Partly original French trench daggers of the First World War

[Reibert]

Hi,
Some time ago I bought several French-style trench daggers from the World War era.


The sales text went something like this:

"Collection of French trench daggers, (repro ?).
Since the war industry had extreme material problems in the First World War, the field forges made daggers for trench warfare from broken bayonets, old files, kitchen knives, and so on.
The "French Nail" is a reproduction, I don't know about the others, I'm not familiar with them.
I'm assuming reproductions as the original daggers are very hard to find.
The models are documented in specialist literature and come from a private WW1 museum in Alsace that was closed due to the death of the owner."


I took a closer look at the daggers and the pieces are at least partially original (at least as far as the blades are concerned) and useful "placeholders".
The "kitchen knife" seems to be completely original, only the leather finger guard seems to have been added.
Such "self-constructions" are known as "Nettoyeurs de tranchées", ("ditch cleaners").

Best regards,
R.

[Anderson]

Interesting group, some probably are reproductions, but nice.