German Uniforms and Equipment

Breadbag Contents Part 1

This Section will concentrate on the breadbag contents in no particular order.

A diversity of personal belongings will be shown here

Butter Dish (Fettbüchse)

An item that could be found in almost every breadbag was the so called Fettbüchse or Fat Container.

It was a small round box with a diameter of aprox 10,5 cm made out of bakelite
which contained butter, fat or schmalz (lard) which was used for cooking or was spread on bread.

Appearently every soldier was authorized aprox 72 grams of this fat per day and a fat container could
hold about three rations (aprox 220 grams).

These containers can be found in a lot of different colours.

It was introduced by order H.V.Bl. 38B No. 203 (Heeres Verordnungs Blatt 203 von 1938 Teil B) dated June 1st, 1938

203. Fat Container

1. To preserve the portion of fat belonging to the field portion (Sandwich spread) a Fat container will be introduced. First, 2 sets will be determined as Soll. The wearing time will not be set. Trials, description and acceptance specifications will be issued later.

2.  Designation: Fat Container
     Material Structure number: 41
     Tool Class: B
     Requirementsign: B 234
     Weight: aprox. 85 gramm

June 1st, 1938

Below a few examples in orange, red/brown and black

Below: Detail picture of the standard orange fat container

The screw lid of the container came with a fine thread and coarse thread.

Most of the time the fine thread means a post war production, but it can be easily checked:
Original lids allways opens and closes in one quarter of a turn.

Below left: black fat container with fine thread

Below right: orange container with coarse thread

Bakelite is an early sort of plastic and was used extensively for the German Army
because of it's heat resistance and electrically non-conductive properties.

Each bakelite article was supposed to be marked which showed the producer and the material it was made of.
This mark was known as the M P D marking (which stands for Staatliches Material Prüfungsamt Dahlem (near Berlin)

Below a few examples encountered on the orange, red-brown and black fat container

24 - Manufacturer : Gebrüder Merten, Gummersbach (Rhld.)

K - Material used : Urea Resin with organic filler

6 - probably batch number

 

3F - Manufacturer : Reininghaus & Co.,
                                  Beleuchtungskörper-Fabrik, Lüdenscheid i. Westf.

S - Material used : Phenolic Resin with wood filler (Sawdust)

 

0X - Maufacturer : Karl Friedr. Seiter K.G.,
                                Bollwerk i. Westf., Post Oberbrügge

S - Material used : Phenolic Resin with wood filler (Sawdust)