Knife-dagger model 16 "the avenger of 1870"
The conflict evolving from war of movement to war of position, combat conditions will also evolve.
Indeed, positional warfare, especially in the trenches, will favor close combat. The need is therefore felt to equip the troops with daggers.
At first the soldiers will themselves make daggers from, for example, shortened bayonets.
The French army will have private industry make trench daggers with a short, tapered blade. The model presented here is one of them.
The trench knife will be one of the favorite weapons of the "trench cleaners"
At the beginning of 1915, trench warfare brought about the reappearance of a long-abandoned weapon in our army:the dagger. The combatant needed a short, manageable weapon for hand-stabbing, that is, the complete opposite of the bayonet. While period bayonets offered a relatively comfortable grip, the length of the blades made them resolutely unusable elsewhere than at the end of the rifle:52 cm of blade with us, 52 and 37 with the Germans, 43 with the British (the Austrians were for once better off, with blades of only 25 cm!). The commissioning of short bladed weapons was therefore essential, so they quickly made their appearance in each camp. In France, there were 2 kinds:those which were entirely manufactured for the occasion, and those which were bastardised with reformed bayonet blades.
One of the most common French trench knives, it is often called "the avenger of 1870" because this proud motto was sometimes engraved on the blade, flush of the guard. It was produced by various establishments:the Besset cutlery in Thiers. A Bourgade (with a Chinese face), S.G.C.O, and a few others. The blade is double-edged, in the same style as that of the American MK1 trench knife made in France. The total length is approximately 280 mm, and it weighs only 150 grams (215 grams with the scabbard). The blade is extended by a tang to the end of the handle, which is quite firmly fixed by a nut on the thread of the tang. The guard is generously sized (78mm), and the smooth wooden handle, reminiscent of that of the boarding knife of the Navy, has a slightly oval section, and offers an excellent grip. The scabbard is made of thin sheet metal, the loop of belt, with a wide opening (75 mm) consisting of a curved metal rod, one flattened end of which was threaded halfway up the sheath during manufacture, before the latter was folded down and brazed; this loop is fixed by a rivet to the upper part of the sheath. The only serious criticism that can be made of the weapon is that it scraps very quickly; no matter how hard we try to tighten the fixing nut of the handle to make up for the play, the guard moves easily and noisily on the blade, the same goes for the belt loop, despite (or because of) its economical assembly and ingenious.
This knife remained in service throughout the war, and even for a long time after, since at the beginning of the 1930s, it still provided Renault tank drivers with certain combat tank regiments. , 1920-1945), it was even distributed in 1940 to certain B.C.C. Especially at 49.