Do I Have a British or Canadian Clasp Knife ?

[Peter Laidler]

When I left my apprenticeship (it was called boy-service) and went into the real world, we were given all of our new kit and the fatherly Company Commander (Major Swanson, Royal Surrey Regt) gave us leavers all a short talk about the real world outside our sheltered world of apprentices and school. Be gentlemanly, abhor violence and war at all costs and all that stuff - and then the next thing the quartermaster walked round and gave us all a razor sharp jack-knife* as shown! Strange world. And shortly afterwards the first of our batch got the chop in Aden!
*We called them jack-knives. I kept mine and gave it to my son a couple of years ago. The good thing about the jack-knife over the Leatherman was that the crunchies were unable to use the jack knife to strip their kit down as they do with a leatherman.
I don't remember our jack knives from the 60's onwards having the spike thinggy as by then, we didn't do a lot of rope splicing, putting bullet holes in the paper targets so that the range day would finish early as everyone got a top score or taking stones out of horses hooves