Imperial dog tag

[KDVR]

Hello friends

I got that set of German imperial dog tags. The two big ones seem to be from German origin, but the small one seems to be from France. May be you know more about it and why the small one was also attached to the set. The set comes direct from a household - was never in collectors hand before.

Please tell me more about the military unit and this combination of dog tags.

Thank you :jumping:

[KDVR]

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[KDVR]

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[Chris Boonzaier]

Hi,

I would guess our man just happened to land two sets of German tags at his unit, (I did the same thing in the army" and added a French one as a souvenir.

If there is a good story as to where and why he got the French one... i guess we will never know.....

[bob lembke]

The dogtags with the perforations (to be snapped when the guy was killed, one half with the remains, oner half to be turned in) was the last of the three major styles of German dog-tags; has more info. So it was more recent than the other, probably 1916 or later. He seemed to be in II. Ersatz Bataillon, 61. Landwehr Infanterie=Regiment, first in the Rekruiten Depot, then in the 4. Kompagnie. The 1880 date is his birth date, so he was about 36, which fits with serving in the Landwehr. The short numbers were his Kriegsstammrolle Nr., which seem to have been reset every year. (In peace-time the Nr. was called Stammrolle Nr., I believe, in wartime the name was changed. Don't understand this all well.)

I have my father's, it has a Hamburg address on it, I knew that he never lived in Hamburg, but that his mother did (don't ask, funny business, my grandfather had two families, poisoning with Deadly Nightshade, the usual domestic excitement), and I made a cold "call" (actually e-mail) to the city archives, and a kindly archivist poked about and found a whole part of my family that I did not know about, a half uncle and aunt I had never heard of, etc., and even where my "family" name came from.

The French one is hardly packed with information, would not give the enemy any info, and with a good data system the guy could be identified. But one wonders how it worked in practice. IMHO the French did not take great care of their men in a number of ways, like medical care.

Bob Lembke