Let me admit from the outset my poor knowledge of regiments and of military insignia or badges.

Readers are forewarned that my writing and identifications may contain egregious howlers.

Card for an unidentified army corps. It shows ‘hands across the sea’, stirring music by the Duke of Wellington.

I was tempted to produce this feature by the quantities of real-photo postcards issued in, or for, Malta from the early 1910s to the late 1920s, a period when huge turnovers of British and empire military personnel passed through or were stationed in Malta.

A composite regimental postcard featuring the battleship HMS Ramillies.

Local photographers and postcard publishers saw this as a commercial opportunity not to be sneered at.

Regimental cards do not seem to have been official initiatives but, rather, private business ventures targeting an extended and receptive market.

A Malta regimental postcard showing two high military officers and the script: 2nd VI cc.o.l Col Regt, produced by Chretien’s Empire Studio.

Most of those issued remained unsigned by the photographer or the publisher.

The Empire Studio did advertise itself on some.

A Royal Fusiliers card showing the liner SS Galeka, converted into a hospital ship in WWI.

Military barracks in St George’s Bay adorned this postcard for the Devonshire regiment.

The Royal Army Medical Corps used this dedicated postcard illustrated by the Cottonera Hospital in 1915.

A card designed for the Somerset Light Infantry regiment.

Every card, although different, follows the same pattern: they are almost all photographs of compositions of other postcards – one, two or more.

The original postcards are placed on a decorative background or in a frame. An identifiable regimental badge often tops the design, occasionally with sparse flowers strewn in between.

Card for the Devonshire Regiment, with the message ‘Best Wishes’ on a background photograph of St Andrew's barracks.

Some have romantic or augural messages.

The photographer then snaps the entire composition and, voilà, another regimental postcard tries its luck on the market.

Manoel Island housed the Northamptonshire regiment, as recorded in this WWI postcard.

The original re-photographed images almost invariably show military assets – barracks, fortifications, armaments, occasionally warships – rarely a notable landmark of the island.

St Andrew’s barracks on a postcard used by the Royal Fusiliers.

A regimental postcard showing St Andrew's barracks, unusually embossed with a name: Hugh Scifo.

No Photoshop then masked the physical limitations of the medium – very visible drawing pins through the corners hold the original postcards flat and in place; the clumsy photographer’s fingerprints sometimes visibly stain the sensitive emulsion.

Technical innocence that all adds to the primitive charm of the product.

A Polverista barracks postcard for the Royal Fusiliers.

A postcard for the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, showing Verdala and Polverista stations.

Cards for several other regiments not included here are known to collectors.

All images from the author’s collections.

A British postcard for the personnel of the Bedfordshire and the Hertfordshire regiments about to leave for Malta.