After my little write-up on the breadbag types I thought I might do a wartime history of the water canteen ( feldflasche ) variants based on the few I own.
These are just the standard size soldat ones – I do not have the 1 liter variants used by the GJ or sanitaters ( if anyone has, please feel free to add them )
First off are a couple of pre / early war types ( I will detail them in future posts ) Both have the black painted aluminium cups and the one on the left has lighter brown straps.
Next are early war variants where the caps were now olive green and the Bakelite cup was introduced.
The next pair are tropical variants – aluminium with webbing straps and a friction buckle ( thanks JerryB for this one ) and a ‘coco’ canteen which was an overmolded resin-on-aluminium canteen. This has the normal roller buckle not often seen on webbing straps. More often than not described as DAK issue, these were more likely used in the Italian & Southern Russian theaters.
Finally the mid to late war variants – the left has the steel cap and is a green steel enamel painted can with pigskin straps while the right hand one has the sometimes seen cloth cover ( as opposed to felt ) with a red enamel bottle and a Bakelite cup.
Details to follow......
Dan
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