COLD STEEL AND UP ’EM

Press, 21 August 1976, Page 15

COLD STEEL AND UP ’EM

Everyone who watches “Dad’s Army” on the box knows that Corporal Jones is a firm believer in the efficacy of the bayonet. As he tells Captain Mainwaring many times, “they don't like the cold steel up ’em.” Corporal Jones used his bayonet in the Sudan, but his version of what happened there will have to be taken with a grain of butcher’s salt in future. “The Bayonet Book,” privately published in Britain towards the end of last year reveals that there were complaints of bayonets that ignominiously "bent" when used against the Arabs in the Sudan; the blades were too long for their weight.

“A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it.” — this uncontestable, if double-edged epigram of Dean Inge’s introduces "The Bayonet Book,” says the writer of the T.L.S. Commentary in “The Times Literary Supplement.” “The Bayonet Book” is a book for weapons freaks, military historians and all sound citizens who believe in collecting as a hedge against inflation; militaria, as the authors point out, are rising in price all the time. Apart from the due attention paid to the firearms of which bayonets are, strictly, only the accessories, what the authors chiefly provide is page after page of vertical naked blades — over a thousand photographs, with accompanying commentary. The first known reference to a military bayonet is mid-seventeenth century and French. Jacques de Chastenet records that his men were armed with bayonets with handles one fool long and blades of the same length again; these combined the virtues of pike and sword and were jammed into the barrel of muskets. . Early bayonets were all of this “plug" variety; but the system had obvious disadvantages, and by the end of the seventeenth century most countries had adopted "socket” bayonets: the blade was attached to a metal tube which fitted outside the barrel.

Naked blades vary .The eighteenthcentury Danish ramrod bayonet, made for ski-troops’ sharp-shooter muskets, is as long and thin as a giant bodkin. Nineteenth-century German “sawback” bayonets look like breadknives; some of their presentation bayonets, with etched blades and jewelled grips, are works of art.

General Mondragon of Mexico ordered from Switzerland in the 1890 s bayonets shaped like cricket bats. The

strangest in the book is Spanish and made to fit a percussion carbine. It has a double-edged wavy blade, 17 inches long, scalloped all the way down on each side like the edges of a jam tart. It would do terrible things to your insides. By far the largest sections are devoted to Germany and Britain (with the United States, Austria and Belgium as runners-up). The German section includes what are known in the trade as “ersatz” bayonets. They were produced quickly and cheaply in the First World War; the makers were given no specifications, speed being of the essence, and some being made in railway repair workshops. They were made to be adjustable to different types of captured rifle. In England in the 1880 s there were complaints of bayonets that ignominiously “bent” when used against the Arabs in the Sudan; the blades were too long for their weight. The trend towards shorter blades continued; the book quotes a report of 1924:

As regards length of blade for killing purposes, the Physical Training Staff .. . came to the conclusion that a six-inch blade was sufficiently long to deal with the most thickly clad of our enemies — potential or otherwise. The mostthickly clad was taken to be a Russian in winter clothing . . .

The proposed length of eight inches, the report said, would be “amply sufficient for killing purposes." and the proposed new shape of the blade “excellent for penelration and also for withdrawal.” Today’s bayonets are — not inappositely — nasty, brutish and short.