Our annual father and son day out. Always sun & fun! Saw some very interesting new vehicles on display, like the Willy’s Jeep fire truck and the M7 snow tractor. Some very good re-enactment displays too. Especially Checkpoint Charlie.
Other highlights were the M4 artillery tractor, which you don’t see very often, and of course the militaria fair where I picked up a few nice items.
The pin-on type is the rarest of luminous disks. So rare that I didn’t have a picture of it. But you could find one in Michel De Trez’s “The Point Of No Return”. Instead of the clip, it has a kind of safety pin at the back. I am told that these were not marked ‘poison inside’, but that they have the broad-arrow mark. That would label them as British issue, or so I thought until Joseph Muchanski sent me photos of his luminous disk with a pin back. It is not Broad Arrow marked but marked R.L.I. 1942. Under the pin is Pat. # 2336969. It is 1 1/2” in diameter. At first I tried searching the patent number, but I couldn’t find anything. That’s because it’s not a US patent number. The disk is not US but Canadian made. RLI stands for Radium Industries Limited.
See photos below and the updated luminous disks article.
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| Pin-on type front (click image to enlarge) | Pin-on type back (click image to enlarge) |
S/Sgt John T Urbank’s binoculars
I recently bought this named case with binoculars at an auction. The name and serial number are those of staff sergeant John T. Urbank, a paratrooper who jumped into Normandy with the 3d platoon Co.’G’ 501 PIR. Urbank led the mortar squad and was usually the jump master, although I don’t know if he was on D-Day.*
My online search on this name quickly led to Mark Bando’s “Trigger Time” site, where I found a copy of a list of equipment for D-Day made by John Urbank on a V Mail form.
John (Jack) Urbank was born in Ohio in 1922 and enlisted at Akron, Ohio on November 30, 1942. He was a sergeant at Normandy and from what I can tell from George Koskimaki’s book “Hell’s Highway”, he had made staff sergeant either before or after the Holland jump. He got wounded at his hands in Holland and was hospitalised in England. I have not yet found any direct evidence that he was there in Bastogne, but I will keep searching.**
He survived the war and in 1946 he returned to live and work in Ohio and passed away in 2005.
* John’s cousin Gary sent me an e-mail to say that John was not the jump master on D-Day. That duty was taken over by a lieutenant, although he does not recall his name.
** Also, Jack was returned to his unit shortly before Bastogne.
As a little summer project, I bought this set of EE-8-B field phones and put them to the testForget the SCR-536/BC-611 “Handie Talkie” you always see in the movies. These things never work when you need them, they require a custom-built 90v battery (!), the range is only a mile or two, and telecommunication laws in Europe prohibit the use of them anyway.For fun re-enactment bring in the EE-8 field phone! It only requires 2 D-cell 1,5v batteries and the range of 11 miles is more than you’ll ever need. And all perfectly legal.And yes, paratroopers did use them a lot.Read the full instructions to test and use the EE-8
INVICTA Challenge is a new game and toy brand for kids about leadership and history. The first game is based on the true story of Turner Turnbull and the 82nd Airborne in Normandy.
Turner Turnbull is largely unknown, but his leadership had an outsized impact on the D-Day invasion, especially for the paratroopers at St. Mere-Elise. Turnbull and his platoon defeated over fifty times their number of Germans on D-Day, in holding the small French town of Neuville-Au-Plain.
Neuville is just a few miles north of St. Mere-Elise, which was hard pressed throughout June 6 from a concentrated German attack from the south. St. Mere-Elise lay alongside the roads the led to Utah Beach, so holding it was vital.
The Turnbull story was also one of the inspirations for “Saving Private Ryan”, as Turnbull’s platoon sergeant was Bob Niland, one of the four Niland brothers.
INVICTA Challenge combines an operations packet, two maps and a 108 page interactive graphic novel to tell the story. Historically authentic, the reader makes the same key decisions that a C-47 pilot, Turner Turnbull, and Lieutenant Colonel Ben Vandevoort faced that day.
The art is photorealistic, based on a photoshoot with a group of World War II re-enactors in northern California. The game comes with a collectible sic inch paratrooper figure, and ties to a free-to-play interactive game, where you fight the tactical battle.
The game is available on Kickstarter for a limited time
In May 2015, Nick Moss sent me this photo of a TL-122-C. “Whilst searching in rock pools with my son today at St Margarets Bay, on the Kent coast, close to Dover (UK) we discovered buried in the sand in a pool a USA Lite TL-122-C flashlight. Just googled it and discovered the link to your site. Amazing!”. Imagine this flashlight belonged to a GI over 70 years ago!
See updated article about TL-122 flashlights
Two years after its opening, I visited the renewed Dezember 44 museum at La Gleize, Belgium. It is now called the “December 44 Historical Museum La Gleize“. I had been meaning to visit it for a long time, but never got around to it until this spring on a visit of the Ardennes and the Ciney militaria show with my son.
Here you can compare photos of the OLD museum from one of my previous visits to photos of the NEW museum. The old museum certainly had its charm and contained a lot of interesting and rare items, but the new museum is much more professional and houses some very special paratrooper items. Among them a super rare FG-42 II German paratrooper rifle and the helmet of General Matthew B. Ridgway, the original C.O. of both the 82nd Airborne Division and XVIII Airborne Corps during WWII (thank you Matt ;-), pictured on the right.
This museum is a must-see on your trip to the Ardennes. The museum shop is a museum in its own right, just like the Paratrooper shop at the Dead Man’s Corner Museum in Normandy.
Already announced in April, but I heard it will be June until it hits the news stands. I’m watching out for my copy!
I love these specials (Hors-Séries) from Gazette des armes. They are full of large and detailed color photos and indispensable for collectors. They come out with a new one about once a year. I have the ones of the M1 Garand, M1 Carbine, Colt M1911, US submachine guns and of several Germans weapons too. The are really good value for money and I often re-read parts. The only draw-back is that it’s in French only. But even for just the full-page photos these specials are worth their money!
This new issue about the Sten gun is looked forward to by many collectors and re-enactors. The Sten is the quintessential firearm of resistance fighters throughout Europe.
This replica of the M9A1 bazooka looks great for late-war re-enactment (Ardennes, Operation Varsity). It’s full-metal and priced around €300-400, depending on where you buy it. Considering real WW2 bazookas are impossible to find, this may be your ticket. My only gripe with this reproduction are the grips. They seem to be of some later type than the ones used in WW2.
This video from Evike shows how it works (if you buy it in Belgium or Germany, you won’t get the ugly orange tip):
I have been doing some research on the shells used in the video, but can’t find them for sale in Belgium anywhere. The effect of shooting BB’s with this is quite minimal. I would rather have a kind of smoke-effect grenade. That would be sweet for re-enactment!
It looks like it will take a repro or demilled rocket in the back. If you could make it throw a flame or a flash from the back when you pull the trigger, that would really top it off!
Mark Layman from Colorado sent me a photo of his invasion arm flag that looks the same as my type 3, except that it has the letters CL printed in black on the inside. I remember seeing a similar arm flag somewhere, but with a different text. But I can’t find the photo anywhere… I can only guess what CL means. Combat Leader comes to mind, but obviously one wouldn’t want to wear that plainly visible on a white armband. I’m thinking rather something for Civilians, eg Civilian Laborer. The U.S. had patches for non-combatants, but maybe the brassard was an improvised means of clearly pointing out civilians authorized to perform some task helping the army.
If anyone knows or owns a similar type of arm flag printed on the inside, please send my a photo.