Historic Military Impressions

Battle Damaged items are highly sought after by a segment of the collecting community, but should always be taken with the extreme care!

Back when I was more active teaching classes at UW Parkside, one of the classes I taught, was how to detect the fakes. Part of that class I talked about how the easiest way to artificially increase value is to take something and fake it. The best way to increase its value is to take something that’s real and modify it to make it worth more money. The easiest way to do that is simply to shoot it.

In fact, I was once told stories about how Walt Disney himself once took German helmets, shot them, poor chicken blood on them to increase your value as a younger man. I do not know if these stories about Walt Disney or true or not, but the process remains unchanged.

In fact, a pomegranate that was once the prize of the collection of the Israeli museum the only artifact to prove the existence of the first temple that was 100% real was later determined to be modified to make it worth more hence fake. In this case, an inscription was added.

In the case of this canteen, it is real, made 1936 and certainly saw action in World War II. The question is when did the damage happen?

Unfortunately, we are quickly moving to the point where a veteran is no longer capable of saying I brought this home from World War II as a war souvenir.

Therefore, when purchasing items like this, you need to be extremely careful because you cannot prove when and where or how, the battle damage occurred.

I watched several people this weekend, look at it, and create amazing stories about how the damage could’ve happened, in early combat actions up to Poland, because of the date on the canteen.

It goes to the point. You should never buy a story, but more importantly, once you see something you shouldn’t allow yourself to create a story to fill in a narrative that doesn’t exist.
Just my thoughts on a item we picked up this weekend from the show we held at American Legion Post 21.

If you’d like to comment below, please do so.

Today was War gaming Saturday. Here is what the table set up looks like.

A new addition to the collection is this Pinfire 7mm revolver.

This example was made in Belgium and is considered a “Lefaucheux-style” pinfire pocket revolver. This version of the firearm was made between 1860 and 1890. Based on a size, it would most likely been carried by a woman in a small handbag.

One key feature of this design is it a trigger folds up to make it more compact to place inside of a pocket or purse?

This example is complete serviceable, and if we could find fireable, Ammo would be fireable, however pinfire Ammo, even though black powder, besides age will no longer fire.

Sadly, then this pistol will have to be exempt from a rule of all guns in the collection if fireball must be fired at least once.

However, it would be fun to take it to Mission 94 I have them ask to inspect our Ammo and pull out a box of pinfire 7 mm cartridges for their inspection.

Last week I picked up a Warsaw shield, (and yes I know they were never issued.) I got it to be able to make a display one day of all the shields and it be nice to have a physical example not a photo. We now have three shields however one was cleaned and polished.

The backstory of the Warsaw shield is that they were authorized and designed but none ever got issued. From there the story kind of splits, when I was younger, I remember reading how some were made, and we’re in the factory when it was bombed, but none were ever issued. today however it is commonly accepted that non-were actually made at the time that the bombers blew up the factory destroying the dies however they indicate that one was stamped out so we do know what it officially looked like.

Either way, this one is probably is historically close to what an original would have looked like and it’s still better than displaying a two dimensional image.

Ironically, most museums in the United States tend to display more reproduction than authentic artifacts. I’m OK with this process if an authentic artifact is unavailable and in case of the Warsaw shield that is the case.

Today, I picked up a WWII nurse grouping. For a Second Lieutenant Mary E. Maves, maiden name, Warren.

Lt. Warren served as a U.S. Army nurse from 1942 to 1945 in the 4th Service Command.

The 4th service command was headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia therefore it is unlikely that Lt. Warren would have seen overseas service, however until the family provides me a copy of her DD-214 I do not know that for sure.

Today, we received the donation of a T-10 C parachute.

The parachute was made in December 1989.

It was jumped with four times and last packed in October 1999.

It will make a nice addition to the collection on display next to our T-7 that was donated about two years ago.

One of the things Mike had hanging on the wall for years when he owned the store was this US Navy submarine 24 hour clock. He sold it just before we took over operations of the store.

Today it technically returned home.

Wound it up it still works as a beautiful bake light housing.

Here are our US Army ACU and OCP patches so far.

Still working on our velcro back patches, placing them on matting boards. Here are our US Air Force patches.

Working on displaying our back back to patches.

At the Show of Shows, we picked up this Re*****on M1858 “New Model Army”. Is Serial Number: 101725 which put its date of manufacture September 1864. These rifled percussions cap pistols were widely used by Union cavalry during the American Civil War.

It’s a nice addition to the collection for future classes and exhibits.

Did you know in WWII US troops were trained with plastic bullets?

Today we added this 8 round 30-06 clip to the collection. These are T-44 frangible training rounds. These frangible bullets were made out of Bakelite which is considered an early version of plastic.

These rounds are dated 1945.

One would think that people coming through our exhibits are auwd by the big things, in fact, it’s the simple little weird things like these bullets that grabbed people’s attention more often.