This German issue Zeltbahn shelter quarter is a standard “midwar” example with zinc buttons and grommets. There is an illegible partial maker stamp and what appears to be a 1940 date. There are numerous and extensive repairs.
We know that equipment items like this were repaired and reissued at unit level and also by depots and workshops. We also know that soldiers were responsible for maintaining equipment and doing basic small repairs.
What may be less clear, looking at an item like this, is when and by whom it was repaired. In collector circles there is talk of a wartime Zeltbahn repair kit composed of circular patches and glue. We can see at least 20 of these supposed “repair kit” repairs on this Zeltbahn. In years of collecting, this writer has never seen an original “Zeltbahn repair kit” nor any reference to one in a period document- in other words, no evidence that this existed. That is not to say that it could not have existed, of course. Perhaps further research could shed light on this question.
Some of the glued circular repairs on this Zeltbahn are on top of other machine stitched repairs, indicating repairs to this were done by different people at different times. 1940 to 1945 might have been enough time for a Zeltbahn to have become worn out this way. But these were used postwar as well, not only by individual hikers and campers, but on a large scale by German and foreign civil, military and paramilitary organizations. I would suggest that little may be known today by collectors about the institutional level repair practices used after 1945 to maintain these surplus items which were no longer in production.
Another point of interest here is that one corner of this wartime Zeltbahn has been replaced with a corner from a prewar Zeltbahn with aluminum grommets and buttons.
The light side of this Zeltbahn shows a pattern of small light spots. This piece shows it particularly well. This “fish scale” or “corn cob” type pattern is not uncommon to see on German Zeltbahn fabric. It can also be found on Swiss made splinter camouflage fabric as used by the Swiss Army. Some collectors have mistakenly assumed that only Swiss fabric has these dots. I am not sure if this is a deliberate aspect of the pattern or (perhaps more likely) some artifact resulting from the way the fabric was printed or finished.
