Card centres

[garlanj]

Just wondering if anyone could enlighten me as to the background for these officer cockades with card centres?

 

[b.loree]

Provides an option....for the M15 style Officer helmet with M91 posts or the traditional split prong bosses.?? I have not seen that version before.

 

[Sandmann]

It‘s a Version of M15-Cocades. I don‘t know if this information is from Lacarde, but there have been officer cocades existing with 2 small opposing holes next to the centre-hole. I have a text from a french book and a picture of cocades like this, but I can’t show it because I don’t know the name of the book.
If interested send a PM and I can send you my informations.

 

[JohnS3rd]

Great information guys!
Thank You
John

 

[garlanj]

Thanks guys. I’d looked in the books I have but couldn’t find anything. I’ve seen a few over the years, mostly on French eBay.
Sandy, I’ll Send you a PM
All the best
Jeremy

 

[J.LeBrasseur]

I have a Prussian set of these I will dig out and take pictures of.

James

 

[b.loree]

There is an officer Reichs kokarde with the center and 2 smaller holes for sale right now on A of K. To me this is designed for the M91 post and prongs to go through the kokarde and into the helmet.

 

[Sandmann]

There is an officer Reichs kokarde with the center and 2 smaller holes for sale right now on A of K. To me this is designed for the M91 post and prongs to go through the kokarde and into the helmet.

That’s correct. But according my informations this type came up for officers around 1915. Nevertheles, I have to correct the source where I have my informations from. I wrote an Essay about cockades for myself from various sources, when I started interesting for Pickelhaube. Unfortunately I lost the source and thought it was from a french book too, where I got other informations from, but it was an entry in a French Forum of our dear member clovis57. Hope he can tell us if he knows a book where the informations are from
Here is the Link where I found the informations https://lagrandeguerre.1fr1.net/
And this is my translation from the part acc. Model 1915:

At that time there were 5 different models (only the last two are M15 creations):​

1. Enlisted men: cockades as from 1891 with M91 mounting hole (since 1895 with a reduced diameter of 48mm).
2. NCOs with portepee: As 1891 with M91 mounting hole and single metal ring in silver or gold.
3. Officer-cockades for property helmets existed from 1871/99.
4. Officer-cockades with M91 mounting hole.
5. Officer-cockades with a small mounting hole and 2 small opposite punched holes for the pins of the M91 buttons with which they are locked .

 

[garlanj]

So I guess this is a conversion to remove the pain of the cockades falling off when swapping chinscales for a chinstrap in the field. The cardboard means the cockades can be mounted behind the M91 lugs and are thus permanently fixed as is the case with the all metal versions.
Thanks all, and particularly Sandy
All the best
Jeremy