Gary; There were two ID booklets of this sort kept for each German soldier. The one you have, the Soldbuch ("Pay-book"), was carried by the soldier, so, although it has a lot of info, it did not contain information that would have been of particular interest to enemy military intelligence. For example, on your photo #3 (post #3) the left page has, among other things, the soldier's shoe size, height, and decorations, while the information on the right page includes specifics on at least nine cholera and typhus injections. The book also not surprisingly covers the receipt of pay. The other book, the Militaer=Pass, contained a lot of additional information, such as family and domicile information, the various units the soldier served in, the weapons he was trained on, his more serious wounds and illnesses and hospitalizations, and the battles that he fought in. Usually one document was issued for the soldier's entire career, and I believe was only given to him when he was de-mobilized. I suspect that they were generally kept at the regimental level during war-time, and periodically sent to the company HQ for the entry of new information; these entries are often entered say six months after the event described. I have about 20-30 of the latter document (the name could be translated as "military passport"), including my father's, and have studied about 40 in detail, and every one teaches you more things about the German Army of the period. They are not easy to figure out; not only do you have to read German written in the Fraktur type and in the Suetterlin and Kurrent hand-scripts, but also a lot of extreme abbreviations and curious forms of description are used. For example, "k. v." means "fit for combat" in regard to physical condition based on a medical evaluation, perhaps after being wounded. My father's stated: "k. v., kein Flammenwerfer", or "fit for combat, but not with flame throwers", which was my father's weapon for most of his war; this evaluation was after the second of his four wounds. If there was a central registry of these in the hands of cooperative collectors they could provide a rich source of historical information. Unfortunately there does not seem to be any sort of association of the collectors of these documents, at least af far as I know. I only know of one or two people in the US who collect and can decypher these, although I am sure that they are others. Bob Lembke
