Knives in war

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Jul 31, 2002
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I've been thinking about this lately because of one of my customers. He's a collector of everything fancy, rare, and/or high quality, and his latest passion is "theater knives". (knives made by servicemen in the Pacific theater during WWII)

He has brought me about 10 of these knives to have some minor repairs done. (only correcting what previous owners screwed up. grinder marks on the edge, etc.) We have spoken at length about them, and it seems I have discounted the role that knives played as weapons during our great wars. Did you know there was actually a shortage of knives for soldiers in WWII? Someone out west actually ran a campaign called "Donate a knife, save a life." or something like that. They recieved thousands of sturdy knives for servicemen in a short time. They didn't even need sheaths, as the government contracted to have generic scabbards made for those without. He told me something that his father (who was a survivor of heavy combat in WWII) had passed on to him. To paraphrase, he said "There are times when you're laying in your little foxhole or a bomb crater, and someone [an enemy] jumps in with you. There's no time or even room to get your rifle around to shoot the guy. (I guess he's talking about those big 14 pound Garands) No one really had sidearms, you know, 'cept the officers, but you could get your knife out pretty quick and just stab the guy." That's one of those things I never really thought about. I guess I should have, since that's exactly what happened to the main character in the historic novel "All Quiet on the Western Front". (written by a WWI veteran)
This collector also said "I got one big knife at home...you should see it... with two notches filed into the guard. You can tell they're origional, and someone put them there on purpose. Not decoration or anything. We'll never know... but it really make you wonder, ya know?" Most of these knives are somewhat crude by our standards, but as he said, "any one of 'em would be worth every penny you got if you really needed it..."

you can figure out the rest of that statement.
 
Hey Possum...

Interesting...

I was just watching Saving Private Ryan today on DVD..
One of the characters in the movie had a knife on his webbing..

It was stag handled and had an aluminum butt cap, very much like a Marbles or something...

It looked very odd to me as the handle was much larger then the butt cap..Something you don't see everyday..

Anyone know what it was ??

During the civil war, mothers use to give their boys and husbands kitchen knives to take into battle.

Thanks

Eric...
 
the only member of the squad to have an "unissued" knife is the sniper, presumably becuase the sniper rifle is probably not issued with a bayonet. It also goes along the character being a "country bumpkin"
 
My great-grandfather was a carpenter and knife/tool maker. He died before I was born, and his shop burned down, but some of the stuff from his office was saved, and some of his furniture and kitchen knives are still in use by the family.
Anyway, he sent a bunch of knives overseas for the troops. They were mostly very simple knives made from bandsaw blades with poured handles. I've got a bigger one that's styled after a trench knife ~8" blade, knucks and all, that I wanted to include a scan of, but I think it's over at my grandfather's...
Here's a scan of a couple what I guess were "prototypes" (these have very thin blades ~1/16", and aren't actually very usable-at least the dagger isn't), and a wooden model of an actual size dagger.
Pretty glamorous looking "tactical" knives, huh?:D
 
Very cool family history, I'll second Eric's request for some pics of the trench knife. Great thread, anybody else got some good stuff?
 
Very cool family history, I'll second Eric's request for some pics of the trench knife. Great thread, anybody else got some good stuff?
 
During WWII the hunting knife companies starteed making combat knives.
A very popular one still easily found is the Pal RH 36. This scan is of my Grandfathers, it saw use in the War. In fact, when my dad was young, he found it and was surprised to find that Granpa (Dad to him) didn't care if he took it outside and used it. It got thrown at stuff. Dug holes, left in the rain, sharpened on a homemade grinder. I got it when I was about eight. I also did all the same stuff. It is still pretty solid. Grandpa was a kinda of knifeknut and he owned several. I never understood why he would let us treat his "Hunting Knife" so. He would never give it to me either. I could do anything with it, but he wouldn't let me say it was mine. That was over 20 years ago. Grandpa is long gone. I later learned the story behind his knife. I got all of his knives now, but that Pal 36 holds a lot of memories. In case you want to know the story. Turns out that this "hunting knife" got used a few times like related above. Grandpa
had always hoped we would break or lose it, the memories it brought back, I guess, he couldn't give it away or sell it, not even to me.
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