Chris Boonzaier

I wonder where the next generation will be.... we have a wealth of old letters and photos... imagine collecting 2020 stuff in 2100... a few old selfies, emails all long erased.... broken hardrives holding secrets never to be revealed.... I pity that generation...

That is a nice one indeed.... Here is my latest find... and a new favorite..... Battalion commander in the 3rd Bavarian Inf Regiment and a Militär Max Joseph Orden recipient...

I saw this online today... What a career! The Famous/Infamous 32 Battalion "The Terrible ones" ... then the Recces... this gentlemen was part of some legendary units in the old South African Army... "WO Victor Banazol (Sargento Ajudante), former 5 Recce Operator died earlier today (24.01.21). Victor served with the Portuguese Army in Angola, with the DRAGÕES Regiment. After the Portuguese leftist revolution of 1974, Victor joined the FNLA briefly before being integrated into the South African Defense Force with 32 Battalion. In 1978 our Brother Victor was transferred to the Special Forces where he qualified as an Operator. Victor retired in 2001 as a Warrant Officer. "

Hi, Am I correct in reading "Augenleiden"? Any guesses what the word after that is`? Thanks Chris

That looks magic... will definitely get it!!!!

There is one thing I know 100% what is going on. from personal experience... the woman with the huge hat is saying to her husband "I met you when you were a soldier... you did not have that bloody big belly back then..." And the kid is thinking "I want to be a machine gunner!" And the woman on the bike thinks "I want a machine gunner!"

Someone pointed out the two old guys on the left are those "know it all" veterans you always see saying "They are doing it all wrong!!"

I keep all of mine at Wild Card's house ?

This was a short lived thing I think... so photos will be rare

Yeah, it is one of a bunch a French Friend pulled out of a river... in pretty good nick, protected by the mud...

Have to figure it out. The 6 regular pencils is a sure thing. I think the small square pocket an eraser, the rounded one a perfect compass fit... I assume 2 bigger pencils left and right... then other mapping necessities... I am thinking this is not your usual officers/NCOs mapcase... the Swiss have a special case for staff officers, which takes more than the normal mapcase... I assume this was designed for a smaller staff and had some extras.

So... what programs are you dudes using?

I knew I still had one somewhere... My thought is that some clever case maker thought it was going to be a 14-15 war... and made these... and on 31 December 1915 he thought "Bugger!" ... and on the 1st of jan 1916 he was making plain 1914 ones again... I cannot say which cross came with it... mixing and matching has been order of the day since the first collector got his hands on 2 cased crosses... mine is also blue velvet

A couple more with the wartime logo

OK, these are obviously not issue, they are tailor made, but in a more or less “military” style with the watch pocket and a lining material… I think it may be just the perfect trousers for a dummy of an early war Bavarian soldier with Cord Stiefelhose, Gamaschen and mountain boots? Of course, there is no way to date it 100%... it is old, does not have wear in any of the places riding pants do, so was not used for horse riding… but it could possibly be party or SA? Not sure if they wore stuff like that… But I think it has a very Bavarian WW1 look

OK... so now I had the fitting compass, a march calculator, and a single period thick pencil .... I needed to start on the 6 thin pencils... a couple of grey and some colored one.... lets look for grey.... from the thick brown one I had a WW1 era logo to go by for one maker... but none on ebay at the moment... plenty with later logs... but A.W. Faber was also around back then... I found some WW1 era mechanical pencil lead by them from the WW1 era... and 5 Grey pencils of varying ages.... one of which was their WW1 era log...

The trousers.... For some reason i cannot justify spending a grand on something that you only see 20 cm of ? ... up until now I have only had Torsos.... but after I got the boots and Gamaschen set up... I wanted a full figure... of course... pants were missing... so I went the copy route...

Hi, am still miles away from that. At the moment I am just trying to get an idea of how it would look on a page. I only have freeware for layout, so Fonts, Size, etc. etc are all Greek to me... so the idea is there... whether the layout etc will be the straw that breaks the camels back I know not... I hope not.... Some regiments like this will be rather short, 2-4 pages, some will be much more in depth and may run 10-20 pages... I am playing with the short ones before i jump into the "big" ones...

Wow... thats is a preeeeety nice cross!

No problems with that, I have had a couple of old beaters... I assume they were made in 1915

Some of you have known me for almost 2 decades now... how I have droned on and on about huge projects dealing with the iron cross award documents... I have made many false starts... but I think i have it mailed now ... I would like to do a Book on Bavarian Infantry and Jäger... and space permitting cover all the Alpenkorps units and maybe some Pionier units. Format will be Iron Cross award documents and Period Photos of men in the regiments... I will have some info to the units, most importantly regimental commanders as they usually signed the documents (Unless Generals did) ... some information about the men whose documents are shown. I chose the 8th BIR to do a sample page, It does not have the best documents, and the photos are not super sexy, but I needed a test unit ... does anyone have thoughts on the format? Tanks Chrs

Hi, thanks, I think it now has a place of honor ? Lets see some of your goodies!

You read my mind ... guess everyone becomes a dirty old man later in life... just the 25,, and 26mm made me doubt that...

Hmm... I was hoping it held something more exotic.....