PKeating

You got de feever, man! Youse sweatin'! I'm on something nice at 4am.

P

Absolutely agree! I never place a bid before the last minute or so when I want something. I'll come in and place twice the item's value in the last 45 seconds. It's a surer way than sniper software but demands a certain sang froid. As you say, the problem with placing bids earlier is that it drives the price up and also alerts the sheep to the fact that something might be worth having. As for group splitters, I would happily take a baseball bat to them. I don't care about the excuses and reasons wherefore. There's a guy in Germany who has an RV with two broken finger joints for breaking up and selling off a photo album that was part of a group for which I paid more than ?15,000.00. He knows I'm going to do it and he keeps a low profile as a result. And I bet he thinks twice when he gets his greedy little vulture claws on dead men's thing now. But it won't save him from digital dislocation when I finally encounter him.

PK

I wouldn't say that, Paul! Thanks all the same, but there are a number of people to whom I bow when it comes to non-LW FJ units. Here's one for Hardy! Note the man wearing the GAB on his wrapover just behind the RKT, who also sports a GAB.

And here's another man in a wrapover sporting a GAB. The cloth DKiG looks rather odd, doesn't it? Anyway, we should look into how these men earned GABs. Did they qualify because they dismounted to fight? Two of these men have Tank Destruction Badges so they clearly fought on foot at some point. Therefore, they wouldn't qualify for the Tank Battle Badge in Bronze. Unstuf Scheu, in the colour or colorised portrait, earned his Bronze Tank Badge with the Wiking's Recce Detachment. He also received the CCC in Bronze whilst still with SS-Aufkl?rungs-Abt 5 in 1943 but never received any form of 'footborne' assault badge prior to that. I don't think the award of the CCC depended upon a previous IAB or GAB but it is interesting, nonetheless, that he got a Bronze Tank Battle Badge instead of the GAB. Perhaps it was simply a question of which badge a commander decided to request for his men.

And just to vary it a bit, the Honour Roll Clasp on a wrapover. This award is scarcely seen as it is but there are not many photos featuring it on wrapovers.

PK

Moving back towards Hardy's theme, here are some more badges not often seen on wrap-over tunics. Who can tell us produced the badges in these photos? (Trick question)

PK

A few months later, on a home leave to see his new baby, promoted to Oberscharf?hrer. Now, who can tell us which maker might have produced his jump badge? Slightly off-topic, I know, and we'll get back to unusual badges on panzer wrap-overs shortly...

PK

Hardy's photo is one of the nicest, most evocative I have seen recently. Do you happen to know more about Klenzer's career? In infantry units, attached specialists like signallers, medics and so on received the GAB rather than the IAB as they weren't "infantry" as such. Artillerymen also received the GAB. Not sure what the criteria were for men in armoured units. I was perhaps mistaken in referring to recce as Aufkl?rungs-Abt personnel in armoured unit received the PKAiB. In this photo, Klenzer has evidently not yet qualified for an PKA but, then again, he might simply not be wearing it.

In this photo of the same Unterscharf?hrer, for instance, he is just wearing his LW Parachutist Badge. Whatever the case, these are all very rare sightings.

PK

That's a nice piece! Last year, I had to get some French miniatures for Patrick Churchill - ex-N? 4 Commando - from Arthus Bertrand and, of course, they are smaller than British miniatures so they were going to look a bit odd mounted with his British campaign stars and medals. Another veteran remembered having some French-made miniatures of British medals back in the 1950s but we couldn't find any. So we mounted his French awards together and he wore them under his British miniature medal bar.

PK

That's a nice piece! Last year, I had to get some French miniatures for Patrick Churchill - ex-N? 4 Commando - from Arthus Bertrand and, of course, they are smaller than British miniatures so they were going to look a bit odd mounted with his British campaign stars and medals. Another veteran remembered having some French-made miniatures of British medals back in the 1950s but we couldn't find any. So we mounted his French awards together and he wore them under his British miniature medal bar.

PK

He was one of four NCOs from the Das Reich Division transferred to SS-Fallschirmj?ger-Btl 500's Field Training Company as instructors late in 1943.

PK

That's not often seen, Hardy. Nice photograph! He might have been a signaller in another motorised part of the regiment, such as the Aufkl?rungs-Abteilung. Here's a snapshot of another tanker wearing a badge not often seen on a black wrapper. I have several of the same man.

Well, there was a guy who jumped an original RZ20 chute in England recently. Anyway, I think most guys used these to keep their cigarettes dry or as muzzle covers.

The late holder of the above soldbuch certainly hadn't used one as its makers intended when he arrived at SS-Fallschirmj?ger-Btl 600. However, the doctor was an understanding fellow and wrote what he had up as a Code 24 rather than a Code 14 or 15, contracting an STD being a chargeable offence in most armies, including the Wehrmacht/Waffen-SS. In fact, I have never seen a soldbuch containing a reference to Codes 14 (syphilis) or 15 (Other STDs). They usually contain '24', which refers to "non-sexually transmitted genital problems". So off to the clinic he went, but it didn't save him from an early death on the battlefield in February 1945, poor fellow.

PK

Despite the stern instructions to dispose of by burning after use, these are reusable and still work after more than sixty years.

PK

And...here he is:

Nachname: Hatheier

Vorname: Josef

Dienstgrad: Gefreiter

Geburtsdatum: 16.05.1924

Geburtsort: Altheim

Todes-/Vermisstendatum: 13.09.1944

Todes-/Vermisstenort: Praga-Warschau

Josef Hatheier konnte im Rahmen unserer Umbettungsarbeiten nicht geborgen werden.

Die vorgesehene ?berf?hrung zum Sammelfriedhof in Warszawa-Nord (Polen) war somit leider nicht m?glich.

Sein Name wird im Gedenkbuch des Friedhofes verzeichnet.

Now you know his DoB, PoB and where he died. It would appear that he was a casualty of the Warsaw Uprising, which lasted from 1.8.1944 to 2.10.1944. There was fierce fighting in Warsaw's Praga district, referred to as Area VI by the Polish Home Army (AK). There are several references to the fighting in the Warsaw suburb of Praga in this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Uprising OK, so it's Wikipedia, but it's a starting point. Praga was where the Soviet Army stopped and waited for the Uprising to be suppressed by the Germans. The Reds reached Praga on 10.9.1944. If Gefreiter Hatheier was KIA on 13.9.1944, as opposed to being wounded earlier and dying on that day, he may have been killed facing Russians or Poles serving in the Soviet Army. By 13.9.1944, the Soviets were in possession of Praga.

He is wearing a Croatian medal. The German force retreating westwards ahead of the Soviet advance through the Praga district was IV. SS-Panzerkorps, which was raised in France in 1943 and served in the Balkans prior to being transferred to the Eastern Front. Josef Hatheier might have been with one of the Heer units attached to this formation. IV. SS-PK's September 1944 ORBAT shows 73. Infanterie-Division: http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Gliede...onen/73ID-R.htm 73. ID fought in southern Russia and the Crimea and was almost destroyed in Sevastopol in May 1944. It was reformed in Hungary. I'm not saying that Josef Hatheier was with one of 73. ID's infantry or, by 1944, grenadier regiments. I'm just indulging in some conjecture. He might have been with one of the Heer units established in the Praga district before the Soviet onslaught. He wears no other decorations in the photograph, which postdates 1941 and the establishment of Croatia. The lack of a Winter War ribbon suggests that he joined the army after that first winter campaign, which tallies with his DoB. RAD service at 18, followed by military service, would have seen him completing basic training and being transferred to a combat unit at the age of 19, in 1943. He may have received the Croatian award for the Crimea. But as I said, this is just conjecture. You could try some sleuthing work with the German telephone book, searching for Hatheiers around Altheim. There is also an Altheim in Austria.

Good luck.

PK

Sent you an e-mail! Just confirmed that Hatheier does indeed exist. I must have been groggily typing it when I checked.

PK

Can't find the name "Hatheier" anywhere. Not listed in the German War Graves files. Nor does a Google search turn up such a name. Anyone got a German telephone directory to see if this name exists?

PK

I am getting so fed up with YouTube's failure to fix the bug rendering Mac users unable to see the videos...

Lovely group, Bill! I know only two groups of similar quality. There must be some more, of course, but this is a very, very, desirable example.

PK

If Polish, it's probably a copy of a copy because Sean Barry's copies looked better than this, unless some Polish wideboy has spun it around in a spindryer with a load of scrap iron to "age" it.

PK

It's actually SBW, which stands for Sean Barry Weske, who produced cast copies of Third Reich badges and medals - and other things - in vast numbers in the 1970s and 1980s. They were considered very good for what they were and never pretended to be other than copies, although some flea market traders certainly gulled people with them.

PK

I'd like to add my support for such a forum.

PK

Dbe post

Just for the interest of readers, these images show the 1939 "Republican" issue Croix de Guerre and the Vichy Government replacement with the dates commemorating what they saw as the War of the 1939-1940. In this case, the recipient has put the Republican ribbon back, presumably after the Lib?ration. As an interesting sidenote, a lot of the 1939-1940 awards by the pre-armistice high command were subsequently cancelled because it was felt that the award criteria had been too relaxed in many cases. So any "Vichy" 1939-1940 cross bearing a Republican ribbon is likely to have belonged to a veteran whose original award was considered valid by the examining authority after the Liberation. These two WW2 crosses also show the distinctive difference in appearance of the Republican and Vichy issues, the latter recalling the WW1 cross and its artificial "chocolate bronze" patina.

The three basic types of Vichy Croix de Guerre: the 1939-1940 cross bearing the rare first type ribbon as seen on Hendrik's example, the extremely rare official Vichy Croix de Guerre which dispensed with the Marianne motif, replacing it with the Francisque and the 1939-1940 cross with the more commonly encountered second type green and black ribbon. Only members of the 1er R?giment de France and Mar?chal P?tain's personal bodyguard detachment, the Groupe de Protection, were eligible for the Etat Fran?ais Croix de Guerre and less than a hundred are estimated to have been awarded. Several holders are still alive, two of whom won theirs in combat against Resistance and Anglo-American Special Forces units.

Regarding Croix de Guerre with other dates, these are described by many as unofficial. The crosses produced in French colonies by local commanders like Giraud could be described as unoffical but it is rather a moot point as the Vichy Government was, after all, the sole legitimate French authority from June 1940 to late 1944, when the remaining Vichy forces were defeated. It should be remembered that Colonel Charles de Gaulle, who promoted himself to the rank of General, was considered a renegade under sentence of death for desertion in the face of the enemy in 1940 and that the Anglo-Americans were very wary of him throughout the war. In other words, the French Republic, as such, had ceased to exist and the "Republican" Croix de Guerre bearing the 1939 date medallion awarded to France Libre personnel by the Gaullist "government-in-exile" during the war were just as unofficial as crosses awarded by Loyalist Vichy administrations in French colonies and territories. In fact, the only official Croix de Guerre awarded or distributed during the German occupation can be seen in the above photograph. Of those, just one was an actual award for military personnel serving in the legitimate French forces (Vichy-controlled) whereas the other was an exchange piece not unlike the denazified WW2 awards produced for veterans by the West German government from 1957 onwards.

PK

Well-spotted! I have never seen anything like that before. But the cross itself looks alright, the rather soft images notwithstanding. A period repair, perhaps?

PK

The stars look okay. The palms are upside-down. It could be possible if the recipient stayed in the French Army. The later Vichy Croix de Guerre cannot be so easily dismissed as unofficial issues because the P?tain administration was the legitimate power in France. The 1939-1940 crosses with the black and green ribbons were exchange awards for anyone who held a 1939 Republican cross and wished to continue wearing it. I have a framed example, with this type of central medallion, said to be of North African manufacture, with its June 1940 citation and a Republican ribbon of British (London) manufacture, showing that the recipient exchanged his 1939 cross but then obtained a new ribbon after the Liberation when framing his award. The crosses with other dates were produced for French soldiers serving in what remained of the French Army after the armistice and, of course, the "new" French Army, which included units like the 1er R?giment de France. Vichy also produced its own CdG in the shape of a cross bearing the Francisque with the legend Etat Fran?ais and the date '1944'. It's not strictly on topic but it is an interesting subject. I agree that it would have been quite a tall order for a man to win two bronze palms and two stars in the course of the 1939-1940 war but not completely impossible. An airman could have done it. However, those palms are upside-down, which is worrying.

PK