Your thoughts on a Army tunic please

[Paul McKee]

http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...d.php?t=149816

Point taken. Yes I agree that most such conversions are done for officer's and nco's, but enlisted ones (as in the link above) do exist. My point is that I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss this piece just because it has been converted.

Paul

[CWP]

The tunic appears to be original with a period applied green collar. This modification could have been performed by anyone with the money to pay a tailor to do it or the talent to do it himself. Having said that, the tunic appears to have more award loops than I would expect on a tunic with no rank. The eagle, at least, appears to be a replacement, and if the collar shows signs of once having litzen sewn directly to it, the tabs are probably postwar replacements also. It is possible this was an officers tunic at one time, close examination of the shoulder board loops might reveal evidence of alteration there.

[airborne_steve]

Accually it is quite common to see M43 tunics with the early dark collar. In Brian Davis's books there are serveral pictures of Jr Enlisted with this style of tunic.

The question is, was it factory applied, using up stocks of dark green collars, was it tailor done or post war applied? I'm quite sure that Jr Enlisted could have had the conversion done for use as a walk out dress tunic.

The tunic has been tailored even having the pockets raised so I sure it was not a big step to have the collar applied. The one thing I don't like is the hand sewn eagle and tabs. The vast majority of thses tunics had machine sewn eagles and tabs. IMHO

Steve

[Paul McKee]

I'm not sure if this has any particular significance, but it may be worth noting the method used to modify this tunic's collar.

• I've noticed on a number of other converted tunics (including yours, Steve) that the dark green badge cloth is simply folded over the edge of the collar and hand sewn in place on the underside. On the tunic we're discussing, the collar has been sewn together, turned right-side-out and top stitched almost as if originally manufactured that way.
• Also, a lot of modified tunics had their collar points exaggerated; on this one it looks no more pointed than an as-issued tunic.

Paul

[Lucky Duck]

a M43 originall tunic.. with messed up collar ...

Tell that to this guy.

[airborne_steve]

Paul,

You are correct. The collar of the tunic in question has a standard, factory, M36 collar. All tunics are assembly line produced with the collars pre-fabricated and ready for installation. I'm sure there were a lot of collars in the early dark green that had never been applied when the change to the field grey collar was instituted. For the average soldier, the dark green collars were both better looking and more comfortable on the back of the neck than the rough, field grey, tunic wool of the latter models.

The Collar on my M43 is a officers collar with the enlisted collar completely removed.

Steve

[M. A. Miller]

collar tabs

Here is a scan of the underside of collar. You can see there was a EM late war collar tab on it at one time.

[M. A. Miller]

Collar tabs

I scanned the collar tabs for a clearer shot.

[M. A. Miller]

Shoulder board straps

Here is a scan of shoulder board strap. Also, would the collar protector be common for an EM ? or maybe it came with the collar.

[M. A. Miller]

Award loops

I don't think this set of loops would be excessive , in fact what is the set of 2 loops close together for? There are 5 loops total as you see in the picture . No other evidence of more.
Thanks for all the replies so far.I appreciate it. I know this tunic isn't a textbook example but neither was I growing up !!!!!
Regards, Mitch