French Military MAS-49/56 Magazine Pouch

MAS-49/56 Twin Mag Pouch

This leather pouch is what French soldiers wore on the belt to carry spare magazines for the MAS-49 and MAS-49/56, France's semi-automatic service rifle of the postwar decades. It holds two 10-round magazines side by side, each in its own flap-covered compartment. Owners of the rifle use it to keep their magazines in period-correct kit, and collectors and reenactors of the Indochina and Algeria era want it to complete a French infantry belt rig.

Features

• Two-Magazine Capacity — Separate compartments each take one 10-round MAS-49/56 magazine, so you can draw one without disturbing the other.
• Leather Construction — The body, flaps and loops are all cut from brown leather, sewn together with heavy saddle-style stitching along every edge.
• Stud-And-Tab Closure — A slotted leather tab on each flap drops over a metal post stud on the front, which holds the flap shut without a snap or buckle that can fail.
• Dual Belt Loops — Two wide vertical leather loops on the back slide onto a duty or field belt and keep the pouch from tipping forward.
• Steel Ring Attachment — A blackened steel ring, riveted into a stitched leather tab at the top center, lets you clip the pouch to suspenders or a shoulder harness.
• Compact Footprint — At about 7.5 in wide, 4.5 in tall and 1.75 in deep (19 x 11.4 x 4.4 cm), it sits flat on the hip.
• Original French Army Issue — This is government-issued equipment made in France, not a later commercial copy.

French Army Issue

The French Army issued this pouch from the 1950s into the 1970s alongside the MAS-49 and MAS-49/56 rifles, chambered in 7.5x54mm French. It belongs to the period of the wars in Indochina and Algeria, which is why it turns up so often in collections and reenactment impressions of those campaigns. Because it is genuine issue, the leather, stitching and hardware follow the army's original pattern. A modern copy only approximates that pattern.