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A
Tunic Collar Liner
By
Eric Tobey
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The
following was taken from the Die Neue Feldpost newsletter
& was done so with permission of the publisher.
We would like to thank him for his generosity as well
as thank all those who have contributed to this
article. It is with their efforts, we are able
to share this valuable research with the rest of you.
An item
commonly issued to German soldiers was the Kragenbinde,
or collar liner. The purpose of this device was
to protect the wool collar on the tunic (which was
difficult to clean) from unsightly soiling, and to
protect the wearer's neck from being chafed by the
collar. The collar liner wasn't needed when the
Wehrmacht began using the M42 collared shirts because
the shirt collar was supposed to do the same things as
the collar liner. Nevertheless, some soldiers
were issued the collarless shirts as late as 1944, and
along with these shirts they were issued Kragenbinde.
New recruits were commonly issued obsolete or pre-worn
uniform parts, and trainees were recorded in their Soldbuchs
as having received collarless shirts and collar liners
until almost the end of the war. Normally, this
"training suit" was exchanged for the
up-to-date field uniform (including M42 shirts)
shortly before the new soldier was transferred to the
front.
We
examined two different versions of the collar liner
for this study. Besides being slightly different
in size, the smaller, more worn version has white
cloth on one side and black polished cotton on the
other, with linen lining inside. The other
specimen is also lined with a linen-like fabric, but
has both inside and outside made of black polished
cotton. The drawing and dimensions given here
are for the all-black example.
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Overall
dimensions of the piece are 23 3/4" long and 1
3/4" wide. There are two sides to it: the
outside, or the side that goes against the tunic
collar (this is the side shown in the illustration),
and the inside, or the side that goes against
the wearer's neck. Both the inside and outside
are made of black polished cotton with a bluish
linen-like lining (see cross section drawing).
The buttonholes are sewn only through the two outside
pieces (lining and outside cotton piece). The
only feature on the inside of the collar liner is a
small strip of lining material with a buttonhole in
it, sewn onto the surface of the liner with two lines
of stitching (labeled "H") which go all the
way through the piece. The outside has the
buttonholes going through it to attach to the tunic
collar buttons and one wooden button.
The
apparent method of construction was simple:
After the two cotton and two lining parts
were cut out, each lining part was sewn on
its mate along the bottom edge, with both
parts inside out. They were now turned
right-side out and top-stitched, again, only
along the bottom edge. There would now
be two holes (labeled "A",
"E", and "F", with the
middle hole centered on the piece, and all
of them 5/8" of an inch from the
bottom) and bottom (labeled "B")
were put in the "inside" part of
the collar liner. The two halves would
then be put together inside out, or with the
cotton pieces facing one another, and sewn
along the top and sides. Now the thing
would be turned right-side out, pressed, and
top-stitched along the top and sides as
shown in the illustration. The small
strip of lining (labeled "E":
1" wide by 1 3/4" long) with
buttonhole in it was now sewn on with the
stitching going all the way through both
halves ("H"). This was to
fasten to button "B" when worn to
close the liner around the neck. Four
lines of stitching were sewn all the way
through the finished collar liner to keep
the halves from separating (labeled
"G"). These lines of
stitching did not extend all the way across
the collar liner, they start at the bottom
and go halfway to the top.
The
collar liner was then complete, ready to be
shipped to the supply depot.
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