The threads cut are from the top of the mk 2 grenade where the fuse body screws in.
View attachment 7003240 What information "specifically" do you want a link to ?
Rifle info, William S. Brophy, the Springfield,
Other weapon info, cant list all the mil manuals.
The tracer, I've personally recovered them, and old American Rifleman nag articles, along with studies why ball and tracer is not the best way to go because as tracer burns out, the weight drops and trajectories change, the non tracer bullet goes elsewhere. Old squad leaders used to run a full mag of tracer to get the squad on target, and this also caused some of the squad leader losses bc it let the opposition know where he was.
The horse calvary in the Philippines, Russell Volkmann, a Special Forces legend. There are numerous others about the calvary.
Ask specific and I will try to find the links.
Square holes stamped in the plate for bolting to ? surface indicate potential uses. The temp burial thing info came from my dad, ETO service 44 and 45.
I bumped the post “And then there were none”, worth reading.
The link I was asking about was for the information about enlisted serial numbers and the breakdown of how the number is configured.
The shrapnel with the threads is not cast metal like the obvious “pineapple” pieces to the right in the photo. So I thought maybe it came from other ordinance.
I posted about my family members in the “and then there were none” thread. My grandfather would not talk about the war. To anyone. I asked him twice in my life what he did in the war. First time (I was like 10 I guess) he told me he was a cook. The second time I asked (I was probably 13-14) he told me he was a foot soldier. I did not know until after he passed away he received a bronze star. In his “memory box” there were some of his ribbons. WWII participant and his Philippines liberation are the two I can remember off the top of my head. His uniform and metals are on display in our local museum.
The writing on the flag would be from friends, neighbors and relatives. It's a souvenir banner each soldier took with him when he left home, with (last) good wishes and signatures from everyone he knew. As I recall, the practice of giving banners/flags to soldiers originated in remote villages; conscripts going off to war were given the flag as a keepsake from well-wishers.
I know that there's still a lot of hard feelings over the war, but ifn you're past it and don't feel a real attachment to the flag, send it to the Japanese consulate. They'll figure out the soldier's name and return it to his closest surviving relatives if they can be found.
My father-in-law brought one home from the Solomons. I didn't know better and threw it out after he passed away (I regarded holding it as a "trophy" as disrespectful to all my high school Japanese friends and their parents--though they never knew I had it). I'm Chinese; a LOT of my father's side of the family met their end in China during the war, so he absolutely HATED the Japanese race (442nd notwithstanding-- I remember once we were going to buy a house until he found out a Japanese family lived down the block--"lousy neighborhood; we look somewhere else".) Contrary to generalized Western understanding, the Chinese and Japanese cultures are not "the same". I grew up with lots of Asian/Japanese friends, but didn't get to know the Japanese culture until I after I visited Japan when I was in my 40s. It gave me enough of a different perspective to regret throwing out my father-in-law's trophy. I should have sent it back, out of respect for the dead. The soldier who carried it had family , too.
I don’t really look at this stuff as trophy’s of war. I tend to look at this stuff as a connection to one of my first best friends, and the life he lived. That is pretty cool information regarding the flag though.
