Chris Boonzaier

He is an extremely fascinating man! Ages ago someone leant me a book about him, I was to return it, but have forgotten who it was :-(

A little something to add to the Thread..... one of my first ever EK docs....

Hi, On ancestry.com, they have the bavarian records. Best Chris

Hi, my 07/10 is close to mint, the owner was killed in 1915 and he had sneaked it home presumably ;-) I think we have to take into account reissuing, recycling etc. etc... I am sure they got less and less pretty rapidly, but not a "flick of the switch" change... Best Chris :-)

I Think we can safely assume that was the award date, and that it was for Flanders. Here is the battles he took part in. His bleeding on the battlefield was more from 'roids than shrapnel... but can hurt just as much I assume...

I have picked up some nice C96 cards, but never more than 10EUR-15EUR max.... http://gmic.co.uk/index.php/topic/60549-mauser-c96/page-2

Wire loop needed to be pulled with force to ignite the fuse.....

A rare pice of metal.... Up until now I have only ever seen them as ground dug things....

Hi, you are right, with magnification it looks like a 40...

Hi, the hospital in mainz may be likely. However, there are plenty of late war photos of men still wearing 07/10 tunics, I dont think we can date it from that. Best Chris

Hi Simon, For service on the Railways... I guess he was a peacetime Railway official

Hi, do you think this is 7th Bavarian FA? It was taken in Pfarrkirchen

Ready for war... with a "40" on the helmet, and what looks like "23" on the shoulder boards....

Thanks, any idea why he would have those shoulder boards on a field grey jacket?

Post a scan and lets see what we can do...

Hi, does the certificate specify the award date, or is that the date it was signed? (Or am I having problems seeing the doc??)

?? Is that document in the Auction supposed to be good?

Ugh...... that's pretty heavy duty stuff right there.... Fantastic!

I see "107" :-)

Hi, This transmittal letter mentions that the Award document will follow at a later date, so I guess it also functions as a preliminary award document until the official document is sent. If they ever got around to doing the official document I cannot say. With the 1914 EK the Kaiser decided (when he saw the ballon was about to burst) that whatever the guys had, was the final document, that included just about any official notification/Ausweiss/Vorläufige document etc.

This looks to be a crown "L" and bomb underneath?

Hi, does anyone know what this could be? Thanks Chris

Some time ago I got a small group of Photos with guys from the 31st Inf Regt... with it was this guy with white shoulder boards and a cross on the cockade... does not look like landwehr? Any ideas what he can be? Thanks Chris

I did a write up here... http://www.kaiserscross.com/40029/492401.html

Hi, thats the best I can do, its long gone... I bought it in 95 or 96 from one of Germany's most well known collectors back then, in those days the rule of thumb was "quality is fine, 800 stamp, must be S+L".. a couple of years later I passed it on to another one of the bigger collector dealers... it went through many hands, and in the late 90s noone ever had a second thought. It is quite interesting to see how much of the stuff from back then is now recognised as not kosher. Back then the only references were Bowen, Gordon Williamsons first book, and Geisslers first book. All were groundbreaking works but in that era the the details were not good enough to form an opinion. The subject matter took a jump forward on Williamsons 1939 book where you could see much better details, then Dietrich März's book pretty much finished it off.... I think at Gordon Williamsons 2nd book it was possible to see it did not correspond to the known 800s, then März put the last nail in the coffin. It is a good example of how the hobby advances...