To every blade seller on eBay, any knife that may have been of the period of WWII, is a "fighting knife." As a student of history, that really gripes my soul. If a WWII soldier had to result to fighting with a knife, that meant that his primary weapon had become useless or lost, his squad, company and battalion had failed in their mission and the poor trooper was probably about to earn the purple heart or the order of the white cross.
Anyone living in a tent, or in a sleeping bag or foxhole needed a knife. There were toenails to clip, tent pegs to make, cans to open, firewood to prepare, ropes to cut, and any one of a thousand mundane tasks that knives are invaluable to comfort and survival. Regardless of the hype, that is the jobs these knives excelled at. Now, I know, before the push-back starts, that you can find stories of Marines on some God-forsaken Pacific atoll, saving his life with his Ka-Bar, but that is the exception to the rule. Perhaps someone in a Marine Raider Battalion would depend on a knife to silence an unwary guard, but again, the exception, not the rule. A more honest description of the knives would be "fixed-blade camp knives," but that wouldn't sell to war gamers.
I am a big fan of the blades of WWII and I don't need to think that "this blade cut a Nazi throat" Ok, my rant is over, I just needed to get it off my chest.....
