20/more-early-scouting-photos-from-ww1/
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN 17 February 2020
Busy preparing simple rules sheets for the Scouting Wide Games project demo / play testing games for the 54mm Little Wars Revisited games day Saturday 14 March 2020. Still spaces available for games / participants … http://littlewarsrevisited.boards.net/thread/404/lwr-forum-games-day-2020
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