It had been decided in
New Zealand while the First Echelon was training there, that 2 NZEF
should wear a universal hat badge, which was to be distinctive of New
Zealand. There was reason for this. In the First World War New
Zealanders had worn their peacetime regimental badges, in which except
under close examination there was nothing of a distinctive New Zealand
nature, artistic though many of them were. The Australians, on the other
hand, had adopted a universal badge – the rising sun – which, while
having nothing particularly Australian about it, was clearly distinctive
and became widely known. In 1939, therefore, a badge had been designed
and made in New Zealand, and had been issued to the First Echelon before
departure.
This
meant that all troops had to give up their regimental or corps badges, a
sacrifice that did not meet with universal approval. The new badge had
been issued fairly late and, so to speak, had not registered as the
‘one and only’, so that here and there the custom arose of sticking
to the peacetime badge. Artillery had their gun, the Machine Gun
Battalion had revived the crossed machine guns of the first war, and so
on. As soon as this was noticed, and orders were issued to stop it,
there was an outcry which soon became general. All units wanted
something else – mostly their peacetime badges – while the
accusation was made against the new badge that it was lacking in
imagination and was not artistic. This agitation was bound up with an
ill-defined feeling that the infantry titles should be changed, as the
new numbers had no connection with any peacetime title. However, the
answer was clear. It was too late to reopen the question of titles and
thus the question of the badges of the infantry. The other corps must
fall into line and all the nice unit badges must be abandoned. As time
went on the universal badge achieved a position of its own, and came to
be accepted as a New Zealand distinction.
Official History of New Zealand in
the Second World War 1939–45: 
