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    Posted (edited)

    A soldbuch & other documents to Sanitater Feldwebel Alfred Slopianka, who became a POW in November 1944.

    No wounds or awards listed, but still a very interesting grouping as Slopianka would have served at & been captured during the siege of Metz in 1944.

    No entry in the solduch re. the award of the Metz armband, but then this paperwork shows that he was a member of Grenadier-Regiment St?ssel (Fahnanjunker-Schule VI), the unit which by its performance was mostly responsible for the introduction of the award, & that he was captured on or about 23/11/44.

    On 3/11/44 American forces continued their reduction of the German defences, launching another offensive.

    By 17/11/44 the Americans were on the verge of entering the city itself, ad hoc battle groups manning isolated forts fell one by one.

    The German commander, Generalleutnant Heinrich Kittel set up his HQ in the Mundra Caserne on the Ile Chambiere, one of the islands on which the city was formed. By 21 November, he was wounded and captured by US soldiers in the basement of a nearby tobacco factory that was being used as an aide station.

    Having passed command to Oberst von St?ssel, who was fighting elsewhere in the defenses, he refused to surrender the German forces.

    It would take another three weeks to subdue the remaining pockets barricaded in the various forts.

    (Above information obtained from an article by Scott Pritchard).

    It's a possibility, given that Alfred Slopianka was a medic & was captured in all probabilty within 1 or 2 days of sending his POW card on 23/11/44, that he may have been amongst the personnel captured along with Generalleutnant Kittel on 21/11/44, but thgen he may well have been captured elsewhere in the defences about that time (there is an allied safe conduct pass amongst the paperwork).

    Edited by leigh kitchen
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