Original U.S. WWII Early Style Shelter Tent with Peg Bag & Early Pattern Collapsible Tent Poles - Rare

Original Item. Only One Available. A shelter-half is a simple kind of partial tent designed to provide temporary shelter and concealment when combined with one or more sections. Two sheets of canvas or a similar material (the halves) are fastened together with snaps, straps or buttons to form a larger surface. The shelter-half is then erected using poles, ropes, pegs, and whatever tools are on hand, forming an inverted V structure. Small tents like these are often called pup tents in American English.

This is a scarce set consisting of two WWII shelter halfs, a large waterproof bag to house them, the original early pattern collapsible tent poles, and the pegs in their original peg bag.

One of the two halves have a laundry number written on, and they appear to be different shades, one khaki and the other closer to an OD green. Both halves are of the period are are in good overall shape.

The original peg bag is marked with a QM 1942 date. There are five small pegs retained in the bag. Also included are two early pattern collapsible tent poles, one of which is marked to COMMERCIAL METAL PRODUCTS CO. of PHILA, PA, Patent applied for. 

An outstanding set, ready for further research and display!

Shelter halves are a mainstay of most armies, and are known from the mid 19th century. Often, each soldier carries one shelter-half and half the poles, etc., and they pair off to erect a two-man tent. The size and shape of each half shelter piece may vary from army to army, but are typically rectangular, triangular or lozenge shaped. When time and space allow, some forms of half-shelters can be combined into a larger, more complex tent.

Shelter-halves are usually designed to serve double duty as ponchos against the rain, or for the concealment of snipers. While the fabric is often simple olive drab, several nations use camouflage fabric. The first printed camouflage for soldiers was the Italian Telo mimetico introduced in 1929 for their half-shelters. The first camouflage uniforms were the Second World War German paratrooper smock, based on their M1931 Splittermuster shelter-halves. Russian Army has used Plasch-palatkas (literally "cape-tents", designed to be used as both a part of a larger tent cover, or an individual weatherproof cape) since 1894, and the modern version, virtually unchanged since, was introduced in 1936, with the camo version being available since 1942. To add some confusion, the ordinary waterproofed cape with a similar name (plasch-nakidka, "cape-overcoat") was issued at the same time, but these weren't intended to combine with each other.