I was looking out for a WWI field
telephone when I visited the Somme in 2001 but the best I could
do was this German Telephone battery box which I bought at the
museum at Albert.
The museum sells artefacts but these
are getting scarcer and of poorer quality each year.
The inside lip of the lid is
inscribed "F.Mauthe
Gmbh, Schalmingen" or something
like this. If anyone can verify this wording or has any information
I would be interested to hear it.
Here are some views:-
On the top of the lid there
were a couple of labels helping with its operation. The terminals
connected to the telephone lines laid between trenches
and the loudspeaker presumably
for morse reception connected to the complicated array of sockets
on the end. A second wooden box with the rest for the handset
connects to this one. |