Ardennes Belges - Belgium

This is constructed of either tin or aluminum and is an unused medallion/stocknagel. This stocknagel is to be mounted on a walking stick with two nails to show the places that they had visited. These are called either pins, mounts, shields, stocknagel, medallions, placckette/scudetti or badges and do the same thing as lapel or hat pins, they tell everyone where you have been and what you have seen.

The Ardennes (Luxembourgish: Ardennen; also known as Ardennes Forest) is a region of extensive forests, rough terrain, rolling hills and ridges formed by the geophysical features of the Ardennes mountain range and the Moselle and Meuse River basins. Geologically, the range is a western extension of the Eifel and both were raised during the Givetian stage, of the Devonian (419.2 ± 3.2 to about 358 Mya (million years ago)) as were several other named ranges of the same greater range.

Primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into Germany and France (lending its name to the Ardennes department and the Champagne-Ardenne région), and geologically into the Eifel—the eastern extension of the Ardennes Forest into Bitburg-Prüm, Germany, most of the Ardenne proper consists of southeastern Wallonia, the southern and more rural part of the Kingdom of Belgium (away from the coastal plain but encompassing over half the kingdom’s total area). The southern part of the Ardennes is the northern section of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and on the southeast the Eifel region continues into Rhineland-Palatinate (German state).

The trees and rivers of the Ardenne provided the underlying charcoal industry assets that enabled the great industrial period of Wallonia in the 18th, 19th centuries, when it was arguably the second great industrial region of the world, after England. The greater region maintained an industrial eminence into the 20th century after coal replaced charcoal in metallurgy.

Allied generals in World War II felt the region was impenetrable to massed vehicular traffic and especially armor, so the area was effectively "all but undefended" during the war, leading to the German Army twice using the region as an invasion route into Northern France and Southern Belgium via Luxembourg in the Battle of France and the later Battle of the Bulge.

Thank you all for your interest. Please check my ebay store for many hundreds of additional German walking stick pins.