Another belated Andy’s Rubbish & Ramblings for you. After dodging all the weekend jobs I was supposed to be doing I managed to poke my nose into my collection momentarily and proceeded to go down the rabbit hole looking at various items and refreshing my interest.
The rather ordinary item I have here is a small zinc box which once held 25 pull fuses of the type used with case-less ammunition. This I believe is the type of fuse you may associate with a Minenwerfer. If this is incorrect please chime in and put the story straight. And I have been corrected, the box is for fuses from a 9cm Kanone.
This box turned up in the local antique shop back in the early 1980’s, I was still an enthusiastic kid back then with minimal reference material available so I was unsure what this interesting looking tin may have been. I don’t remember the asking price, it wouldn’t have been a great deal. I later thought that this may been a box for hand grenade pull fuses, however this was not the case. I have since learned it was more likely to be for the likes of a 9cm Kanone.
The box its self appears to be zinc, and for what was likely a consumable item it is very well made. It seems the lid and base are each made from two seperate parts, the flat base/top attached to a band which forms the sides. The top is beautifully embossed which would require a substantial amount of work on making a die to produce the lid. That’s a lot of intricate work to produce such a utilitarian item, especially when you consider grenade detonators were packed in wooden blocks contained in cardboard sleeves (In saying that, there’s was a lot of work put into the wooden inserts of those boxes also).
The often overlooked manufacturing of such mundane items designed to keep the war machine running must have consumed a tremendous amount of manpower( or woman power ) and resources.
It’s interesting for me as some New Zealand serviceman from my local area kept this tin, as a souvenir or possibly kept other small trinkets in this tin and carried it home with him from the other side of the globe, who knows what it contained or how it survived so long.
It’s nothing fancy, rare or expensive, it does however remain an interesting item when you think about where it originated and how it came to be in the possession of a young New Zealander. That same unknown soldier then brought it home for reasons unknown and it was then preserved and still survives today 106 years since the cessation of hostilities in 1918.
Also pictured with the box is a M.W.K dog tag from Ersatz Pioneer battalion 22, Minenwerfer Kompine 345. Somewhere I have a MWK marked s98/05s Bayonet as well which by Gus’s logic means I should own a Minenwerfer…..although it seems, this is no longer a related item.
Edit, I have received the following comment , not for a Minenwerfer as I thought.
Hello,
Ist not for Minenwerfer.
Ist for 9cm kanone.