Your most historically interesting militaria

[earl]

What is your most interesting stuff? I'm not a collector of militaria but have a few items passed down in the family that are interesting to me. Have a Civil War-era Colt musket sitting on the fireplace mantle, a huge Reich service flag a great uncle brought back from the war which isn't displayed needless to say, and another great uncle's West Point annual which contains cadet photos of Eisenhower and Bradley, his school mates. Earl

 

[BriarWolf]

I suppose the pride of my collection is my small Imperial German Great War lot, a 1914 Iron Cross II class, a Bavarian Military Merit Cross 3rd Class with Swords, and a Wound Badge in Black. I do have a number of CCCP and DDR medals and badges as well, including a WWII Order of the Red Star and a lapel pin for a member of the Supreme Soviet.

 

[DNO]

After over 50 years of collecting I have a few interesting things and although I'm primarily a collector of Boer War and World War One items, one of my treasured possessions is the last White Ensign flown by the RCN corvette HMCS Chambly in 1945. Wouldn't give that one up for anything.

 

[BriarWolf]

I'm envious.

 

[Stearmen]

My Great, Great, Grandfathers Civil War medals, cap badge and letters.

 

[Otter]

Not strictly militaria, a collection of fused and puddles pennies, collected by my grandfather from gas meters following the Clydebank blitz. He was the chief meter reader for the gas board and had quite a collection of weird and wonderful coins recovered from meters.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I suppose the pride of my collection is my small Imperial German Great War lot, a 1914 Iron Cross II class, a Bavarian Military Merit Cross 3rd Class with Swords, and a Wound Badge in Black. I do have a number of CCCP and DDR medals and badges as well, including a WWII Order of the Red Star and a lapel pin for a member of the Supreme Soviet.

The Bavarian Military Merit Cross is one of my favorite German medals. Here's my entire Imperial German collection at this time.

 

[Edward]

I collected a few bits as a kid. One thing I have is a US helmet from Vietnam. Not especially rare or valuable, but it has a huge dent in the top where it stopped a VC bullet killing the guy who wore it. The other several bullets fired at him went into his body, but the helmet saved his life. He went on the be a Major as a career soldier, spent time working in some capacity I don't know with a guy in the Inniskilling Fusiliers (if memory serves), swapped helmets, and then that guy later worked in BT, where he heard from my dad that an eleven year old me collected this stuff, and it was passed on to me. I've slways been fascinated by that helmet because it saved a guy's life.

 

[Otter]

It is amazing how generous people could be with bits and bobs of memorabilia. I was given a German helmet that was being used as a plant pot to grow geraniums in Arras. Our neighbour in the house I grew up in was a police inspector, he had served in the Royal Engineers in WWII, he gave me a 44 dated battledress tunic with his Sergeant Major bits and bobs on it that he wore after D Day. Still got both of them.

 

[Fastuni]

Early post-war (1945-1949) German Police uniforms.

The first is a Third Reich police tunic altered post-war (brown collar, eagle, shoulderboards, green piping removed) to
an open collar style. Tiny size (hunger years) for an Sub-Officer of the motorized traffic police of Schleswig.
Letter to the wearer is dated with 23.5.1947.

From the same period a Gendarmerie tunic of the post-war "Saar" state, a French protectorate in Western Germany until 1956.

 

[DavidJones]

Probably my Japanese Good Luck flag from WWII.

 

[scotrace]

I have the center from a Nazi flag with swastika, collected during the war by my father. I posted a picture of it here once and got pounced on for being a nut job.

 

[Bushman]

A knife my Grandfather took from a Korean soldier when he was in the Korean War.

 

[Otter]

A friend of mine had a Kriegsmarine ensign and a very large NDSP banner that his Uncle had liberated from a destroyer in Hamburg at the end of WWII. It still worries me that there is a photo out there of myself and friends posing with them as callow youths.

 

[Edward]

A friend of mine had a Kriegsmarine ensign and a very large NDSP banner that his Uncle had liberated from a destroyer in Hamburg at the end of WWII. It still worries me that there is a photo out there of myself and friends posing with them as callow youths.

This is how thekids of the Facebook generation often have it harder than we did!

 

[DNO]

Despite the fact that my interest lies in WW1 and the South African War, I can never resist an interesting piece of naval history.

This is a gun tompion from H.M.S. Gallant



Gallant was a pre-war Royal Navy G-class destroyer. In 1939 it was in the 1st Destroyer Flotilla together with its more famous mate, H.M.S. Glowworm. It participated in the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940. By late 1940 it was serving in the Med and had participated in the sinking of an Italian submarine. Like most destroyers, it was a beautiful ship.



On January 10th, 1941 it struck a mine off Malta, causing massive damage to its forward section and the loss of 60 crew members. It was towed to Grand Harbour, Malta and was pretty well destroyed in an air raid there in 1942. In 1943, she was finally sunk as a blockship. Here's a shot of Gallant after the mine incident. It's amazing that it remained afloat.




How the gun tompion ended up in a pile of rusty tools in a rural auction in southern Ontario I'll never know. It must have been collected off the ship sometime while it was in Grand Harbour, possibly by a crew member. It's had an interesting journey.

 

[MikeKardec]

Hmm. I have a pair of Hensoldt and Wetzlar Binoculars that my Dad got from a German plane he captured. The story was that Dad (who was in the transpo corps) was waiting in the shade with his platoon of fuel tankers at a recently captured airfield. A German plane landed, not realizing the field had been over run, and one of the crew sprinted for the main building. Dad and several soldiers captured the other members of the aircrew and then Dad went into the building after the last guy. He found him sitting on the john (this explaining the sprinting and possibly the reason for landing at a strange airfield). Dad arrested him and took his binocs as a prize. He was still using them as his only binoculars in the 1970s. They are excellent, produced, I'm guessing, early in the war.

Dad said that, as an officer, he signed for lots of interesting war booty that his men found but he was always too busy to take any himself. He did make off with a couple of boxes of carbon paper from a factory where he and his outfit camped for a few days. That carbon paper helped his post war career a great deal in that he was a writer and used it to make copies of stories ... probably the most practical yet unromantic prize taken in WWII!

 

[Bugguy]

Not necessarily my most prized, but possibly the most novel... sort of one size fits all. Historically (culturally) important at the time. Mailed by a childhood friend in 1943. No postage required. Fell out of dad's scrap book.

 

[1961MJS]

Hi, no pictures, most of the stuff is in a different house. I have my Dad's rush mat for his hut on Fiji in WW2, still not gone and it was on Grandma's front porch until 1980 (inside). I have the 17th Weather Squadron's copy of a Meteorology text book. I also have three of Dad's Garrison caps, one is plain Khaki, one is Khaki with Air Corps Trim, and one in Wool.

I have Doc Hyde's WW2 MkII Ontario Knife (effectively a Navy Kabar). I have Dad's wool dress coat that he never actually wore. Doc Hyde was a Pharmacist's Mate, but where I have no idea. He gave it to a neighbor who was going to throw it away. I carried it for years.

I also have Presley Dunbar's (great great grandfather) discharge from the Union Army. He was in the 47th Kentucky Mounted Infantry and fought quite a few battles / skirmishes with the Raiders.

Later

 

[Turnip]

Most interesting for me is a complete copy of the Russion POW file of a grandpa, once the Russians opened their archives after end of Cold War we had the opportunity to get our hands on it, who got caught by the Russians in ´45 and starved soon after in war captivity, also location of camp and cemetery is mentioned...