SOUVENIRS FROM THE BATTLEFRONT

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 74, 20 December 1917, Page 7

SOUVENIRS FROM THE BATTLEFRONT

SPOILS OF THE RELIC HUNTERS

ODD FRAGMENTS FROM FRANCE (By H. B. 0. Pollard.) [Published by authority of the War Office, per favour of the Royal Colonial Institute.] In every battalion there are a number of confirmed souvenir hunters, and sometimes their influence is so potent that an epidemic craze for collecting spreads through all ranks, and the main topic of conversation is souvenirs in all their variations. In every walk of life one meets the men with strong acquisitive habits; if his particular form of acquisitiveness is anti-social he becomes a burglar, or, in bad cases, a financier; but, fortunately, lie is usually merely a collector. To a man with a fully developed hungry passion for collecting life in the Army is rather a trial, for a collection of any kind sooner or later demands a home to put it in, and, as is well known, when in the Army one has no home, but lives a vagrant existence carrying one s belongings with one. During tho training period, the collector's instinct lies dormant, but one© the front is reached it generally breaks out witli great virulence. There aie few things of value to collect, unless you chance to he a German officer in occupied territory, but if you are on the honest sido of the trench line you are ready to content yourself with tne prevailing collector's liobby for war souvenirs."

Cerman Helmets,

In the early days the Germans were obligingly provided with substantial and picturesque helmets, brilliant witn heavy metal garniture. There. were also unusual variations of theso, like quaint Bavariau shakos, while one or two fantastic cavalry regiments provided a rare and extremely little used variety has not since been seen upon the Western front. ■ , „ , , , The German helmet of to-day has depreciated almost to the same extent its German morals. It is no longer even leather, but a kind of light pegamoid substitute; the metal spike has given place to wood or composition, the solid brass regimental badge to a thin tinsel plaque. Tho true collector rather discounts tho modern helmet, and lias no interest at all in the little round grey convict cap which so many German prisoners wear. If the Germans only knew it, a sure passport to warm and instant favour or surrender is a decent helmet. It attracts immediate attention, and the fortunate owner is given cigarettes ana other marks or favour by his delighted captor, instead of being merely herded' to the rear without ceremony. . Tho supply of helmets is by no means adequate to the demand, and, indeed, the market is only glutted on occasions of a big push or a large scale raid. As a result, the souvenir collector must perforce content himself with minor trophies of the great war. Hostile artillery provides a great number ot them in the form of fuses and nose caps of wonderful variation. Inhere is moro fiian a souvenir hunter's interest in theso particular trophies, for the artillery are professionally interested in them, too, because tho setting of tho fuse may give the correct range of a suspected battery; so nose-cap hunting is not a useless sport.

"Bijouterie des Tranchees."

Tho French soldiers have specialised in aluminium rings and jewellery made from the nose caps of hostile shell, and quite a Tittle industry developed in "bijouterie des trenohees," often extremely artlstio in conception and dchcato in craftsmanship. Tho British prefer to work in brass —the brass of empty cartridges and field-gun cases.' With infinite patience anil few toola they produce what are best called "peculiar objects of the mantelpiece. Ijttlo model coal scuttles with legb mado of bullets, and a coal scoop worked up from a German rifle cartridge; rases of curious surface mottling made by indenting the brass of a field-gun case; or even more ambitious designs of Allied .flags and heroes, indented by hammering in a Tation case nail with an object that may serve for a hammer. TKero is no end to the variety of Ingenuity the soldier collector craftsman can display; inkpots and candlesticks contrived from the interioi economy of Bhrapnel shells, decorative paper weights from hand grenades; all manner of war gear can be perverted from its normal purpose. There is, too, a' brisk trade or barter in these souvenir worEs of art. A decorative shell-case may |be exchanged for a set of pocket tools; corkscrews, penknives, or pencil cases, ingeniously contrived from small arm ammunition; but in the main they are kept jealously by their creators or sent back by a comrade goin<* on leave to rejoin the craftsman's family, i Sometimes a chosen piece is presented to a fompany commander as a token, not so much representative of "affection fnd esteem," as tho close and intimate relationship and comradeship existing between the men and'their officers. A retiring mayor may be given a gold watch, a popular preacher a pair of silver candlesticks, a celebrated politician rewarded with a title; but such a gift as an inscribed shell-case with a date in reminiscence of some incident of war, is something that will in years to come mean more than most c.f these things. Souvenirs Pathetic.

Sometimes theso souvenirs of war are pathetic and eloquent of the terror and destruction of old things. Such a one is a small lozenge of leaded felass, a fragment of tlie old windows of Ypres Cathedral set in a beaten tray (<f cartridge brass. Others are pathetic in their associations, such as a simple talisman worn by a German to avert bad luck, but since proved to be unefual to the task of diverting British arms.

The souvenir habit has its piactical uses, for it serves to introduce a new interest into the cheerless round of long spoils, of stationary winter warfare. Mere discomfort may seem a small matter to a man who has .uever been without a luxuriouse home, but it often means far more than danger to life and limb to a man in the trenches, and is much harder to bear. Tho collector's little employments and interests all serve to ligthen it. At tho back of the collectors' minds is r.lways the same idea, the making of a souvenir to send home; some thing that will be to his friends an enduring souvenir of his campaigning days, something that will take pride cf place among tho little household gods, and he handed down to children in memory of their warrior sire. The souvenir collector may not bo precisely conscious of the identity of his own desires with thoso of the Allied Governments, hut the ornamented shell-case and the economic treaties may be akin in purposo; both being designed to keep 'jur knowledge of tlie Germans well in mind.