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WWII skis and poles


Shakethetrees
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After the war my father had a good bit of downtime and took up winter sports. As an athletic kid from the South, he got to be pretty good on a pair of skis he liberated from somewhere in Occupied Germany. Somewhere I have a photo album of him on the slopes.

 

He brought this set home with him and, called up for The Korean War and sent back to Germany, he packed them up and brought them back with him.

 

They appear to be Whermacht issue used by Gebirgsjaeger troops in less friendly times, and match some I found photos of. The toe clips are marked as made by Kandahar and the heel plates are signed in some script that I can't make out. Several parts are stamped "Made in Germany". My guess as to an explanation is that the Whermacht purchased skis from manufacturers who also exported them pre war.

 

The only waffenampt I saw on the pictures of skis was on the underside, right at or just aft of the upward curl. He did tell me that he sanded and refinished/waxed them before using them, so any Wampt. Is long gone.

 

I have eight images of the skis themselves. I will have to hunt down the album to get some scans of him in action.

In the early 1960's we went to Colorado on a family Christmas vacation, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, this was a big deal. When we reached the ski run, a look came over him as he put them on. By then they were old school, but he took off and tore up the slopes, to our amazement!

 

Anyway, I digress.

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More images. The first shows the toe clamps with the Kandahar marking. It's a little hard to read, but these things have been in an attic since 1962.

 

The poles are unmarked. All leather straps show signs of critter damage, but the metal bits are still there.

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What a neat and unusual bringback! I really like them. Funny how the binding technology hadn't changed much by the time I took up skiing in the mid 60's.

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