The first, actually, is not mine. A friend has lent me a number of things to look at and measure. This is one of them. I think it is a haversack of late Victorian era and the strap may have been replaced or changed, but here it is as it is.
The next item is the Oliver Pattern haversack. It has been altered to become the 1915 pattern haversack by the removal of the original canvas straps and their replacement with long leather tabs. In the photograph one can see all that remains of a leather strap that has been cut back subsequently. I have added a replacement just to show the appropriate and proper size and shape of what would have been there.
What I love most about this is the detailing on the button.
And while we're looking at this here is a detail of the snap on the P'08 ammunition pouches. Once again I am struck by the delicacy of detailing in the machinery of war.
A very simple treasure is this next small pouch. It is my grandfather's PH gas mask bag that he would have received in 1915.
Here also is a photograph of him on sentry duty wearing that pouch, followed by his own photo of a trench mate in the mask. He wasn't supposed to have a camera. More on that later.
I believe in the later years, when the new gas masks were created, these pouches often became a way of holding small personal items. When I first received this pouch it was missing a button. I looked in the button jar that belonged to my wife's grandmother and found a perfect match. And here again the small domestic details at odds with or, perhaps, essentially present within the lives of men so far from home.
This leads me to the aptly named "housewife", above. This was a soldier's roll of necessary things for toiletry and repairs. It would hold a knife, fork and spoon, a toothbrush, a razor and built-in strop, a shaving brush, and possibly a small sewing set. The contents of this one are my own slowly accumulating collection. My grandfather's name and regiment are written on the canvas.
A similar kind of object is this bandolier, below, with small snap fasteners. It was really a one-use-only throwaway item. It has been around for 100 years in spite of that. This would have held clips of bullets that would augment the supply in the ammunition pouches.
From here we go to small leather pouches. These, for the most part, seem to be ammunition holding devices. The first artifact is another borrowed item dating from 1892. It shows similarities to the Oliver Pattern pouch that I show here as a reproduction. The leather has darkened with age.
With all of these I particular like the use of a stud with an elongated and pointed flap. Someone has thought to design this in this manner. It becomes an issue of fashion rather than merely function.
By contrast the next item, below, has that simple functionality. This is a 1914 British leather pouch adapted in 1917 or '18 to have two straps. Even so the leather has been worked with a grained pattern.
The backstrap and buckle have been crudely removed with a grinder by someone who turned this into a belt-worn ammo pouch.
Most recently I've been given this beautiful 1916 pattern Canadian ammo pouch by a man whose had it for sixty years!
I find all of these things to be objects of beauty. I love the materials and their carefully crafted nature. This is the sort of collecting that seems to appeal to me. I have little or no interest in battle casualty statistics or the firepower of cannons and shells. I don't know why that is, but it seems to have served me well and taken me to interesting places.
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