World War II souvenir from Tunis
 

In it's current form I can only describe this thing as a shank. The blade reads

Lt L C Espino Souvenir World Wor II
Tunis D D Golabalo 20
65th Inf

The 65th infantry was apparently a Puerto Rican unit. http://www.prvmsa.org/2012/07/11/65t...ntry-regiment/ They trained in North Africa and then shipped off for France.

I have no idea what D D Golabalo 20 means. There may be an I or a J after the second D, it's hard to say. There's also some flowery decorations. I don't know if these were done at the same time as the message or predate it.

The engraving seems pretty well done, I find it hard to believe this is what this object looked like when Lt Espino bought it. Why would you bother engraving such a crude and ugly weapon? I'd bet the the hilt is some ad hoc repair done on the battlefield.

The wood hilt is wrapped in what appears to be a bandage and the wood underneath looks like it was once dyed red. The tip of the blade has been reprofiled with a file or power tool to be more stabby and the edge is sharp and shiny so somebody sharpened it recently. It's not pretty but it looks quite effective as a weapon. The blade slides out easily but I don't see any markings on the tang.

Does anybody have a guess to what this once was or what D D Golabalo 20 might mean?

It looks like the blade decoration had a Greek motif and Greek lettering. I can see a delta pretty clearly.

Interesting. I wonder how it ended up in Tunis.

http://www.lonesentry.com/65thbook/index.html

That's a history of the units action in Europe, which started in France and ended in Austria. This little blade was carried through quite a bit of heavy front line action which must have reduced it to its current state.