Nice haul!  I would love to see a close up of the ribbons.   -Ski

Oh, you have to grab that!   Well done!   -Ski

Neat collection!   -Ski

53rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team SSI Florida Army National Guardsmen stand near the White House on June 3, 2026 in Washington, D.C. Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images.  

Ken How many times did you hear about crated Jeeps being buried on wartime airfields before the 'Yanks' left. Never an eye witness , they always heard it from a friend who knew someone who heard it from someone that was there.  There must be at least one out there somewhere in an old forgotten storage hanger or shed........  Having said that when we used to do gliding the one guy was a farmer and he stored some of the gliders in his barn. He told us that Rolls Royce bought an old small quarry on his land and used it to bury hundreds of aircraft engines that were still crated. Afterwards they added about 20ft of blitz rubble to seal it before finishing off with top soil. I never pushed him for details of the quarry as I had no way of digging it.  

Doing a scale model of this piece and I was wondering if that piece was really just one color (olive drab) like EVERYWHERE. All pictures I see are like just either Olive Drab or Green/Grey. But everything is that color. Was it really like that in the war? Most everything online is either a museum piece or some yard piece at a Veterans Hall. Not too many out there showing the actual combat since color photos and film was relatively new too expensive for war correspondents. Thanks for any input.

Well done. Enjoy it while you still have room for furniture!

Earlier on this thread I had posted this lighter:     Recently I became aware of the same lighter on eBay, but with the wording in Vietnamese:     Unfortunately, I don’t think that this is an authentic President Thieu lighter. Here’s the Vietnamese version I found on Wordpress:     I think you can see a major difference in quality between the two lighters, especially with the central seal as well as the overall engraving quality. I believe this last/bottom version is an authentic one.

Here are photos of the buckle on its sides.  

thank you for your replies and info. here it is in hand,