The Ones That Didn’t Get Away: Mystery Steel and Ancient Forum Wisdom
Some knives are beautiful. Some are useful. A few are neither.
This one came in mislabeled, dumped in a pile of surplus with a decaying leather sheath and rust clinging to the guard. It looked like an M4 bayonet. At first. But the longer I stared at it, the less sense it made.
The guard had the barrel ring from an M4, meant to slide over the muzzle of an M1 Carbine. But the pommel was off an M3 fighting knife. No bayonet lug. No attachment mechanism. Nothing that would actually let it stick to a rifle. Which raises the obvious question: if it doesn’t attach, is it still a bayonet? Or just a knife that thinks it’s one?
I tried to ignore it. Cleaned it up. Set it aside. But it kept circling back. I started digging through old military surplus forums. Posts from 2008 written by guys who quoted Army manuals like scripture. Eventually I found it. A short run of parts knives, cobbled together from leftover M3 and M4 components at the tail end of World War II. Never officially adopted. Some say experimental. Some say just a way to use up stock.
It never made it into standard issue. Which is probably why it ended up here. Halfway between bayonet and trench knife. Half a story told by a machine shop.
I’m keeping it. It doesn’t belong anywhere else.
