Cartridges cases are probably by far the most frequently found of items on the battlefield. We show above just a few with their identifying headstamps. Besides the maker marks and year of manufacture you will also notice that they come from rifles, BARs and 50 cal MGs. Below is listed the manufacturers as they appear from left to right above:
Denver Ordnance Plant (DEN)
Des Moines Ordnance Plant (DM)
Delaware Ordnance Plant (DW)
Eau Claire Ordnance Plant (EW)
Lake City Ordnance Plant (LC)
Remington Arms Co (RA)
St Louis Ordnance Plant (SL)
Twin Cities Ordnance Plant (TW)
*Utah Ordnance Plant (U) shown and/or (UT) not shown
Frankford Arsenal (FA)
Fabrique National? (FN 9mm 43)
Federal Cartridge Co (FC)
(RL vii) - British 303 clearly from 1939.
Radway Green (RG vii) - British 303. This cartridge was made in Cheshire. They started the MK VII design commenced in 1940 and Radway initially used a single arrow as their identifier, switching to "RG" in 1942. All Ministry of Defence manufacturers of ammunition stopped using the Roman mark numerals of the example seen above in late '44, so we can now say that the cartridge dates from either 1943, '44, possibly 1942 but certainly not 1945. However this still doesn't answer the question as to how it ended up where it was unearthed!!
Winchester Repeating Arms Co (WRA)
*The Utah Ordnance Plant was termed a "second wave" plant. It was run by Remington on behalf of the US Government and was located in Salt Lake City, Utah.
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