{"product_id":"prussian-infantry-regiment-140-leutnant-shoulder-board-west-prussian-original","title":"Prussian Infantry Regiment 140 Leutnant Shoulder Board West Prussian Original","description":"\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003eThis is a single original officer's shoulder board (Schulterstück) of a Leutnant (second lieutenant) of the 4. Westpreußisches Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 140 (Fourth West Prussian Infantry Regiment No. 140), a line infantry regiment of the Prussian Army. The identification is secure: the flat interwoven officer's braid places the wearer among the commissioned officers, the absence of any rank star fixes the grade at Leutnant (the junior officer rank, one step below Oberleutnant, which carried a single star), and the applied numeral 140 names the regiment directly.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003eThe board is constructed of two lengths of flat silver officer's braid (Tresse) drawn in parallel and turned in a rounded loop at the head, worked in the herringbone weave standard to Imperial officer boards and laid over a fabric underlay (Unterlage). The visible underlay and the reverse backing are a light cream to white wool; the front is largely covered by the braid, so only the narrow margins read as underlay. A gilt metal regimental numeral 140 is fixed to the lower half of the braid by prongs. The reverse shows the mounting typical of a removable officer board: a worked button slit (Knopfloch) at the head, through which the board buttoned at the collar end of the shoulder, and the bent-over prong tips of the numeral pressing through the backing. A faint mark is present near one edge of the reverse but is not legible in the provided images. No maker's stamp is otherwise visible.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003eThe regiment itself is a substantial one for the collector of Imperial infantry. Raised among the West Prussian regiments of the later 19th-century Prussian expansion, Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 140 formed part of the 8th Infantry Brigade of the 4th Division under the II Army Corps, whose divisional seat lay at Bromberg. In the First World War the regiment saw hard service on the Western Front, including documented action in the Verdun sector before Fort Douaumont, one of the most costly battlefields of the war. A shoulder board carrying the \"140\" therefore ties directly to a regiment with a recorded combat history rather than to an anonymous garrison unit, which is the distinction that matters to collectors who build by regiment.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003eThe German elements are limited to the rank system carried in the insignia itself. Schulterstück is the officer's shoulder board as distinct from the enlisted man's cloth strap (Schulterklappe); Leutnant is the entry commissioned rank, translated as second lieutenant; the numeral 140 is the regimental number and requires no translation. No inscription, name, or maker's mark is present to attribute the board to an individual officer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003eIn condition the board is complete and honest. The silver braid has toned to a warm, slightly golden tarnish across its surface with no unraveling or loss to the weave, and the gilt numeral is firmly seated and fully legible. The reverse cloth shows soiling, age spotting, and the expected disturbance around the button slit and the numeral prongs, consistent with a board removed from a tunic and long stored. There is no evidence of moth damage to the visible surfaces, and no part of the braid or the numeral is missing. As a single board rather than a matched pair, it is presented for the shoulder from which it came.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003eFor the collector, a numbered, regimentally identifiable Imperial officer's board is a materially better acquisition than a plain example, because the identification is fixed rather than inferred. Unnumbered single Imperial infantry officer boards trade in the sixty-dollar range at retail; the presence of a clear regimental numeral, and one belonging to a regiment with a known Verdun record, places this piece above that baseline. It suits a collection built by regiment, by the Province of West Prussia, or by the II Army Corps, and it stands equally as an affordable, unambiguous example of Imperial officer rank insignia.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Derrittmeister Militaria Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50228030570735,"sku":"23-13","price":125.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/9169\/5855\/files\/23-13_1.jpg?v=1784850621","url":"https:\/\/derrittmeister.com\/products\/prussian-infantry-regiment-140-leutnant-shoulder-board-west-prussian-original","provider":"Derrittmeister Militaria Group","version":"1.0","type":"link"}