German mountain troops, Gebirgsjager boot campion or ice cleat recovered in the Belfort Gap the battle in the Vosges Mountains on the French - German border the battle in 1944-1945

This is a German mountain troops, Gebirgsjager boot campion or ice cleat which is near complete but with no straps. The campion is in relic and rusty condition it is still very solid not braking up or crumbling it still moves like it should do and has been well clean and is perfect for display or any collection. The campion was recovered in the Belfort Gap the battle in the Vosges Mountains on the French - German border the battle in 1944-1945.

German resistance was spotty in September 1944, but rapidly coalesced in front of the Belfort Gap, a corridor of relatively flat terrain that lies between the Vosges and Jura mountains on the Swiss frontier, and a gateway to the Rhine river. The advance of the French 1st Army Corps was slowed in front of the Belfort Gap by the German 11th panzer Division which dug in defended the gap. This Panther tank was destroyed during that fighting in October 1944 until January 1945. In three months of savage fighting, the U.S. Seventh Army finally took the Mountains but at a large cost. Around the area of the Belfort Gap. With the toughest terrain on the Western Front, the Vosges mountain range was seemingly an impregnable fortress, manned by German Gebirgsjager mountain troops determined to hold the last barrier between the Allies and the Rhine. Yet despite nearly constant rain, snow, ice, and mud, soldiers of the U.S. Seventh Army tore through thousands of pillboxes, acres of barbed wire, hundreds of roadblocks, and miles of other enemy obstacles, ripping the tenacious German defenders out of their fortifications in fierce fighting–and then held on to their gains by crushing Operation Nordwind, the German offensive launched in a hail of steel at an hour before midnight on the last New Year’s Eve of the war. 

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