French Lebel bayonet for Poland Wz.86/93

[ph3s]

Gents let me introduce you, my new arrival ;)

The story of thus bayonets, begin in France at end of 19 century. M1886 was designed for French Lebel-Bertie rifle. It was a nice old school bayonet with 520 mm long cruciform blade and quillion ( the hook on the crossguard). French solders used to call it 'Rosalie'. In 1890 to reduce the cost of production, quillion were removed and new bayonets got a name M1886/93. In 1935 blade was shorted to 340mm.

In terms to be able to fight with Bolshevism, in 1930s Poland bought from France something like 300.000 rifles. Bayonets with rifles were various (M1886, M1886/93, M1886/35) For Polish army they all got the same codename Wz 86/93.

During the occupation, Germans officially ignored thus. The reason was simple: Poland was producing own Mauser rifle with nice knife-bayonet, wz-24. Unofficially many of bayonets were cut down to be used as trench/boot daggers.

In 1945(Liberation of Poland) the storm groups of 1st Ukrainian Front officially got armed with those, mainly by ../35. Soviet troop were still short of small edged weapons. Long ones were issued to home front.

I only can assume that many Lebel bayonets with the 1st Ukrainian Front walked to Berlin.