PKeating

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

How could anyone "sleep" in Ireland during 1916-21 with all that racket going on? I guess they would deserve a medal for snoozing during the Rising and War of Independence. The whole story sounds like a load of ould Blarney to me. description mentions 4 examples - where are the other 3? Ho Hum....

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

Coming back - almost - to German or Germanic motorcycles, here's the Neval roadtest from Issue #1. The opening spread showed the outfit in a garbage dump in the south of France, with my mate and I in matching tangerine racing leathers on our backs in the trash. Had the Ivans and their importers had any money in those days, they'd have sued us. I think that's what they said on the phone at any rate. I suppose I ought to scan some of this stuff and stick it up on the web somewhere.

neval test/fast classics/copyright ? prosper keating 1994/pix by mike carr/?

The old harpie hovered with the asparagus. She?d stopped applying it to me but she was still dangerous?I could tell. Although the local lingo for the usual mitigating circumstances escaped me for the moment, I?d managed to convey that I wasn?t actually a German, despite the provocative lines of the Neval combo, half-obscured by the remains of the fruit?n?veg stall.

Neval. Hardly a name to conjure with, is it? At least Cossack implied strength, savagery, the wilds of Old Mother Russia, and all that sort of thing. Neeval or Neville? Who knows? Who cares? Quite why they changed the name to something more redolent of a Third World gut condition beats me, but there you are.

Ural, one of the previous model names, has a certain industrial charm but Urinal was predictable. Dnepr is better. The name of a river somewhere in the Russian hinterland. Dnepr almost makes up for Neval. The Neval MT10 Dnepr is generally referred to by those in the know as the ?military model?. Of course, Eastern Bloc motorcycles either look military or as if there should be a large key protruding from the rider?s back. Remember when every third backstreet in bedsit land had its very own Cossack outfit, providing a feline maternity ward amongst the fifth-hand Crestas and second-hand prophylactics? Or when every third-rate war film had its own anal-retentive Aryan mannequin stacking any number of Cossacks decked out to look like pukka Wehrmacht BMW outfits?

Well, in spite of the fall-off in demand for atrocious war films and all-purpose bedsit bikes, the Ivans still make, and export, the old warhorses. A brand-new BMW-based boxer twin attached to a licence-built Steib military sidecar sounds like a lot of bike for the money at ?2.5k all-in.Neval UK occasionally offer the option of reconditioned BMW R80 lumps instead of the Russian original for another two grand but then, that rather defeats the object.

Nothing like confidence in what you?re selling. There again, selling Nevals has to be something of an uphill task. The hippie?s project bike has always suffered from something of an image problem unless, that is, you?re into MAG membership on L-plates or dodgy white label cassettes of German marching medleys. Or both. Neval UK, a few miles north of the Humber Estuary, expressed an initial reluctance to part with a test bike. Seems they?ve had problems with pressmen crashing Neval after Neval and then writing unkind things or not writing anything at all. Perhaps they should get a larger advertising budget sorted out - that always sways a few previously objective opinions. There again, it may be that those who wrote nothing at all did so because they couldn?t, because they?re dead?

To say that the test bike handled badly on collection would be phrasing it extremely generously. The 50 mph ride from Humberside to London was due in part to the speed governors in the flat-slide carbs but going any faster would have resulted in a spot of toilet trading with Old Nick. As any Old Git will tell you - if you stand still long enough - an outfit should be set up with ?toe-in? and ?lean-out?. This means that the sidecar wheel must angle slightly inwards towards a notional line through the wheels of the motorcycle to counteract the drag effect of the effective deadweight of the sidecar. The motorcycle and the sidecar should also lean away slightly from each other through a vertical plane to counter the effects of loading and so on. The test outfit employed substantial ?toe-out? and ?lean-in? sending my ringpiece into spasm several times during that long, long journey.

Another aspect of sidecar-ing is the need to motor the cycle around the sidecar through lefthanders. Ergo: with UK-spec outfits, the throttle should be held wide open all the way through lefthanders. This requires manliness. Cowardice often leads to a shotgun marriage with, if you?re lucky, the opposite verge or, if not, an oncoming lorry. This is all fine and dandy if the grunt?s on tap; it wasn?t and lefthanders, especially uphill variations with psychotic crosswinds and lavatory brush salespersons on tailgate duty, provoked a terror unfelt since my days at the mercy of a schoolful of paedophilic monks. A clutchless gearshift device inspired by Triumph?s Slickshift of the late 1950s only added to the general sense of misery. Oh?and it was raining as well.

Overtaking a swaying Teutonic Road Train with Freddie Kruger inches behind you in his White Minivan in a rising lefthander that tightens, with the steel hawsers of the cutprice Armco getting closer as the power dies away, promotes sweaty crevices. Braking?s not an option because of the mutinous chassis and a front end as soft as a lager lout?s dick. Cossacks weren?t this bad. There again, Cossacks tended not to go anywhere and were therefore inherently safe. Back in ###### City, it took a day of spannering to sort out most of the problems?as far as they could be sorted out. Other revelations included the twin-leading shoe front brake set up for one-shoe contact (an economy measure perhaps?); tappet clearances more suited to a WW1 rotary aero engine, and a Lucas Rita lookalike electronic ignition system whose rotor clouted one of the coils as it revolved.

The front forks were biased to the left but we figured it didn?t matter so much because the outfit behaved like a tranquilised elephant anyway. The knobbly tyres and the reverse gear, found only on MT10 military models, proved useful as the outfit spent a fair amount of time on grass verges and in hedgerows, except when motorways were used as there was then ample width to remain more or less on the tarmac.

Admittedly reluctant to surrender any of the mph I?d fought so hard to wring from the mass of chernobylium alloy and pig-iron pinking away under the tank, I?d hammered the Neval through the sort of threadbare French villages where you get chased uphill by three-legged dogs, only to have this fruit?n?veg stall leap out in front of me. Of course, going for a gap between the houses barely wide enough for three combine harvesters and using the brakes was reckless. Would les flics wear the Regina v Spike Milligan defence? Perhaps not. Best to offer the old gallows bird some folding stuff and clear out sharpish before the knackers materialised. She filleted my wallet with the skill of a Cairo whore, leaving me insufficient even to buy a box of matches to torch the outfit. Just as well, of course, as it wasn?t mine - one of its few saving graces. Virtually undriveable before, the Neval was now simply undriveable.

The forks were as bent as the old bitch?s bananas?except the bananas were more sort of flattish than bent and belonged to me now. I was alone. Alone and destitute in a part of rural France yet to be emasculated by Peter Mayle. I wasn?t alone in the truest sense; it?s just that, with the best will in the world, my fellow hacks? test bikes weren?t geared low enough to stay with me on the move. Not even the Harley. I saw them only at sunrise; for the last ten minutes of their three-hour lunch stops; and whenever I happened to crash, in which case my non-appearance would have a searchparty retracing the route scanning ditches and so on.

Not that I crashed on purpose, out of a sense of isolation, you understand. The Neval managed that all by itself. My colleagues must have done the distance to the South of France twice over; forty clicks forwards?twenty back to extract me from the wreckage?thirty forwards. Half-an-hour wait?n?debate. Back again?only to swerve off the road themselves as the Neval zig-zagged into view, hurtling along with Quasimodo ringing the bells in each pot as a combination of French gasoline and capricious ignition timing spark-eroded the piston crowns.

The danger had passed for the time being and a strange stillness settled over the little French village, disturbed only by the gentle breeze stirring last year?s Front National posters. I manhandled the warped outfit onto some wasteground and waited. A three-legged dog hobbled by, eyeballed me, and limped on with a disdainful bronchial grunt. A cacophony of mechanical mayhem punctuated by the odd successful combustion announced the return of the Harley and the BSA caff racer.

Out came toolrolls and apart came the Neval?s forks. A clean task as neither leg contained much in the way of oil. Both stanchions were dog-legged?a hydraulic press job. As I indulged in a spot of Maroccan yoga, the boys inserted a stanchion between the bars across a nearby window and heaved?to show willing perhaps. A sign above the window swam into focus through the clouds of herbal remedy: Pharmacie.

Funny thing about rozzers the world over: never there when they?re needed but always there when they?re not. It took several tubs of snake oil, some favourable references to Monsieur Le Pen, and a few tokes on the cheroot to persuade the chap that we weren?t a bunch of drug-crazed bikers in search of an angry fix. Nice enough cove in his own way. Much nicer than the motorcycle cops in another ghost village who nicked me for speeding; they refused to accept the Neval in lieu of the spot fine.

Speeding, I hear you ask? After removing the speed governors from the carbs, the Neval was good for about seventy mph on the level and rather more down steep hills into villages with 30 kph limits.

The stanchion was still bent. I threw it away in disgust but it came right back. A trip to the local bar induced lateral thought. Replace both stanchions in the yokes with the bent sections turned inwards towards one another. Replace the carjack holding the whole shebang up with two substantial concrete blocks and use it to jack the stanchions outwards an equal amount. It worked a treat. Good thing the stanchions were so pliable, eh? The tool kit doesn?t include a carjack nor concrete blocks but they?re a worthwhile addition and the blocks assist in holding the sidecar down if you can?t find anyone stupid enough to travel in the chair.

The handling improved a bit after that particular crash but the grabby front stopper and the Teflon Skidmaster tyres called for several replays of the drill. We got quite good at it. Lefthanders still brought on a spasm or two of involuntary buttock-clenching, due partly to the reverse camber effect of driving a UK-spec outfit on Napoleon?s Left, but not quite the abject terror of before.

Once down in the South, I leased a lunatic from the Montpellier Ayslum and trained him, with the aid of a cattle prod, to emulate Helmut Lunemann?s passenger. Looked quite normal in his orange Aviakit one-piece and state-of-the-art lid. Not having to dismount to push the outfit through iffy-looking bends cut journey times dramatically.

The riding position dictated by the fixed rubber saddle, the overly swept-back ?bars, and the ?adjustable? footrests couldn?t be more tortuous had it been devised by Torquemada?s technicians. The pillion seat is worth trying just so you can boast about it should you ever find yourself in a face-off with a bunch of Uruguayan gauchos.

The indicators flash in time to the engine which guzzles gasoline at a monstrous rate. The reserve facility is good for a mile or so which is ideal for your average Kalmuk goatherd on the Steppes. Not. There again, the chair could carry at least fifty gallons of one-star. The rear differential seeps, depositing lube onto the hub and thence to the read tyre although this is, of course, academic.

The front brake is, in fact, the only really good fitting. Pointless. The forks are crap, the tyres don?t grip, and the sidecar needs a brake of its own as panic braking will end in a merger with all sorts of unyielding objects to the right. When one traffic light pulled a snidey on me with less than two hundred metres in hand, I had to hurl the plot down a convenient sidestreet. The passenger carried on, which was a bit unfortunate.

In happier times, when the factory was state-subsidised and could sell their machines to the West dirt-cheap in exchange for hard currency, the shortcomings weren?t quite so obvious. As price increases, so does awareness of flaws. The ?2.5k retail price has to be looked at in the context of, for instance, low mileage grey import crotch rockets from Japan.

Come to that, a running if smokey old 1960s BMW R60/2 with Earles forks and a genuine Steib sports chair can be had for less than the Neval. Sure?you?ll probably have to rebuild it but you?ll certainly have to rebuild the Neval - with new bearings and BMW parts - before the odometer jerks around to 5000 kilometers?unless you?re fortunate. You could take the plunge and pay ?4.5k for the R80-engined version and really develop a grudge.

The Owners Club - no, really, there are enough owners to form a club - appear to advocate absolutely everything made in Russia. Hmmmmm. The bottom end was knocking by the time I got halfway back up the Cherbourg Peninsula on the home run. At the port, I saw an identical model on a transporter carrying smashed-up holiday-makers? cars back to Blighty. A conrod had apparently made a break for freedom somewhere near Lorient. The clock showed less than 4000 km.

I limped back up the A3 to The Smoke and called Neval UK. I was impressed by their cool detachment when I described some of their test outfit?s shortcomings. Seems Nevals undergo some kind of transformation between Russian production line and UK end user. Neval blamed Motor Cycle News. Cutting short the imminent monologue about the evils of The Press, I informed than that I would have the outfit delivered to their southern agent.

How nice to find such traditional dealers. The Neval could be a decent bike for the money if someone gave a damn. It has a certain inverted style. The expressions of diners in one Proven?al town square as we drove backwards, three-up, around their tables made the ordeal almost worthwhile. The fear on the faces of oncoming drivers was fun as well, as long as I could co-ordinate my zig with their zag.

These plus points might justify buying an old smoker for a few hundred notes but four-figure sums are simply out of the question unless the manufacturers get a grip on quality and preparation control. Should you buy one, wrap up warmly against Death?s chill breath: he?ll be perched on that pillion most of the time?and he won?t half be feeling mean after a few miles.

SIDEBAR

Popular lore suggests an image of the Ivans, flushed with victory over the Nazis in 1945, hot-footing it back to the Motherland with some BMW/Steib blueprints for a spot of plagiaristic R&D. This is about as accurate as the wellworn notion that German women ######ed Russian soldiers to feed their kids and enjoyed it.

The truth is rather less palatable. The Ribbentrop-Molotov Non-Aggression Pact, signed between the Nazis and the Soviets in 1940, entitled Boris to manufacture some of Herman?s goodies under licence. The Neval actually owes more to the pre-war Zundapp outfit used by the Wehrmacht but nowhere near as good as the BMW machine. The Russians tend to be coy about this in the same way that Volkswagen are coy about the early history of the Beetle, largely styled by Adolf himself.

The manufacturers have gone to considerable trouble to shake off this unfortunate image. The sidecar grabrail no longer has locating serrations for the machinegun mount and the entrenching tool bracketry has also been omitted. Futile. One gaggle of pensionable inebriates propping up the Maire in a French town along the route lurched as one to their feet as the Neval droned into view and raised their hands to the sky in a gesture familiar to three generations of German soldiers.

Copyright ? Prosper Keating 1993

Hmmm. Let's just say that they toned it down after the Art Director and I left. It lasted for a few more issues, written by guys who were more into modern stuff and couldn't understand that there might have been more to motorbikes than crotch rockets and pulling wheelies. Hey, I'm not knocking them. They did their best. Whatever floats your boat and all that. But we had a ball for four issues. It's funny to see copies changing hands for more than the price of a round. I have quite a few examples of issues 2 to 4 but Issue #1 is scarce. There was another mag around the same time: Road Rocket. Now, RR is very rare. It was put out by EMAP whose executives freaked out over the first two issues. It was seriously off the wall. It was pulled after the second issue and EMAP pulped as many copies as they could. I suppose that FC and RR were really more into the lifestyle aspect and, in that sense, broke a mould. The opposition tried to emulate them but failed. They tried to get me to work for them but a short stint on Motor Cycle News as an editor went nowhere.

Ah...memories...

PK

Coastal Artillery tunics are, as Gordon points out, quite distinctive in cut.

PK

Coastal Artillery?

I wouldn't feel uncomfortable about these. They look perfectly OK to me. Some of these embroidered badges can look pretty ropey and be genuine. These conform to various criteria that suggest period manufacture.

PK

"Sixty seconds of rain?" LOL! There speaks an old soldier...

"?tanche" translates as "tight". One sees these with various numbers under the word. Wasserdicht is the German word for watertight. If "?tanche" is a reference to watertightness rather than a brand name, then it would suggest a Swiss-French contractor rather than a Swiss-German source. Dozens of Swiss firms supplied wristwatches to the Wehrmacht. many of which were fitted with the AS1130 movement. However, your watch contains a rarely seen Minerva Calibre 12 movement. The important part of any watch is the movement so you have something rather nice there, in a generic case with Heer markings. Whoever made this watch invested in one of the best movements available. However, is there a threaded back missing or does it indeed have a press-in back? The part stamped with the DH number appears to be the inner cover found on many military watches. A couple of the retaining tabs seem to be missing too. Does the movement keep good time?

PK

How nice to see a genuine TK patch for a change.

PK

Go raibh maith agat! I only just saw this. What a wonderful photo. That is a DKW KM200, made from 1934 to 1936, so 1934 seems logical. The IC prefix places them somewhere in Ostpreu?en. IC was also used in the Memelland after the takeover. The deathshead looks like a second type, which appeared in 1934 and 1935. Standarte Nr 60 was based in Insterberg, which is in what was East Prussia. So there we are! There's a guy here in Paris with one of these in LW livery. Das Kleine Wunder! They're actually really sweet little bikes...for two-strokes.

Fast Classics, eh? We had a lot of fun doing that magazine. We were always getting the safety nazi contingent and their friends in motorcycle groups like the BMF busting our balls over some of the articles and photographs. Christ, but we pissed so many people off. I remember the screams of fury - so to speak - from wannabe Rockers when I coined the term "chromosexual" in an article about Tritons. I'd forgotten about it until a fellow in the States posted it on a biker website the other day: http://www.britbike.com/ubb/noncgi/ultimat...8/t/000723.html And then there was the lawsuit threat from a German European Commissioner after I illustrated a front-of-book newspiece about him with a picture of G?ring. Oh man! Mind you, we made a lot of people laugh too.

PK

But may we know his real name and address in order to try to blacklist him effectively or, at least, declare him pariah?

PK

Extract from a Nepalese article of July 2007:

According to Pun, he was ?ordered? to hand over his VC for just 40,000 Indian rupees - about 500 pounds today - in 1974 by the British Army which said it was taking it for safe-keeping. The British Ministry of Defence claimed that Pun?s VC displayed in the Gurkha Museum in Winchester, was purchased from him in 1974 for market value.

He had received a letter in March 1974 from the 6th Gurkha Rifles saying an officer would visit him to take back the medal. Pun quoted the official approaching him to take back the medal as saying, ?He informed me the medal was too valuable to be in my possession and the army would be withholding it for safekeeping. Some time later I received IRs 40,000 in return. My Victoria Cross was taken to the Regimental Headquarters in Hong Kong. It was kept there for a number of years."

I think anyone with an understanding of how things used to work in British society can glean a fairly clear, stark picture of what happened. IRs 40k was about ?500.00 at the time. The old boy was told by an officer sahib to hand his medal over and, being a good and loyal Gurkha, did so. He was later given a 'gratuity' and the British Army assumed ownership of his VC. I was interested in medals in 1974 and I must say that I have having trouble remembering any VCs changing hands on the open market at the time for ?500.00. I could be mistaken but I seem to recall prices being somewhat higher.

PK

Thanks, gents. I was pretty sure that it wasn't a real one when I saw it. Apparently, it's the VC described by the Gurkha regimental museum as that of Tul Bahadur Pun VC. The suspender doesn't look right, for one thing.

This is Pun VC wearing the real thing. The image isn't high definition but it is good enough to spot the difference between the suspenders of the VC worn by Pun years before the regimental museum acquired the cross and the VC displayed by the museum. Perhaps the museum has put a copy on display.

PK

Click on this link: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/02/IMG_2919.jpg

PK

These people are never held liable, except for the well-known German dealer who ran away from his table when threatened by a fellow who seemed perfectly capable of realising his threats.

PK

PK

I have a copy of James Brady's statement mentioning his comrade Frank Stringer, whom Brady last saw during the bridgehead action at a place he describes as "Oderbridge", at the beginning of April 1945.

PK

I have yet to see credible soldbuch entries for the Army Balloon Observer Badge. As for the badge itself, it is generally accepted that nothing other than a studio pattern was ever made before May 1945. There are no accredited photographs of this badge being worn during WW2. There are a few doctored images. Regarding numbered LW=EKA, this has been debated a number of times and one of the better-known examples featuring in a book was exposed as comprising a questionable badge with a faked-up document based on a normal EKA certificate. Not a single one of the German FJ veterans I have known over the years ever recalled seeing such badges or any of their comrades having a numbered EKA entered in their paybooks. And that's the sort of thing that would have been a talking point amongst soldiers, believe me. Just like the Balloon Badge: such a badge would have been considered extremely prestigious, almost on a par with a Parachutist Badge. Yet no veteran who ever served with the observer units flying balloons is on record as confirming any awards, even on paper. There have been a few "provisional" or "field-made" award documents bandied about over the years but nothing accepted as genuine. It's rather like the LW-Panzerkampfabzeichen and all the other badges instituted by G?ring late in 1944. However, these badges were available in 1957 form because they were approved and instituted. A couple of veterans serving in the BW are reported to have worn the Badge for the Destruction of an Low-Flying Aircraft on their ribbon bars, the justification being a citation for this act, which was rewarded with the General Assault Badge. But they never received the aircraft-killer badge during the war because none were awarded.

PK

He put the Spanienkreuz on the wrong side for the photo! Nice EKII award shot.

The other post was useful too: it gave me a smile! That's a nice portrait. A lot of these WW2 tankers were quite small fellows, weren't they? Paul Schmid appears to have the KVK2 and, perhaps, the Ostfront Medaille to go with his S=A.

A blast from the past...when I was still interested in badges and things. This is a Condor Legion Tank Badge I owned, with a photo of the recipient, Paul Zundorf.

And this is one of the photos I didn't manage to get, because the group was split up. OK, it's not a wrapover but how often do you see this badge and medal combination on a field blouse? Can't remember who has this print but I've marked it.

PK

Some of them do it just to piss people off.

PK