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The Annoyed Man wrote:

Abraham wrote:I always felt a little silly doing bayonet practice. It seemed like something done as a leftover from pre-WW1 days and earlier, when officers wore feathers in their caps and dressed rather gaudy and gayly.

Not all that long ago, I read an article stating the bayonets were not responsible for much death and destruction during battles.

You’re probably right. I remember a scene in Band of Brothers when one of the paratroopers of the 506th bayoneted one of the guys in his own company during their first days in Normandy because the other guy surprised him at night. I’ll bet that a fair number of bayonet wounds were either unintentionally self-inflicted, or incidents of “friendly shanking”. But I think I remember a scene in “We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young” when Col Hal Moore tells his troopers to fix bayonets at the Battle of Ia Drang in Vietnam.

I imagine that is NOT an order you ever want to hear.......

There was a scene in one episode where Bull Randleman used a bayonet on a german in the barn when in Holland. The one where the farmer dug the shrapnel out of his shoulder.

The Annoyed Man wrote:But I think I remember a scene in “We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young” when Col Hal Moore tells his troopers to fix bayonets at the Battle of Ia Drang in Vietnam.

In the movie but not in the book, iirc, so I suspect it was a Hollywood invention for emotional impact.

The Annoyed Man wrote:I imagine that is NOT an order you ever want to hear.......

Roger that.

In single shot muzzle loader days, the bayonet was often considered the primary weapon and the firearm the secondary (limited use) weapon. These days, with metallic cartridge magazine-fed arms, and now most of the military small arms being semi and even fully automatic, the roles have been reversed.

to answer the original poster query

ONE TO CLEAN MY FINGERNAILS AND CUT STRING!

A small foldable karambit.

On the subject of bayonet use in the era of semi-automatic/automatic firearms, when the paratroopers were briefed on their D-Day jump and subsequent actions, they were told to use hand-grenades and bayonets as much as possible. This was to make them harder to locate and to conserve ammunition, since it wasn't known how long it would take for the ground forces to get inland to them. Some airborne troops lost their primary arms when they jumped due to various factors, and all that remained to them were grenades and bayonets. I suspect that more than a few German soldiers lost their lives to bayonets that dark early morning in Normandy.

K.Mooneyham,

Undoubtedly you are right.

Yep, a bayonet will certainly kill, but in the every day infantry soldiers hands, it's a clunky bit of gear and one I always kind of laughed at.

K.Mooneyham wrote:On the subject of bayonet use in the era of semi-automatic/automatic firearms, when the paratroopers were briefed on their D-Day jump and subsequent actions, they were told to use hand-grenades and bayonets as much as possible. This was to make them harder to locate and to conserve ammunition, since it wasn't known how long it would take for the ground forces to get inland to them. Some airborne troops lost their primary arms when they jumped due to various factors, and all that remained to them were grenades and bayonets. I suspect that more than a few German soldiers lost their lives to bayonets that dark early morning in Normandy.

In fact, Major (then Lt) Dick Winters landed with the 506th in Normandy with just his knife, which was strapped to his right boot, and whatever he had in his pockets. Like most of the paratroopers who had lost their weapons on jumping, he had a musette bag (like a small day pack) on his back, and his rifle was secured through the straps in front, across his chest. The straps snapped under the shock of his canopy deploying. The straps were kind of flimsy for that purpose. Here’s a picture of what a musette bag looked like. The guy on the left with his back to the camera is wearing one:


Here’s another picture of one: