L42 Transit Chest Paint Schemes/Labels

Was the original issued L42 transit chest just paint solid green when it was procured? I've seen a few with paint schemes..all rather crude...was this done by local units? Anybody know what the colours mean? See botches of yellow,red,occasionally white. Letters sometimes stenciled and other times in magic marker.

I looked at the ones from Poulin's Auctions....the last batch were mostly solid green with paper labels either typed lettering or magic marker? Any comments on this?

any rhyme or reason to this?

Ron (Canada)

Ron, so far as I can gather, the sets were delivered to the initial using units with plain khaki green paint job and units marked them accordingly. I theorize that when they were sold as surplus,unit info was to be obliterated and so someone just spray painted over with NATO olive drab paint. On mine, I stripped the spray paint off with acetone to uncover Gurkha markings.

Best regards,
Chris

A lot of the markings were codified for security reasons. But generally, the coloured corners indicated the company within the regiment that the snipoer was allocated. But in some regiments, the snipers were all in the Support company. So it was all a bit hit and miss - if you'll excuse the rather apt phrase!