museumtom Posted 3 January , 2005 Share Posted 3 January , 2005 I dont know how many times I have read of guys who are selling or have a bayonet that their father/grandfather etc used in ww1 or ww2. I dont know any army that allowed their soldiers to leave their rifle in the stores before de-mob or discharge and the quartermaster saying...'you can keep your bayonet as a keep sake'...'go on...its a souvineer, give it to your kids and tell them about when you used it or kept it with you during the war' Am I wrong? Tom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bkristof Posted 3 January , 2005 Share Posted 3 January , 2005 it is indeed strange that bayonets can be found on attics, indeed sometimes it is even the truth. So the story can be true! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest steveb21 Posted 3 January , 2005 Share Posted 3 January , 2005 Mate, Your right. But they can be kept by other means. My SLR bayonet was a five finger discount while other mates claimed them lost and either paid for them threw the system or they were written off, depending on the QM. But having been an over twenty year vetern I was given all my kit gratis thanks the a mate in the Q store and a more then grenous system in the Aussie Army. Cheers S.B Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Dave Posted 3 January , 2005 Share Posted 3 January , 2005 I too have my own bayonet. I used it to repair a magazine ejection port cover on my section commanders M16 in 1990. I then put it beside me and when we moved off, forgot about it. I went back a couple of months later (as I was to be charged fo rit's loss) and found it. The charge went out of time, I scored a bayonet and never had to worry about cleaning the bloody thing again! The bayonet has been retained as a reminder of time spent in the military as it went everywhere I did. But your right, the amount of bayonets out there and turning up is quite phonomenal. There was a court case a few years back where a chap turned up wth a 1907 sword bayonet at an airport and claimed that it was a family heirloom that he could not bear to be parted with. Dodgy stuff I say. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malcolm Posted 3 January , 2005 Share Posted 3 January , 2005 I remember my Grandfather's bayonet and my uncle's bayonet in a sideboard in my Grandfather's house. Aye Malcolm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bkristof Posted 3 January , 2005 Share Posted 3 January , 2005 This phenomenon is also common in Belgium. Very strange. Maybe the army in those days weren't so strict and they didn't suffer from small budgets. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Morgan Posted 3 January , 2005 Share Posted 3 January , 2005 It's an interesting question - where DO they all come from? My grandmother said that when my grandfather came home on leave, he had all his equipment with him, including rifle and bayonet. I suppose that the average infantryman would have no trouble in (literally) picking up a spare bayonet and taking it home on leave. But it must have been a very widespread practice if that's where they all came from. I would have thought that all the surplus ones would have gone for scrap years ago. Tom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bkristof Posted 3 January , 2005 Share Posted 3 January , 2005 Even surplus ones aren't destroyed. I know a guy who bought a few years ago a box with 100 1907 Smle bayonets! In the grease for storage. Maybe all european countries wanted to equip a home guard when needed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gary Samson Posted 3 January , 2005 Share Posted 3 January , 2005 I have my grandfather's bayonet. He also came home with other kit including his SMLE, which he handed over to the local Police during a firearms amnesty in the 1960s. Gary Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bkristof Posted 4 January , 2005 Share Posted 4 January , 2005 too bad... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J T Gray Posted 4 January , 2005 Share Posted 4 January , 2005 Even surplus ones aren't destroyed. And it's astonishing what surplus items are still around. Two summers ago my girlfriend and I were chatting to a chap at an event who was living as a medieval potter - if you've seen a chap in a silly hat making medieval pots for Time Team it was probably him. Anyway he had a flint-and-steel for firelighting, and spotted me looking at the odd rhomboid-shaped flint which looked familiar - a gun flint! Apparently you can still obtain them from the MOD, as that's where he got it from - presumably if what he said was true the MOD have a stock somewhere left over from... Oooh, when would the army have last used flintlocks? Indian Mutiny? A good long time ago, anyway! Adrian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T8HANTS Posted 4 January , 2005 Share Posted 4 January , 2005 Back in the sixties you could buy bayonets wholesale, No 4 spikes were about 2/3d (11)p if you bought 50. SMLE bayonets 3/- (15p). Even as late as the mid ninties there were boxes of the balde bayonet for the No 4 (The No 9 Bayonet, I think). Don't forget for every rifle they made about four bayonets. Back in old days people didn't worry about such things Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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