KIA belt

[Jean-Loup]

We often see "dead man helmets" with straps cut off, but the equivalent in belts seems to be much rarer, probably because in the cases the belt would be cut, only the buckle was kept as a souvenir.

The belt below was found in the mass grave at Villeneuve-Loubet, when it was exhumed in 2006 (see the link in my signature for more details).
The two pieces of belt were found at opposit ends of the grave. The obvious conclusion was that the belt was cut with a knife just before the burial, so that someone could keep the baionet and ammunition pouches.

[Jean-Loup]

Unfortunately, none of the french civilians who buried those German dead at Villeneuve are still alive today, so they can not describe what happened. But I recently spoke to a civilian who participated in burying German dead on an other battlefield, and what he told me shed a bit more light on the topic of cutting belts.

He said that there were several dead German near his house that had been dead for days already, and were starting to decompose seriously. Him and a friend decided it was time to take care of them. The bodies had already been pilfered, but some of them still had grenades (egg grenades I suspect) attached to their ammunition pouches. The old man specificaly told me that he used a knife to cut the belts off those dead, so that whoever would come and exhume the bodies in the future would not risk being killed by one of the grenades.

Here is a better view of the cut on the belt from Villeneuve.

JL