Cut off battle damaged breast eagle

[Dansson]

I recently acquired this beautiful cut off breast eagle that has seemingly seen heavy combat during it's lifetime.

[Lloyds]

Its a pre war eagle used on parade and dress tunics and probably not a cut off eagle,these are normally mounted on green cloth as is yours so probably never saw combat

[Dansson]

Good to know, well at least it "looks good" and fits the display.

[nonameno]

Hello Gentlemen,
While Lloyds is totally correct, this type of eagle was often worn by officers on their field tunic, as evidenced in many period photographs. Nevertheless, we can never know for sure what happened.
Thank you,
Curtiss

[Dansson]

Hello Gentlemen,
While Lloyds is totally correct, this type of eagle was often worn by officers on their field tunic, as evidenced in many period photographs. Nevertheless, we can never know for sure what happened.
Thank you,
Curtiss

That's interesting.

[kerryboo]

I believe that this officer has such an eagle on a summer-weight tunic,
Kerry.

[Jean-Claude]

As far as I am concerned both Lloyd & Dansson are correct...

As Lloyd mentioned this bevo bird is cloth mounted but judging from the narrow/irregular green wool border that remains and the wear on the eagle itself I agree with Dansson it was also uniform removed. The cloth backing was trimmed after uniform removal probably because it was damaged as you see quite often

Not the same style of bird but the attached is an un-issued/un-trimmed cloth mounted bird. Note the width of backing cloth when compared to the specimen posted by Dansson

JC

[Willi Z.]

Yes, it could be a removed eagle with damage from it being removed, but it could also be moth eaten, like so many of these pre-war Luft and Heer Eagles with that wool backing are.

As to how much of a border is present, there would be lots of manufacturing variations.

"Cut off" or a "cutoff" means different things to folks....to some it might mean still attached to a piece of uniform, which is what I suspect this thread started as.

[Dansson]

As yet an apprentice in these matters, I've learned quite much from this thread.

Yes, I referred this as "cut off" as I thought some tunic fabric was left. Well it's at least tunic removed as the thread remnants and the wear suggest.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed!

[Lloyds]

this is how they left the factory on a dark green backing

[Hofstetter]

I had a nice infantry Feldwebel combat tunic with this exact type eagle originally applied over the top of the standard eagle (wish I still had it).
It was definitely combat worn with staining and small holes tears especially around the where the belt and equipment was worn. The breast eagle was still in very good condition and if it was removed you would never guess it was on a combat tunic.

[Mike Swan]

Eagles aside, that's an interesting admin tunic photo posted by Kerry.

Mike

[Dansson]

This developed to an informative thread