Question on swords

Joined
Mar 12, 2015
What would happen to the belongings of soldiers especially swords from the NCOS when they were found dead on the battle field?
 
The possibilities are near endless.

Personal effects could have been looted/repurposed/auctioned off/etc - by either comrades or enemies.

Weaponry and equipment could have been captured/stockpiled/destroyed/reissued/or provided a 'battlefield upgrade' to a soldier with damaged or inferior examples.

NCO swords/sabers?
Lots of variables here.

Collected and reissued...?

There were bound to be alot of them damaged or lost during battle, so i'm sure that many ended up in the ownership of another NCO often out of necessity - and sometimes perhaps as a memento by a fellow (buddy) NCO.

I'm sure that there has been a few instances of a friend/comrade making sure that mother/father/wife ended up with it.

A ton of them ended up getting hacked down into field-expedient knives.

It is (unfortunately) more than safe to say that an NCO sword/saber wouldn't have typically gotten quite the same 'nostalgic treatment' as that of a high-profile officers private-purchase model.

The most you can do is just wonder about this kind of thing.
 
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The Infantry NCO sword was largely ornamental and they are rarely recovered when metal detecting battlefields; they were used in winter camp for dress parade. NCO's carried both a musket and often times pistol into combat, the NCO sword was an encumbrance that was not needed. Officer's used their swords to direct troops, thus the NCO sword was rendered obsolete except in the cav and artillery where they were issued regulation cav or light artillery swords respectively.

Most NCO swords found today are in fantastic shape, since they usually sat in a trunk in the battalion warehouse.
 
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