ww2 German dress bajonet

[tigern]

Hello.I ask question about this k98 and portepeen. It is etched down in the magazine.

Regards

Tommy

[alex gross]

Hello!
Very nice Höller bayonet with Höller "3 scene" etched.
What is the numbers on the scabbard back? Scratched or painted?

Help link for portepee:
http://www.milex.de/forum/anhaenge/f...ormenmsg_0.jpg

[tigern]

Hello. Thanks for you reply. The numbers on the skin are scrapped in.

Regards

Tommy

[Anderson]

That's a very good condition Holler dress bayonet, with as Alex says, an authentic Holler etching. Correct frog and troddel (1st Battaillon,2nd Company) though it should be attached to the frog, not bayonet grip, unlike a dagger. A very nice example only slightly spoiled by someones scratching of numbers on the scabbard.

[TWS]

Very nice presentation dress bayonet. Given to a soldier by the unit when they completed their enlistment as a memento. "In remembrance of my service time". Often the unit designation is also etched onto it.

[Frogprince]

A very nice example I have a somewhat different perspective as to what they were. Labelled as private purchase sidearms, seen as represented by the surviving specimens in the shape of a pyramid - the no etches are the base, the generic etches the middle, then the unit types followed by the custom etches. IMO carried over as a tradition from the Imperial era when there were a lot more private purchase swords, they were to be worn off duty with the appropriate uniform and secondarily serving as a memento of a soldier's enlistment when it was completed. Imperial era unit marked dress swords being fairly common, with the possibly additional cost extra options dependent on the size of the soldier's wallet or his family if they were the ones purchasing it.

What changed during the TR era was the rapid series of mobilizations with units broken up to create more units, renamed, changed, shuffled around etc. etc. So that a soldier who was in one unit might find himself a month later somewhere else with the added uncertainty of when he was going to have completed his commitment - and that's before there was any armed conflict. My point here being that the embellishments if present were time sensitive. TR era regulations also reflecting the Imperial traditions as regards when and what they could be worn with. Best Regards, Fred

[Anderson]

Interesting comments as usual Fred. I would imagine most of the etched "remembrance" bayonets we see were made in the pre-war 1930's when Germany was rapidly rebuilding it's armed forces. No doubt it was also an period of compulsory military training of all able bodied men. The post WW1 restrictions limited the size of the standing army. So by training reserve soldiers for a period, they could maintain the appearance of a smaller army than potentially could be called up. In this environment of limited period of training/service you can see how the "remembrance" souvenir industry developed. As these etched bayonets probably were bought as men returned to their civilian jobs. Of course by 1939/40 the call to mobilization would have returned these men to uniform, but as Fred said, perhaps a completely different unit.

[TWS]

That's correct. The unit mementos were largely confined to the pre-war years as once the war got started neither time nor conditions sufficed to allow such a "luxury". (Plus once the war really got going, soldiers were in it for the duration unless very severe wounds dictated they be released. Lightly disabled men were usually assigned instructor/trainer roles if no longer able-bodied enough to serve at the front). Different units had different traditions. For instance I have a model Panzer I on a marble base with an inscription to a man completing his service time in 2. Kompanie of Panzer Regiment 5. Another well-known example is the bust of the soldier wearing a Stahlhelm, often but not always with a unit inscription.
Example: WW2 German Army Staff Officer Bronze Presentation Bust

When the Heer expanded in the different pre-war waves (Welle) usually entire units were transferred to new units that were being stood up to give them a cadre of already trained/more experienced personnel. Often an entire battalion would be given to a newly stood up regiment or an entire company to a new battalion. Individual transfers were more common once the war got going.

The remembrance memento industry is alive and well into the present day. Whenever I left my unit in the U.S. Army to move to another, I was presented with a memento (often a framed unit guidon with a plaque). Near every major military base are shops that specialize in preparing these types of "awards". We kept a unit fund to pay for these and on more than one occasion it was my duty to order the memento and go pick it up from the shop so we could present it to the departing soldier. When I was stationed in Germany, I could have been buying these from the descendants of the family business that prepared those awards for Wehrmacht soldiers for all I know.