What do you guys think of this piece, it shows a fair amount of age and the construction is consistent with other straps of this type I have, the leather is a dark green. The addition of the waffen acceptance mark leads me to believe it is for the Army Forestry service.
All opinions are welcome

Gary

makes a world of sense, gary. scarce accessory I'm sure. what does houston coates say?

hi gary
just sticking my two cents in here you could be on the target with this army over the shoulder strap if you research the waffen number last three digits this will tell you if your close or not if this waffen amptd is not on the list for army foresty then what can one say but truthfully it looks originaly done to me weather it is right or wqrong please let us know maybe we can all learn something new in this great researched hobby god bless see you at the max show next week andy militarynut

Thank you for the photo.

What i have red over the years regarding WaA markings the number behind it ( in this case 103) was linked to an inspector.
They were assigned to plants for a limitted amount of time, these time periods were limitted to prevent for a so called "friendly" relation between the inspector and the plant management.

Army contracts were very lucrative, so corruption and payoffs Always played a role in the Reich, therefore limitted periods of assigement.

Thats why you can see the WaA103 marking on totally different items.
WaA103 for example was once assigned to the FN factory in Belgium.


Regards
Ger



I like the shoulderstrap, in green a hard to find one for sure.
Im not sure why it would be an army forrestry item , as accountrements like shoulderstraps were imo private purchases, at least this marking on a shoulderstrap is the first for me.
But we aint seen everything yet.

The numbers were assigned to specific inspectors who had their own teams that varied in size, and depending on the location the type of items they inspected. Some were for a very long times. But they could also be transferred or discontinued for some reason. Which is what happened with the Mauser (rifle factory) inspectors that were transferred to Czechoslovakia to work with the preexisting Mauser type rifle operations to bring them into production, and generally conform to German Army/Wehrmacht specifications. The style of Waffenamts another factor that is time sensitive. With all that said this is a first for me. From memory without doing any looking further into the matter, one of TMJ's books had a Waffenamted Hitler Youth knife that I spent a long time trying to find a comparable example for sale so I could have one of my own. But that never happened because it turned out to be a PW altered fake. To be clear I'm not saying that is the case here - but my experience tends to make me cautious with items that are outside the normal parameters. They did not inspect the millions of the ordinary bayonet frogs that were put to hard use on a daily basis - so what is special with a shoulder strap that required it to be inspected? Best Regards, Fred