Converted Officer belt to EM belt "Sud-Front"

[90th Light]

Has anyone ever seen a belt like this before ???

I picked up a number of items directly from a New Zealand veteran who served in both Afrika and Italy. I had these items for a while and one day as I studying the belt, suddenly I thought " I have seen that paint colour before. Thus I got one of the unsolved, so called CZ cancelled Egypt export order helmets out of storage and found the paint on the veteran belt buckle matches perfectly the paint on the helmet. Suddenly the reality that this paint was used by the Germans during WW2 struck me. Thus we checked other examples and eventually had the paint tested. It is most certainly a WW2 paint.

The belt itself adds even more to the mystery because it is not a regular EM/ NCO belt. It is an officer belt, open frame buckle that has been refurbished into a EM/ NCO belt. They have plug every hole and sewn a regular catch on were the open frame buckle was. I have never ever seen another belt like this.

This belt makes me wonder, why go to all that trouble of plugging the holes ??? Thus if they were going to all the trouble of refurbishing officer belts at that time then why could they not refurbish a steel helmet ???

If anyone else has one like this i.e. buckle or belt then please add some images or lets us know.

Many thanks,

Chris

[90th Light]

2/ Just love the condition and the mystery around this mid 1980;s CZ find.

However, the belt was picked up in Italy at the end of WW2 in May 1945,

Chris

[90th Light]

3/ Notice how the buckle is rusting the same way as the helmet. It is like the moisture has penetrated the paint is places,

Chris

[90th Light]

4/ The maker of the buckle is "CTD 1941"

I have another in my collection marked "CTD 1943"

Did this maker change the year each January ?

Chris

[90th Light]

5/ Here are the plug holes from it being an officer belt. Makes you wonder why they went to all that trouble. Why not just have it as a late war belt and put the buckle adjustment through the holes.

This belt and buckle have never been touched since it was brought back from WW2. The buckle has always sat at only one place on the leather adjustment tab and that was for the German who wore it. When I got it, there was a spider living in the back of the buckle. You can still see some of the cobweb at the sewn end of the leather adjustment strap,

Chris

[90th Light]

6/ The catch is also a shade of RAL tan/ sand/ brown. You can see some of the stitching still remaining from where the officer open frame buckle was sewn.

This RAL sand/ tan/ brown paint on both the buckle and catch appears to be a shade of "dunkelgelb RAL 7028",

Chris

[yellow12]

Hello,

IMO that's a WH buckle with standard color variation .......

A Suedfront or DAK buckle , I do firmly with a web tab !

Here is a interesting thread about such helmet :

http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...d.php?t=743165

[90th Light]

Interesting,

a "CTD 1942" and an "ESL 42" painted a shade of RAL 7028 "Dunkelgelb" (sand/ tan/ brown) in this thread;

http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...d.php?t=778442

Chris

[90th Light]

Evolution, Joseph R. Zrodlowski on the subject of this WW2 German paint code wrote;

"Take a look at the chart included in Tomas Chory's CAMOUFLAGE COLORS-Wehrmacht-Heer, 1939-1945:

He provides chips for five different versions of Dunkelgelb. The first color, "Dunkelgelb nach Muster" (Dark Yellow according to standard) was used between Feb-Apr 43 and wasn't assigned an RAL number. Here is an RAL color card snowing RAL 7028 Ausgabe 1944, which is referred to in H.M.'s:


Chory's book is an excellent resource. It's difficult to find, "



Chris

[Guido L.]

Sorry, but I cannot see here a "Süd-Front" buckle neither a converted officer belt.

For me it is just a standard Wehrmacht Heer buckle together with a standard EM belt. Each maker used a different shade of fieldgrey and I never heard of a RAL code regulation about colours on WH belt buckles! In theory this particular belt buckle could have been worn on any WWII war theater. The only feature that indicates compulsory a usage as a tropical item is a tongue from web material. Just a light or tan shaded colour is not enough to come to this conclusion. And at the end of the war this all doesn't matter as you could find all colours on WH buckles even Luftwaffe blue. Further tropical web stuff in stock was given to regular units who fought in eastern or western Europe.
The belt shows all characteristics of WH EM belts. Someone has just punched these holes into the belt for any reason.

[90th Light]

Sorry, but I cannot see here a "Süd-Front" buckle neither a converted officer belt.

For me it is just a standard Wehrmacht Heer buckle together with a standard EM belt.

The belt shows all characteristics of WH EM belts. Someone has just punched these holes into the belt for any reason.

Hello Guido,

thank you for your reply. I am sorry to say that this is not a "standard EM belt"
with holes punched in it

This is exactly how the belt was worn in Italy by the German whose belt it was. It has never been worn since the end of WW2.

To show you what I mean, I have taken some images of this belt beside a standard officer belt and a later war RB numbered belt with the holes simply punched in.

The holes are in the position of an officer belt and have then been filled in during the war to make an EM belt,

Chris

p.s. please also note the pointed end of an officer belt (the EM/ NCO belt has a rounded end). Also the outer side of the belt has a line running down its full length, parallel with each edge of the belt (this is not seen on an EM/ NCO belts) These are typical features of an officer open frame belt

[90th Light]

Here is the other end of the belts. You can see where an officer buckle has been un-stitched, the belt end cut down to size and then an EM/ NCO clip stitched back in that place.

Where the clip is stitched, you can see one remaining stitch line from where the officer open frame buckle was stitched. This old stitch line joins the new clip stitch line on the inside of the belt and looks like an over-run by the machinist. However, when this belt was an officer belt it was longer and this remaining stitch line from the officer buckle was on the outside of the belt. The other stitch lines from the officer open frame buckle have been lost when they cut the belt to fit the new EM/ NCO clip.

Notice how the end on the officer belt modified to EM/ NCO belt is cut a bit unevenly where it wraps around the clip,

Chris

[90th Light]

For me it is just a standard Wehrmacht Heer buckle. Each maker used a different shade of fieldgrey and I never heard of a RAL code regulation about colours on WH belt buckles! In theory this particular belt buckle could have been worn on any WWII war theater. The only feature that indicates compulsory a usage as a tropical item is a tongue from web material. Just a light or tan shaded colour is not enough to come to this conclusion. And at the end of the war this all doesn't matter as you could find all colours on WH buckles even Luftwaffe blue. Further tropical web stuff in stock was given to regular units who fought in eastern or western Europe.

Hello again Guido,

I understand what you are saying and I do not disagree.

However, I have had a lot of belts directly from the hands of New Zealand veterans. The are a very common souvenir of WW2 in my country.

Many of these belts came from Afrika 1941-43 in web with buckles also with the web tab. A few from Afrika were leather belts and some buckles had leather tabs.

Other belts came from Italy 1943-45. Many of those were leather but some were web belts. Most of the buckles had either a leather tab or no tab but a few still had web tabs.

Several of these buckles were painted one of the shades of RAL 7028. Most of the RAL 7028 painted examples had no tab but in rare cases when they did have a tab, it was a web tab.

My feeling is that the use of RAL 7028 is later to late war i.e. 1943 to 1945 (may be the second half of 1942 given that the web tabs were sometimes the early green). However based on the German units these buckles came from, I am not yet certain that some RAL 7028 painted buckles were not intended for tropical use in 1943-44.

Here is a comparison of the types to show you what I mean,

Chris

[90th Light]

Two more examples,

Tropical "Dunkelgelb RAL 7028" or Late War "Dunkelgelb RAL 7028" or both

???

That is the question,

Chris

[Ric Ferrari]

5/ Here are the plug holes from it being an officer belt. Makes you wonder why they went to all that trouble. Why not just have it as a late war belt and put the buckle adjustment through the holes.

Chris

Hello Chris,

I observed few of them over my collecting life and all period modified, either with empty holes or filled ones.

I do not know the reason why having so much trouble (holes filled and adjustment strap added), but I guess it happened before late war belts were approved and issued.

Ric