MysteryKnives with(or without)a story.......

[knife7knut]

Whilst stumbling through one of my knife storage containers looking for a particular knife I came across these two.The first one caught my eye as I noticed an inscription on the handle I hadn't seen before.I picked it up to examine a little more closely and a couple of things caught my eye.
First was it is a Colonial knife with what appear to be silver handles(although they are not marked as such)which seemed a bit unusual.The bail is broken but the two side parts still remain;possibly the silver stamp had been on it.
The second was the inscription. In two lines it says,"Greg 10-12-64" and "Mike 4-14-67" What could this be I wondered.My first thought was it could be the birth dates of someone's children. Then I thought:"I wonder if is the names of two friends who were lost in a war?"
If the latter were the case,then Greg could have possibly been an,"advisor" such as a Seabee that was in Vietnam but was early in the conflict which started in July of 1964.I was in Navy boot camp then and remember it well.
It is just one of those knives that I will never know the whole story about it's origin.
The second knife I have been trying to decipher the stamp on it for awhile now and I think the first part may be the word,"Silver" as in Silver Steel. That was a stamping used on early Sheffield knives and this one could very well be that. The ivory handles have an interesting pattern and discoloration;the square kick on the master blade and the steel pivot pin are all indicators of a mid 1800's Sheffield knife.
Anyway I thought I would post them up for your viewing pleasure and speculation.

[zzyzzogeton]

My first guess is that they are the dates they were killed in VN.

I bet there is a list out there that lists VN casualties by date of death. If you could find it and do a search for who died on those dates, there might be some connection to a Greg (Gregory) and Mike (Michael) who died on those dates - brothers or something.

[orvet]

I think there is a site on the US National Parks website in DC that has the names of all the people killed in Viet Nam listed by date killed.
If not one of the veteran service organizations should have such a list.

[orvet]

https://www.virtualwall.org/iPanels.htm

According to the website above, no kia on those dates.

[eveled]

http://thewall-usa.com/names.asp

This is a really interesting site. Each day you can see who was killed on today’s date. I don’t see how to search a specific date, but if you mark your calendar and check on each date it will give you the answer.

Really sad that there are 18 men on the wall who weren’t even 18 yet, including 1 who was only 15 years old.

My opinion is your knife was a Father’s Day present with Birthdays. I think if they were death dates it would have an inscription like “never forget” “dearly missed” “some gave all” or something similar.

[glennbad]

I have a knife similar to your first one. My mother got it from her sister or brother, and it has all of us cousins' birthdates engraved on it. I'll see about digging it up for a pic.