Great War Leather Haversack

This Haversack is from the collection of my friend who lent me the gas mask in the previous post. His grandfather was in the Canadian artillery.

I'm guessing it is a private purchase officer's haversack. It bears some similarities to the canvas Oliver Pattern haversack that was used in 1900 and then at the start of the Great War. The leather is still very supple, though delicate. There have been some repairs made with care, presumably because in usage this leather did not stand up to the task. 

What is curious is the very hand-made addition of two straps with snap hooks onto the body of the haversack. These then clip onto the snap hooks of the shoulder strap. There is no evidence of any previous attachment points and I'm mystified as to why this is so. Was the haversack originally intended to be merely a carrying bag without a strap? There is an internal loop of leather with no apparent purpose, though one might pass a belt through it. However there is no wear indicating that, and it would be rather a strange system to buckle the haversack onto a belt in such a manner.

The inside has a divider made of a stiff oiled canvas. There are no dates or markings.

Once again I am taken by the simple beauty of personal items created for the business of war.

Great War Gas Mask and Carrying Haversack

A friend of mine has lent me some of his grandfather's First World War artifacts to study. I have just begun the job and am most drawn, right now, to the box respirator and carrier, and to a leather haversack which I will describe in the next post.

The gas mask was issued in 1918. It does not seem to have received much service as it is in "pristine" condition, only suffering the aging of 100 years. All the rubber has hardened and become brittle. It is impossible to look inside the fabric of the mask, and the rubber hose has only stayed together because of the cloth covering. The exhalation valve is in fragments and the steel casing of the filter is suffering badly from internal rust.

These pictures will, I hope, be useful to those who may have accurate measurements of other masks but lack such clean and unspoiled details.

The eyepiece is of some orange and man-made material. It's some form of early plastic about which I know nothing.

One can see the nose pinchers through one of the goggles. The internal mouthpiece has been lost but for the extending metal tube and a ring of hard rubber.

Also of interest are some of the rare and ephemeral parts of the pristine package. This card, to record hours of usage, slides into a cardboard envelope. The whole envelope is then held by a string to the bottom of the respirator tube.

I expected some kind of repair kit. There was nothing but some stuck bits of fabric attached to the "hours of usage" envelope. However there was another interesting box full of cleaning compound and a polishing cloth for the eye glass.

The inner box slides into the outer box like a matchbox.

The carrying bag was perfect showing no signs of wear and not having suffered from the rusting of the respirator box. Internally it has its string, used to secure the bag around the body of the wearer, and the spring which is designed to keep the respirator valve off the bottom of the bag.

The rest of these photos show the finer details, especially in the straping system, which are aspects that one cannot study from the average photograph. As a person who makes things for a living I'm a struck by both the attention to details and the decision to be straightforward with assembly methods. The attachment of the stud seems quite intricate being a clever reinforcement by doubling back the strapping followed by a reinforcing stitching circle. The leather tab, which is used to shorten the shoulder strap quickly to bring the whole unit snug to the wearer's chest, is still flexible after 100 years. It shows a broad arrow that is hard to note unless the leather is bent. By contrast, the internal stitching is left with its raw edges.

The adjusting buckle strap is a nice simple levering clamp system.

I hope these photos will be useful to someone.

It's interesting to compare these photographs to my reproduction that I bought from Schipperfabric. Here is a link to my blog "Great War reproductions" which features some photographs of this:

http://greatwarreproductions.blogspot.ca/2014/11/reproduction-wwi-bicycle-and-gas-mask.html