Kriegsmarine blockade-runner with documents

[westfale]

Hello!

After receiving the last missing documents I would like to show you an interesting set of the "Blockadebrecher-Abzeichen", the blockade-runner-badge.

August Ulrich, who got this award, was a steward travelling with a lot of ships over the atlantic ocean and the indian ocean during his time working at the "Norddeutscher Lloyd" in Bremen. He was born in march 1900, so he was in the age of 39 when he start again as steward at the ship "Bremen", the flagship of the LLoyd. His Captain was Adolph Ahrens, and during his time onboard they start a trip from Bremerhaven to New York.

On their way back to home WW2 starts, so Capt. Ahrens got a new destination: Murmansk. They arrived Murmansk on the 6th of september. As you can see on the 2nd document, the "Dienst-Zegnis" of his trip, signed by the A. Ahrens now with his new rank as Commodore, August Ulrich leave the "Bremen" in Murmansk at the 17th of september 1939 with most of the others, to go by train back at home.

In march 1942 August Ulrich got a letter to come to a naval office to receive the blockade-runner-badge (no. 6629), which is also written in his papers, both shown here, also with the award himself. The award was worn after the war, too - so it was denazfied. For his trip, the first blockade-runner-trip at ww2, he got also the war-merit-cross 2nd class without swords.

It was a normal duty, but one of the interesting trips during wourld war 2 - as said before: the first blockade-runner!

Hope you like it, too!

regards

westfale

Edited September 27, 2008 by westfale

[westfale]

The rest of the set:

[westfale]

And the award himself, given in a presentation-box with an half-miniature for civilians:

[Bernhard H.Holst]

Hello Westfale.

Thank you for showing these articles . The liner "Bremen" touches a special cord with this reader; my grandmother returned from the USA on board the "Bremen" on the voyage just before the one described in your posting and spoke about it many times. as readers may well know the liner caught fire during the war and was not repaired.

My wife to-be worked for the North German Lloyd post-war and was a passenger during a short trial run of the new German liner "Bremen" the ex-"Pasteur"/French liner, WWII and then Far East troopship on which I sailed twice to and from Vietnam.

Thanks again for triggering memories.

Bernhard H. Holst

[Guest Rick Research]

This is an extremely interesting set-- such complete documentation is virtually impossible to find. :cheers: