COMMANDOS’ KNIVES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 May 1942, Page 4

COMMANDOS’ KNIVES

FORGED BY QUEEN VICTORIA’S SWORDMAKER. Eighty-year-old swordmaker Tom Beasley, who forged his first blade as a child of eight during the FrancoPrussian war of 1870, is working 10| hours a day helping to arm Britain against her enemies. Since war began he has lost only half-an-hour of working time —when his clock stopped one morning. But today the skill Tom put into making the sword presented to Queen Victoria by the Indian Princes on her Diamond Jubilee is being used to show younger men how to forge the deadly black knives used by Britain’s commandos and parachute troops. These knives, worn in a leather scabbard attached to the leg, have an interesting history. Of the finest sword steel, they were designed by Superintendents Fairbairn and Sykes of the Shanghai Police, who put their “rough house” experience to good account by teaching Britain’s shock troops the art of swift and silent killing. But the pattern is really much older, for, in 1686, troops fighting at Bayonne thrust such daggers as these into the muzzles of their flintlock muskets—and gave the world the first bayonet. The factory where Tom Beasley has worked for 50 years normally turns out not only the best swords but the finest hollow ground razor blade in the world. Founded in 1772 as gunmakers, they started, making swords in 1832 and cut-throat razors in 1890, while ten years later they were one of the first steel forgers to take up the safety razor, which in peace time they send all over the world. Their swords go to the military and police forces in the Empire, South America, Abyssinia, Egypt and other countries, but war has put an end to this. Now the company make the commando knives and scabbards, armourpiercing shot for anti-tank guns and an automatic fire extinguisher, the Graviner, which is installed in every British warplane. Organised for war effort, the factory has doubled its staffs —now 50 per cent women —and quad-) nipled its output.