WWII TYPE F FANY HEADSET, 1940's

Headset used by The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry F.A.N.Y. as part of the S.O.E. Special Operations Executive. The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry was created in 1907 by Lord Kitchener, as a link organisation between front line fighting units and field hospitals.
Early recruits were drawn from mainly upper middle classes. During WW1 the FANY ran field hospitals, drove ambulances and set up soup kitchens and troop canteens.
In 1938 they became part of Auxiliary Territorial Services (ATS). In 1940 Hugh Dalton, Minister of Economic Warfare, established the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Contact was made with the Commandant of FANY and arranged for her to provide personnel for the SOE.
At first they were used to produce passports, ration books, and other forged documents for use in occupied Europe. Also to decode, encode and transmit messages to and from the field.
In April 1942 Churchill gave his permission to send women in the SOE into Europe.
Since the war the FANY has been known mainly for it's work in the field of military and civil communications.

Your comments:

• I spent 10 years at sea in the merchant navy with a pair of these clamped to my head :-)
  .......... Richard, Derby, 1st of March 2014
  
  
• Definitely S.G.Brown. I still have the pair that I bought in 1964/5 when I went to Radio Officer training college in Southampton.
  .......... Ian Izett, Aberystwyth, Wales., 25th of March 2011
  
  
• SG Brown type F? Also found as Patient bedside hospital headphones in NHS Hospitals in the '50s to'70s
  .......... Bob Lee, Elstead, Surrey, 15th of November 2010
  
  

A0488