Chris Boonzaier

Hi, its one of the copies on german Ebay... they are up all the time...

With English text

This is the card I will have enlarged...

As our man was in a Pionier Unit in the Argonne for most if not all of the war... i will have this Argonne Pionier song postcard enlarged to A4 size and mount the cross on it.... Here is the Argonnerwald Pionier song....

Here are a couple of pages of pice from the Ersatz Battalion in Aschaffenburg 1917.... http://kaiserscross.com/69501/517101.html

The actions at Shimber Berris - The raising and first operations of the Somaliland Camel Corps November 1914 to February 1915 HERE A new page has been added to the machine gun photo album. HERE I have been working on some new texts related to the Alpenkorps, they are not yet finished, but I am happy to be able to show some rare photos of men of the 2nd Bavarian Jäger Ersatz Battalion in Aschaffenburg going through basic traing in 1917 HERE

As I said before.... things dont have to look like what they are meant to be... The blue UN Kevlar helmet on the badge we got in Sarjevo looks like a Blue Lava pancake... you could run a competiton guessing what it is... but in the original design on paper, you could seee right away. I dont think they would have introduced arm badges for painters, gas plapers or paddle boar oar carriers,.... The German army seems to have been pretty strict along those lines....

A total dud I think.... he sells a lot of them.....

Does this one have a chance... ?

Unfortunately not.... but I think that name is a dead giveaway as to Herkunft ;-)

Yeah... but who else has Friedolin as a first name.... sounds plenty Bavarian to moi!

Hi, it is of course pure supposition on my part, but I would have thought a family may have put the name and/or some personal details on the back... A company commander (or something) would maybe have said "I need 5 Crosses with "Xmas 1917" on them..." Of course, I was not there, there are probably 100 different possibilities about who where and why...

Indeed, a dream Diploma!! I have always drooled over it :-)

You have to thank Nick, I am just a worker bee...

Hi, Lets not forget, other nations were also not giving out great awards for wounds at the time. I think most nations eventually just gave a stripe on the sleeve... the British still dont have a Purple Heart like award til this day... so there was no direct precedent to pressure the Germans to award an Iron Cross for wounds, noone else was doing it, and theGermans had not done it in the past either... The awarding of the EK for Invalides seems to have started as late as early 1917... so once again no huge rush to push through a statute to reward the wounded. It seems to have been an afterthought to the poster sized diplomas sent to the familied of those killed in action, which in turn seems to have been a bone thrown to the families to stop them from pressuring the Govt for Iron Crosses for the KIA (As KIA did not qualify for an EK)... That men with multiple wounds were more likely to have an EK is sure, but I have never been able to find (and i have looked far and wide) and example of any Authority awarding an EK to a soldier just for that. A few memoires do mention that when it came to proposing men for awards (other than for individual acts of bravery) after an action units usually favoured the wounded and the guys who had been longest in the section... so if a guy had been wounded 3-4 times, chances are, he already had the Iron Cross, but this was not bound by a regulation. Best Chris

Hi, but keep in mind that the doctors recommendation was just part of the process. I cannot find the Xeroxes i had way back when, but if memory serves me right, the other things that came into play was a confirmation that the soldier was "clean"... i.e. no charges, no suspicion that he had not done a bunk or any cowardly action. That was another part of the process, but done by the Generalkommando. I am sure it was usually a rubber stamp process all along, but there were a number of boxes being ticked along the way....

Hi, I mean It could be "schütze" as a Qualification badge more than Rank. If a soldier is a (for instance) Gunner, he is a gunner as Private, and as Captain.... same way a qualified machine Gunner stays a qualified MG Schütze, even when promoted. We could spend time on weather he is a MG "Scharfschütze" or "Schütze" but remember, the soldiers of MGSSA in the war were also "Schütze Schmidt" as opposed to "Scharfschütze Schmidt".... P.S. you are also still a "Prussian" in spite of becoming a Moderater ;-)

Hi, I would be very curious to see the original documentation on that.... I don't think even a German soldier would have recieved that award for a lifesaving action in Munich. And a private would not have recieved the medal with a crown, which is rank related as opposed to the level of Bravery. I am guessing he did indeed recieve a medal, or at least a commendation, but not a Bavarian Military Merit Cross. I think something has been lost in translation and family legend and the cross shown ist just a "filler". An original quote from a family member (found with google) mentions an Iron Cross being in family possesion and being his award. Best Chris

Lets not forget, the term "Schütze" was the equivelent rank of "Private" for MG troops. It could simply be a qualification badge.... like Richtschütze.... Not everyone in an MG Unit was a qualified MG Schütze... some just carried ammo cans... so "Schütze" could very well be his qualification. A more current example of doing this are some of the French qualification badges where the actual qualification can be read on the badge... i.e. "Pointeur" or "Instructeur" or "Chef de Piece" on the new 81mm Mortar badges...

You are NOT serious??

That is a very nice and obviously well worn cross... Its kinda frustrating that the engraver did not put some hint as to who it was for... it is a WAG, but when I was in the army the company always gave X-Mas presents, one was a KaBar with "Christmas 1991" engraved on it... I think I still have an old towel with "Christmas 199?" embroidered on it somewhere.... Maybe there is no name because all the EK1 recipients in a specific unit recieved a nice domed cross from the CO ?

Here we go.... I assume 62nd Infantry....

Here is one of my old ones, from the late 80s, early 90s.....

Hi, it is important to differentiate between doctors awarding crosses and doctors handing them out, and even more important to differentiate between invalides getting the cross and soldiers automatically getting it for any wound

I am guessing they are supposed to be handgrenades that have exploded. One cannot say it is a very succesful design.... but probably one of those cases where a design on paper looks very different to the finished result. When I was in Bosnia a guy did a design for the Battalion commemorative badge.. looked fine on paper, when the badges arrived you needed a bit of imagination to see what they were ;-) Still, very nice :-)