PKeating

Worn by individuals who were only slightly less welcome at a unit's location than bubonic plague and the clap! Bravo, Paul! Hey...maybe I will make it to Maine in the next month. In the meantime, what an amazing set of epaulettes. P

Side by side... PK

Here is an indisputable original. PK

http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=30703 PK

Cut straps suggest a helmet removed from a swollen body prior to burial. They had to slice through the straps as they were trapped in the swollen flesh and skin and the buckles were inaccessible. Missing liner fingers perhaps due to blood and brain tissue soiling. I had a mint Heer SD "M40" reissue with cut straps and the liner pulled out of the band because of, according to the farmer who took it from a pile of helmets as a 12 year old in 1944, the smell of putrifaction from the leather, to which his mother strongly objected. PK

I think you might have a hard time selling this one to a serious collector because none of the BeVo or, rather, BeVo-style Italian SS arm eagles that have cropped up on the market from time to time are accepted as period pieces. That said, the Italien cuff title of which only a handful of examples with provenance are known was of BeVo-style construction and made in Italy so it is not beyond belief that an Italian firm tendering for the contract to supply these insignia might have tooled up and produced a roll for evaluation purposes. However, the Italian SS Legion wore embroidered arm eagles, made in the Italian style. both on red and black backing. There are no period photographs showing anything like this in wear. PK

Is there an echo in here? PK

Do any of you remember a dealership operating through the www.ss-armory.net website and did any of you have any dealings with them? The website disappeared about a year ago and was reportedly active for about three years. PK

Don't worry about the Niemann Certificate of Authenticity. It's battered, broken and denazified but it is an absolutely genuine solid silver Type 2 Fallschirmsch?tzenabzeichen (Heer) by C E Juncker and, for ?2,500.00, would make a serious FJ collector a good collection filler until a better example comes along. It's on the Claus Phillip Militaria website: http://www.philipp-militaria.de Go to the "Bis 1945" German awards section and click on Heer. The blurb states that the wearer denazified the badge when he was a POW. Perhaps the wearer's name is known. Unfortunately, his name and unit details have also been removed from the reverse of the wreath but, still, as I said, it's genuine and a good opportunity for someone without $12k or so to invest in one of these to have a representative example beside the aluminium and zinc versions. PK PK

Do you have more documents from this man? Do you have the soldbuch? The Sonnenburg breakout was quite an interesting action. There was an Concentration Camp there, to which people were still being deported as late as March 1944. P

The thirteen condemned men were members of the 24th Infantry Regiment, which was one of the US Army's two all-black infantry regiments. They were hanged one minute after sunrise, at 07:17 hrs on 11.12.1917, at Camp Travis, near the Texan town of San Antonio. According to some accounts, the gallows was a simple affair and the men were stood on folding chairs. They reportedly sang the negro spiritual I'm coming home before the hangmen kicked the chairs away. Other accounts describe a more modern hanging, with a short drop, breaking their necks. These and other executions related to the so-called Houston Riot were carried out with a degree of secrecy before the event that caused a lot of ill-feeling. President Woodrow Wilson subsequently commuted a number of death sentences and the US Army General, Ruckman, who handled the executions was found to have acted legally, according to the Articles of War, and cleared of any wrong-doing. There was a feeling that Ruckman took undue pleasure in hanging blacks but that could just be subjective reporting. Many of the 24th IR (US) men who took part in the "march on Houston" and the skirmishing with local civilians and law enforcement officers were veterans of Pershing's Mexican expedition and various border actions against Mexican irregulars. Some were veterans of the Spanish-American War and the Philippines campaign. PK

http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/righitpix.html

Oh dear! That's like the RZM stamps one finds on otherwise genuine war badges. Sheer vandalism. PK

One sees M40s like this from time to time, without the liners and with just the ends of the chinstraps in place. This usually suggests a helmet removed from a rotting corpse, the chinstraps being cut by the burial detail because they were trapped in the swollen flesh and skin, covering the buckle. The liners were then ripped out by souvenir hunters because of the smell. I've had a few otherwise near-mint examples. One example was given to me my a farmer who remembered his mother telling him to get rid of the helmet because the liner stank. So he ripped the liner out, leaving just the band in place. The helmet was as-new. Still is as-new. I'd be inclined to believe that yours came from Normandy, where a lot of reserve units with nice, new kit, hardly used during their occupation duties, found themselves confronted by Allied forces. PK

Garbage. Sorry to be blunt, but there you are. Perhaps the old boy from whose house you retrieved them did silkscreening as part of his occupational therapy. Maybe he was involved in amateur dramatics. Perhaps he wore them on his pyjamas ? la Max Mosley. But one thing is sure: these are not from the early 1940s. If I were you, I'd invest in a new keyboard with a non-sticking caps lock key instead. PK

Thanks, Brendan. I always thought the Republic, as such, didn't come into being until 1949 and that ireland remained a Commonwealth member until that point. That clarifies things for me. PK

There we go! Looking at it again, it's not the KM200 but actually the NZ500. As anyone who has ever ridden a two-stroke single of more than 250cc can confirm, the NZ500 was a fast machine, although the carb, apparently, had a governor fitted. This was simply a bolt screwed into the top, limiting the upward movement of the throttle slide. Enterprising soldiers removed it but it was a chargeable offence if caught. PK

Trying again. No dice. It's telling me that 52MB is greater than the available space.

Thanks for the comments, gents. I've ordered a 'serious' scanner that can handle A4-plus page sizes as most of the mags for which I have written are large format. So there'll be less excuse to put off following the trend and sticking a website up there. A large part of a writer's life, you see, is spent finding pretexts to avoid getting on with the job. These forums are brilliant in that respect. I was thinking of a whole Fast Classics section with the best bits of the first four issues because there were so many wonderful examples of writing and photography in them, even from contributors who usually turned out 'filler' for the established motorcycle magazines. Inasmuch as the iconic Mark Williams' Performance Bike broke new ground in 1971, giving greaser-era bikers an alternative to The Green 'Un and The Blue 'Un, FC gave guys who were into riding older machinery for various reasons an alternative to EMAP's Classic Bike, which was aimed more at the kind of people in leisurewear and Cornish Pasty shoes who transport their old bikes about on trailers. Mind you, I always enjoyed The Classic Motorcycle when dear old Bob Currie was at the helm. Sure, it was for coffin-dodgers but the kind of coffin-dodgers who could tell us a thing or two over a few beers before climbing into their rubber coats and blatting off home in a cloud of Castrol R to feed the cat. Then Bob popped his clogs and the whiny-voiced cringeworthy executives at EMAP screwed the CMC up too. I enjoy leafing through Classic Bike in WH Smiths here in Paris and looking at all the ads for copper bracelets, piles cushions and home equity loans. Mark Williams, who gave me my break and my grounding in publishing, always said their readership was dying. They've been a long time about it but the ads say it all. And the mag is now full of Jap Cr@p. Still, musn't grumble: EMAP went bust recently. Oh well, I'm off out to change the oil in the HRD and tighten up a few nuts and bolts. Natch...there's a good reason for not getting on with the articles I have to write. In the meantime, coming back to the topic of German motorcycles, here's a rather nice photograph - a present from my friend Eric Queen - of a Luftwaffe officer cadet getting to know a slightly later, military version of the DKW KM 200. Note details like the bashplate, for off-roading. As I said, there's a fellow who rides one of these about, just like this one, in Paris. He doesn't dress the part, though. That might be taking it a bit far. PK [Note: this website isn't accepting a 53MB image and my remote host is down for maintenance so I'll have to put the image up later - PK]

Nobody seems to have had this type of shield in their collections before the late 1990s. Also, some of these shields, as in one of the photographs here, are mounted on completely incorrect backing. And when you hold this type of fake in your hands, you just know there is something wrong with it. Get your money back from the dealer and invest in a real one. The document seems to be genuine but, of course, it is impossible to tell from this photo. PK

In 1969, an Indian Mutiny VC to William Rennie was sold for ?1,700.00 to the regimental museum. The previous record was set in 1966 when the Middlesex Regiment paid ?900.00 for a Somme VC. Yet the MOD apparently claim to have bought Mr Pun VC's cross from him for "market value" in 1974, allegedly paying him ?500.00 for it. That is hardly "market value". Or maybe they felt, given the times that were in it, that a medal to a non-whiteman was worth half that to a whiteman. However, if the chronology of events is examined, Pun VC received a letter from Regimental HQ in Hong Kong, directing him to give the VC to an officer who would come to fetch it, probably an officer charged with travelling around Nepal paying pensions to veterans, because of its high value. The Pun cross was then displayed at Regt HQ in Hong Kong for several years, before ending up in the UK in the possession of the regimental museum there. There has been no reply yet to my query to the museum about the whereabouts of the genuine Pun cross. Even more worrying is the account I was given recently of Pun VC himself examining "his" VC at the museum and commenting that it did not look like his, that the engraving seemed different. Hopefully, the museum can at least produce the real cross, something they seem to have failed to do so far, by various accounts. PK

Indeed! Mind you, my Anglo-Irish great-aunt Emma by marriage remembered the Easter Rising as an eleven year old girl, and being sent down to Bolands with her bicycle to fetch some bread after it was occupied. They gave her some too! Anyway, she told me of a hilarious letter her mother had received from two dotty old maiden aunts from somewhere in the Cotswolds, who had decided to visit Dublin on a whim for the Easter weekend. They found it a boring, empty place, with most shops shut, people "looking shifty", and some sort of military exercise going on, that prevented them from paying a visit to Emma's family. They were not at all impressed with the city nor with the staff at the Shelbourne Hotel, who refused to take messages to people the two old biddies wished to visit. So they went back to Kingstown, as Dun Laoghaire was called in those days, as the boat train wasn't even running, which irritated them even more, and went back home to England. The letter is somewhere in the files of that branch of the family. I would love to see it. I tend to agree that this "Sleeper Medal" is a bit of a tall tale. The medal doesn't even look like anything the Irish government would have presented. It looks like some sort of generic sports or competition medal. Speaking of the 1941 awards and the evident feeling on the part of some Irish members of being snubbed over a dedicated Ireland forum, I think I put a couple of noses out of joint on another forum when members raised objections to discussions of IRA medals because they had nothing at all to do with British medals or medal groups. I pointed out that more than a few Irish veterans of HM Forces received medals for the Anglo-Irish and Civil Wars, as well as the 1939-1945 Emergency, and that, in any case, these medals were issued by the Free State government, making them Commonwealth or, in fact, Dominion and therefore British Empire issues. The discussions were deleted nonetheless. LOL! Any fellow Irishmen care to comment on my point here? PK

The document conforms in appearance to the naval versions issued by General Eduard Dietl's office. Of course, it is usually impossible to establish authenticity from a photograph, especially a snapshot like this, taken from a distance, at an angle, through glass. The shield is indeed a fake that has fooled a good many collectors. The Narvikschild was made by several firms, of course, and there are differences between them but this type turned up in the 1990s, as far as I remember. PK

An FJR 13 company moving into positions near the Norman village of Champs des Losques. Just children... Another 5. FJD survivor of the Normandy maelstrom, although he died young in the 1960s. Note the date he qualified as a paratrooper at Dreux, which is some eighty kilometres west of Paris. His jump licence was issued at divisional HQ on 20.7.1944 just as the Saint-L? battle was drawing to a close. He is wearing the cloth jump badge to which the rare award document refers. The look on his face says it all, really... The group includes several dozen photos from his time in the Flak-Artillerie and he was a very fresh-faced lad under normal circumstances. The jump licence served as his ID because he probably lost his paybook. Note the French annotation. Some of his POW documents are in French. Barth might even have given Voight first aid. Again, the Voight document is very nice. What a shame it's alone. PK

FJR13 was originally formed in France, in Reims, from III./FJR3 as the first step in creating 5. Fallschirmj?ger-Division, commanded by Generalleutnant und RKT Gustav Wilke until September 1944. 5. FJD formed up in Reims on March 2nd 1944 although the order was posted on November 5th 1943. The cadre of the new division consisted of the Fallschirmj?ger-Lehr-Bataillon, III./FJR3 and III./FJR4 and several thousand new recruits. Cadre for I./FJR 13 came from III./FJR 3 but I./FJR 13 became I./FJR 15 in May 1944, by which time the regiment was in Brittany with 5. FJD, forming in the Rennes area under Wilke. II./FJR 13 was based in Lanr?las and, like the rest of the regiment bar the 1st Bn, was still in a formative stage when the Allies landed in Normandy. Wilke was initially only able to field Fallschirmj?ger-Rgt 15, composed as follows: II./FJR 15, I./FJR 13, originally formed from III./FJR 3 and redesignated I./FJR 15 and I./FJR 14, formed from III./FJR 4. FJR 15 fought with 17. SS-Pz.-Gren Division in the Saint-L? zone and then with 77. Infanterie-Division. 5. FJD received reinforcements in September 1944 and throughout the rest of the autumn. I think it is reasonable to assume that J?ger Voight was either one of the trained soldiers sent to the front by Wilke just after D-Day or that he reached the front a bit later. It does seem that he was wounded in Normandy or during the retreat across the Seine and into the Netherlands. Hard to say from where he might originally have come. He was probably para-trained. They were still putting people through jump schools in France in July 1944, as documents I have from a 5. FJD medic show. A written enquiry to the WASt might turn up more information. Other elements of FJR 13 and of 5. FJD in general joined the battle through July and August, as the Stab/FJR 13 group here shows: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=45659 Gustav Wilke, who died in 1977, was in command of 5. Fallschirmj?ger-Division from 1.4.1944 to 23.9.1944 but his replacement, Ludwig Heilmann, is not listed as taking up his new post until 16.11.1944. That's a nice photograph of Wilke wearing his 1939 Spange. He was awarded the RK on 24.5.1940. He also held the 1914 EK2. Wilke was also a qualified military pilot, having transferred from the Heer to the Luftwaffe in 1935. Before and during the early part of the war, he served with airlanding units, commanding Luftlandegeschwader 1 from July 1940 to August 1941 before spending over a year as the Luftwaffe's special representative to the Messerschmidt Works, involved in the development of heavy transport gliders. He then went to the 1. LW-Feld-Division as commander under Eugen Meindl. For three months, he was in command of 2. FJD, from December 1943 to March 1944, when Ramcke was wounded. Wilke was then posted to 5. FJD. He also commanded 9. and 10. FJD before the end of the war. Nice document. PK