Hello Lenny,
Wow, that's a lot of belt buckles!
At least they don't take up
too much space!
My 1943 Winchester M1 Garand.
My "BYF" coded 1943 K98 brought back by a SW Missouri veteran. He luckily had a brother serving in the USAAF who brought it back when they ferried their B17 back home. Hence forth no "duffel cut". He picked it out of a huge pile in the Saar Region at the end of hostilities. It has 7 notches in the comb of the stock, 3 deep V cuts and 4 straight cuts. The veteran and another GI spotted it at the same time and almost came to blows over it. An NCO broke it up and made them guess how many rounds he had on him for his Thompson. Arther was closest at 320, the actual number was 340 between his rucksack and extra magazines. It is all numbers matching, except for the bolt which is all numbers matching itself. As was typical the bolts were all removed from the surrendered rifles and dumped in a pile of their own. He also picked up some ammo pouches that oddly contained TC over a crescent moon 1943 marked Turkish ammo. I have shot this rifle with that very same ammo and it is quite accurate, being about a half inch low at 100 yards. Makes sense given the conversion to meters!
At any rate, I think I solved the reason for the different style notches. As most full power bolt action rifles do, it has a fairly good kick. Even 70 years later the deep V notches are quite unpleasant on one's cheek!
Anyhow, as you've seen the previous threads from a post run amok (I blame 43rdRR
) you're pretty much up to speed on this subject. By the way, high jacking of posts happens here sometimes, well, um, actually frequently!
Marco,
Great collection! The only thing I don't have any of is armor relics.
I've been offered some over the years, but once the item's get over here to the States one can basically ask any price since they are so rare here. It would probably be slightly cheaper to get the piece over there and still have it shipped here!
Love this stuff, cheers,
Eric.