World War I Trench Knife

This is a World War I Mark 1 trench knife. The U.S. Military found the earlier Model 1917 and Model 1918 trench knives lacked functionality. The Mark 1 got rid of the earlier triangular blades and instead featured a double-edged flat blade. It also features a bronze handle with integral finger grips. In order to get knives to troops in the field as quickly as possible, the first Mark 1 trench knives were ordered from a French manufacturer, Au Lion. This knife is an example of one made by the Au Lion company.

The knife belonged to Charles Wentworth Hoffmann, who was born in North Carolina in 1891 and joined the New Mexico National Guard in 1916. During WWI, Hoffmann was a Lieutenant serving with the 131st Machine Gun Battalion, 36th Division. The 36th Division was originally composed of soldiers from the Texas and Oklahoma National Guards, with replacements coming from Texas volunteers and draftees. The 36th trained at Camp Bowie in Fort Worth, Texas, from the summer of 1917 to summer 1918. The Division went overseas to France in July 1918 and entered combat on October 8, 1918. They saw 24 days of combat before the war ended. While most of the soldiers in the 36th Division were from Texas, some of the officers, like Hoffmann, came from other states. Hoffmann purchased this knife while serving in France. He engraved one side of his knife with “France, -19, 131 M.G. BN. 36th Div.”

In a 1966 newsletter article for The Branding Iron, Charles Hoffmann related the incredible story of what happened to his knife in WWI and afterwards. On October 11, 1918, he went into battle carrying the knife. He collided with a German soldier in the dark and lost the knife. In the midst of battle, he was unable to find it. Fast forward to September 24, 1944. Now with the rank of Colonel, Hoffman was in charge of a German prisoner of war enclosure in France. After rounding up 200 prisoners he overheard some of his men discussing a knife which had been turned in by a German prisoner. Col. Hoffman asked to see the knife and found it was engraved “C.W.H. 131 M.G. BN. 36th Div.” It was the same knife he’d lost on that October night in 1918! He had the original WWI information reengraved by a jeweler and had “England 1942-’44, France 1944-’45, Belgium 1946” added to the other side of his knife. The C.C.E 13 stood for Continental Central Enclosure 13, the name of the POW camp he commanded for the U.S. forces.

Col. Hoffmann served with the California National Guard between the wars and spent most of his life there. The knife was turned into the Ventura County, California sheriff’s department by Hoffmann’s niece and donated to the Texas Military Forces Museum in 2012.

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