A London museum is for the first time revealing the hand-to-hand weapons used in the First World War by Army officers — and created by their West End tailors.
The Guards Museum, in Wellington Barracks near Buckingham Palace, has put on display three of the weapons — a brass knuckle duster, a flexible cosh finished in leather which could be secreted in a pocket and a mini-mace, made from a branch with a lump of lead inserted in the top.
The weapons were found among thousands of artefacts in the archives of the 370-year-old Household Division. Andrew Wallis, curator of the museum, said: “We’ve recently uncovered a number of artefacts from our reserve collection, all to do with trench fighting in the Great War.
“When the young officers were informed they were going to the frontline, they would have gone to their West End tailors and said, ‘Have you got anything I can take with me for when the bullets run out?’
“They would procure these very fearsome weapons, many of which were beautifully produced — it’s what they would take to protect themselves in close-quarter battle. They would have popped out to their local tailor and got themselves a weapon.
“Those artefacts are very evocative of the period and bring home to you that these young soldiers and officers ended up in hand-to-hand fighting.
“Anyone can be brave from 500 metres away, but when you’re staring your opponent in the eye, fighting with these trench tools, that really brings home how grim and how gruesome the trenches were.”
A total of 4,096 Guardsmen, mostly from the barracks, died fighting in Flanders between 1914 and 1918. In June, the museum unveiled a £700,000 memorial garden created from soil from 70 Flanders battlefields.
