For the Soldier of God!
For customers that are looking for a smaller, more portable, more traditional rosary that is still strong, rugged, and masculine, HERE IT IS! The WWI Battle Beads® are the closest replica you can buy of the original vintage 1916 WWI service combat rosaries issued by the US and French governments to soldiers, sailors, and flying aces in WWI. They are rugged, masculine, and portable, with a meaningful history, and they won't knot up or break apart.
WWI Service Combat Rosary
The original WWI service combat rosaries were produced beginning in 1916 and today are extremely collectible and valuable. They were made from "pull chain" ball chain beading with varying sized beads to represent the rosary. Here are some images we found on Ebay.com from listings for these antique service combat rosaries. They sell anywhere from $150 to over $300.
The original rosary was made of brass and coated with a black wash. On many of the surviving rosaries, the black color has worn away, revealing the dull brassy color of the metal. The centerpiece was one that depicts Our Lady in different medals, and there were several varieties of crucifixes attached. Sometimes, when you find one of these originals, the crucifix will have been replaced.
The image below shows one that we have here at the Rugged Rosaries studio and it is over 100 years old, however, the corpus has fallen off of it.
WWI Military Battle Beads Rosary
Our version of these awesome rosaries is the WWI Battle Beads® Combat Rosary. It was originally inspired by a pull chain rosary from the 1960s purchased in a Catholic shop and carried into the Vietnam War. By the 1960s, rosaries were no longer being officially issued to troops, but you could still buy similar pull chain styles.
Pictured below is the exact little rosary from the 60's that originally inspired our WWI Battle Beads. This one is quite small and made of sterling silver. It has slightly larger Our Father beads. Isn't it beautiful?
The Rugged Rosary WWI Battle Beads are a faithful reproduction of these vintage rosaries. We make them a little larger and sturdier, we use the same type of sturdy pull chain, and the Our Father beads are slightly larger just like in the originals.
However, we have gone even further and offer these in a variety of styles and colors.
We carefully assemble each rosary by hand in our Rugged Rosary workshop. And just as in our paracord rosaries, we use very strong double looped split rings instead of jump rings for attaching your crucifix and medals.
Because we make these daily in our own studio, we can also customize your WWI Battle Beads service combat rosary with devotional medals, different crucifixes or center piece medals, or extra sets of decades for your 15 or 20 decade rosaries.
And more photos of WWI Battle Beads showing the quality detail of the crucifixes and chains:
Rugged, Masculine, Portable
If you are looking for a rugged, masculine, and portable rosary, with a meaningful history, that won't knot up or break apart, this is the rosary for you. As with all Rugged Rosaries, we offer a 100% money back guarantee.