Ahhh, I always thought that Types 1 and 2 came out closer to the end of the war.  This definitely proves otherwise.   This is a Type 1.   -Ski

Man, I love this thread!  Here is a photo I am not sure was posted already.  It features the PX 101st Airborne patch being worn by the Divisional commander (?).   -Ski    

Really nice work on the knife.  Love it!

PM on the way.

A photo of him wearing his P 41s this would be July 1944

Any idea on what the tag would have read?

Recent finds from house clean out in Northern Virginia. Iwo Jima Marine, Corporal Theodore Charles Kasica Assistant Cook, Company B, 1st Battalion, 25th Marines, 4th Marine Division By the third week on Iwo Jima, the savage fighting in the “Meat Grinder” east of Airfield No. 2 had worn down even the toughest Marines. On March 10, 1945, Corporal Ted Kasica, the 22-year-old assistant cook from Passaic, New Jersey, was once again braving enemy fire to supply his fellow Marines in Company B. It was only natural that Ted became a cook — his father was a baker back home. The family trade had quietly followed him into the Marine Corps, turning him into the man who kept his brothers fed in the middle of hell. Japanese snipers had already tried four times to hit him. On D-Day, while rushing machine-gun ammunition forward, the first bullet slammed into the box he carried; miraculously, it did not explode. A second sniper fired while he was pinned down by a mortar barrage. A third time, carrying a bright yellow airplane target marker over his shoulder during a general advance, a Japanese soldier shot at the conspicuous marker “out of curiosity.” On the fourth and final attempt, Ted staggered forward under the heavy load of a case of rations and four bandoliers of ammunition, delivering food and supplies to the front lines near the Amphitheater-Knob salient. This time the sniper found his mark. The bullet smashed into his left wrist, fracturing the bones. “He only hit my wrist,” Kasica later said with quiet understatement. In the same deadly area that morning, his Company Commander, Captain Fred Kendall, sprinted forward through heavy fire, rallied his stalled Marines, and personally led the assault that knocked out four machine guns and accounted for twenty-two of the enemy—before he himself was cut down and killed. Ted was evacuated the same day, beginning the long road home through hospitals to New Jersey. That afternoon the Amphitheater-Knob salient finally fell, with the 25th Marines closing the trap on the last major Japanese strongpoint in the 4th Marine Division’s zone. For Corporal Theodore Kasica, the war ended in the dust and smoke of that bowl-shaped killing ground. He had served honorably as an assistant cook — carrying on his father’s baking tradition in the most dangerous way imaginable — repeatedly walking through enemy fire so his fellow Marines could eat, fight, and hold the line. A quiet hero who proved that even the cook could be as brave as any rifleman on Iwo Jima.