Hi, showing some pictures of my latest addition to the collection. It’s a Heer M42 I picked up from an Italian collector. It has some wear (but no mothing I can see), but what I really like is that the eagle and collar patches are attached with same thread that the tunic is made with, hence I believe the insignia to be wartime applied, and the wear likely wartime, something I’ve been looking for, for a while! Also, it didn’t break the bank (i.e not US dealer prices - no offence to US dealers!) which makes a change for me anyway.

There is a seam on a sleeve that has come away, but it doesn’t show when displayed, so I’ll probably leave that as it is. There are a few repairs made with a blue-black thread, they are quite ‘functional’, I wonder if even wartime? All the buttons match and are originally applied (marked "JFS 40" for Josef Felix & Sohne of Gablonz), except for the bottom one at the front, which is a replacement and a decent match, and there is one collar liner button missing, but I don’t think I’ll be losing any sleep over those!

It came with a pair of M36 type Infantry Unteroffizier shoulder straps which are plausible without NCO collar tress (field promotion, no time for unit tailor to add NCO tress etc), but I felt unlikely as there are no award loops and I might expect an NCO of that rank to at least have an Infantry Assault badge. The seller bought it from another collector, who in turn had bought it from the Italian dealer "Der Alter Art" (Stefano Borghi, incidentally he is also the Hermann Historica representative in Italy), and as luck would have it he still had the pictures on his website!

Alter Art - cod.u250 GIACCA M42 FANTERIA

When sold there it had basic Infantry EM boards on, so it’s possible that the intermediate owner had changed the boards. Of course after all this time who knows how many times boards could have been changed?

I’m always interested in the history of artefacts and contacted Stefano at "Der Alter Art" to ask if he recalled any history with the tunic, on the grounds that if you don’t ask you don’t get! He very kindly replied, only that he recalled that it was sourced in Germany. What a pity that more information is not preserved when these items change hands.

Regards, Paul

Click to enlarge the picture