I was recently going through my grandfathers ww2 possessions and found this tag. Does anybody know what it was used for and what the writing on it means too? Image attached. Fought in western desert FYI
As Owen points out it is French...troisieme indicated by 3e as an abbreviation,similar to third, "rd" in the English language ..."bis" looks to be "with an address" which I would say in this case refers to the military unit.
I found a similar item in my late father's WW2 collection, thought to be from an Italian PoW sailor, my father was stationed in Alexandria / Cairo. I've attached it for you to see, just out of interest. I would love to return it to his family but that could be very difficult !!
Looks like 3º to me. The masculine ordinal indicator, º, was used in languages such as Spanish, Portuguese and Italian (Well done Robert-w). I haven’t seen the underlined version used in French. “Pte” could be the abbreviation for Puente (Spanish) or Ponte (Italian) meaning Bridge. So, possibly, it was an address and attached to a set of keys. p.s. The º should be underlined, but the fonts available on here don't allow it!
It's a very stylised font. The stamps look almost like 'local production' and they're not struck cleanly. Without thinking too hard, I read it as....3e Qtr. G. bis... "Quartier Général" perhaps ?..but which ?