The Armour Archive

can somebody give me a hand understanding this blazon?

fieldless, a sheaf of three swords inverted argent, held by a maintained gauntlet apaumy fesswise.

It is a Badge, as fieldless is allowed for Badges.

3 swords, points down and silver all over instead of hilted in gold (which is default for swords not otherwise spec'd); "maintained by a gauntlet..." would be better blazon: it's holding them by their midparts and the swords are angled right and left such as the shape of a sheaf of wheat would make, X plus a vertical one in the middle. The gauntlet, which seems to be "proper" and thus silver or gray, has its palm to the viewer, so its fingers and thumb are visible wrapped around that sheaf of swords. The gauntlet is quite horizontal in alignment.

In heraldry, the default position for weapons as charges is their position in normal use. Swords are normally point upwards, maces and axes business ends up, bows are upright and arrows shooting or lying horizontally. An Abrams tank would be, well, in profile. A hand grenade would be fuze upwards.

awesome thanks.

Konstantin the Red wrote:An Abrams tank would be, well, in profile.

Actually, the Army's Armor branch badge shows a tank affronty.

But modern heraldry as a rule avoids "prosaic objects."
(Until I think the 1960s the badge showed a WWI era (MK VII) tank in profile. It looked like a round-cornered parallelogram and was NOT easily recognizable!)
EDIT: The current insignia was actually adopted in 1951 and represents an M-26 Pershing tank.

Konstantin also wrote:A hand grenade would be fuze upwards.

There is a charge in heraldry called a grenade; it's the old-fashioned one consisting of a metal ball with a fuzeholder on top. The fuze is usually lit.

It's used in quite a vew coats, and is the badge of the First Regiment of Foot Guards, known as the Grenadiers.

Yep. Fuze upwards -- for a grenade of about any description but a stick grenade, which likely would be depicted fuze downwards, as it is hidden in its stick. Not that many grenadiers would try throwing a stick grenade underhand. Though you can imagine bizarre, confined situations where one might. Trying to throw a stick grenade up a chimney from the fireplace, say... Better get past that soot-shelf!

Throw a grenade UP a chimney? I think the odds would be against success . . .

A-yup.

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Razza-dam-frazzin chimney-hobs... killem all... then I go after the Gremlins From The Kremlin... für das Reich!!

Hans. Hans! Put the schnapps bottle down. Stop playing with those Granaten.

In Mother Rossya, grenade throw YOU!

Especially if you are having trouble with fuze.

"Raz, Dva, Pyat'! Nyet, Tri!!" BANG

Okay, everybody save the watches. It's getting pretty deep in here when I'm doing Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch in Russian.