Original Item. One-of-a-Kind. This is a very good WWII souvenir patch blanket section displaying a large assortment of U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, and Army Air Forces insignia, together with a single German Kriegsmarine NCO breast eagle. The section appears to have been cut from a larger regulation wool blanket and now retains a total of 92 hand-sewn patches and insignia. The section measures 32 x 35”.

Souvenir patch blankets were assembled by servicemen as personal records of wartime experience, travel, trade, and collecting. Patches could be obtained from comrades, exchanged with personnel from other units, purchased, or brought home as souvenirs. They were then sewn onto blankets, curtains, jackets, hats, and other fabric backgrounds as informal displays of service and wartime collecting.

Several particularly good examples are present throughout the display, giving the section considerable visual variety and illustrating the wide range of insignia encountered during WWII.

There are visible shadows and attachment evidence to the left and right of the 1st Division patch, indicating that additional patches were once present in those locations and were later removed.

These missing pieces are important to the history and condition of the blanket section and show that the surviving arrangement is no longer completely intact.

The cut edges also confirm that this is only a surviving portion of a larger souvenir blanket rather than a complete original blanket in its full wartime configuration.

The inclusion of a German Kriegsmarine NCO breast eagle among predominantly American insignia is especially interesting. It reflects the common practice of incorporating captured, traded, or otherwise acquired enemy insignia into American wartime souvenir displays.

Without provenance identifying the original serviceman, however, the exact circumstances under which any individual patch was obtained cannot be determined.

The combination of 92 surviving pieces, hand-sewn construction, broad representation of American military branches, the single German naval insignia, and visible missing-patch shadows makes this an appealing surviving section of a WWII serviceman’s souvenir display. It preserves both the collecting habits of returning American personnel and the layered history of a larger patch blanket that was later reduced in size.