SOLD,SOLD,SOLD This piece comes from an amazing silver hoard that was sold by Bill Shea of Ruptured Duck Militaria. A superb original piece of silverware taken from Hitler’s Eagles Nest by a C Company soldier of the 101st Airborne Division in May 1945. It is a ‘Führer pattern’ lunch knife. Collectors nowadays commonly refer to this Bruckmann pattern as the formal pattern.
Rarely can one find these silver pieces with such pedigree. A superb quality item and a fascinating piece of history!
What is offered:
– The pictured lunch knife from the 2009 hoard
– The original professionally prepared portfolio containing a copy of the letter written by the Veteran in 2006.
– Contained in the folio, fantastic copies of pictures taken by the Veteran showing his service time, training, and actual pictures of him and his buddies literally at the Berghof and the Eagle’s Nest!
What was said by the Ruptured Duck 2009:
Some collectors say “don’t buy the story, buy the item!”. Well I, for one, have never believed in that philosophy. I guess a lot of that depends on who is telling you the story. These details are directly from the mouth and the written word of a P.F.C. (name withheld at his request) from Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. These details were gathered both from a letter he wrote and a face to face conversation he had with a good friend of mine in 2006. And boy did he have a story to tell. He related that he, like most of the boys in his Queens, N.Y. neighbourhood, entered the service in March of 1943 when he turned 18. He first went to the Armour Corps at Fort Polk as part of the 8th Armour Division. He then entered training with the Army Air Corps as a pilot, but this program was cut short. He then volunteered for the Paratroopers and trained at Fort Benning in Georgia. In December of 1944, he was assigned to the 101st Division in France. They were quickly whisked off to Belgium and attached to the 506th. This is where he encountered Colonel Sink, who was standing on a jeep with a frozen dead German soldier at his feet. He proceeded to tell all these replacements that it was their job to hold the town of Bastogne at all costs. Shortly before Christmas,1944 he was assigned to “C” Company. Having survived that historical event, he then recalled April of 1945 and speeding through the Rhineland to Bavaria without opposition. When they reached Berchtesgaden and the Berghof area, he said they could see this stone structure on the top of a nearby snow-covered mountain. He related how one of the Sergeants asked for four volunteers to go to the top and secure the building. He said “my hand shot up because by then I knew it was Hitler’s Eagles Nest”.
measures knife 21 cm
