What Uniforms?

[Chris Boonzaier]

Hi,

What can this be? On the photo it says the Photographer is in Gersthofen.

<Thanks

Chris

[Naxos]

Can you make an enlagement of the shoulder strap?

[Chris Boonzaier]

The best possible...

I think the dead men may be firemen with the old leather fire helmets as opposed to soldiers?

The wound badge on old Himmlerface means it is not in the early war period where the average soldier was still wearing a haube. i think this is postwar.

[Ulsterman]

Note the boots, single cockade,1918+ wound badge, civvy-style flat caps etc..

I reckon this is 1919/20 and those are war graves personnel.

Edited February 24, 2009 by Ulsterman

[Naxos]

Note the boots, single cockade,1918+ wound badge, civvy-style flat caps etc..

I reckon this is 1919/20 and those are war graves personnel.

Medic - Unteroffizier - yes, after the war - early twenties

They must have found some casualties dating back to the beginning of the war

Edited February 25, 2009 by Naxos

[Guest Rick Research]

I'd say 1920s Landespolizei. I agree from at least the person whose helmet is visible that the dead person(s) was/were fire fighter(s). However they are not BURNED, but appear to have been engulfed in MUD or some such that required digging inside a building-- perhaps an accident during a flood with a building on fire?

Postal zip for Gersthofen is 86368 which puts it in the Augsburg region-- too far away for any WW1 air raid action.

Seems to be a peacetime local fatal accident.

(In 1919 in Boston, Massachusetts, tens of thousands of gallons of fermented molasses erupted from a gigantic storage tank and engulfed entire neighborhoods, drowning and suffocating at least dozens and injuring hundreds. Could have been that sort of industrial catastrophe.)