PKeating Posted October 8, 2009 Share Posted October 8, 2009 This award document bears the hand signature of Fritz Prager, CO of II./Fallschirmjäger-Rgt 1 from 1938 to 1940 and then of II./Fallschirmjäger-Rgt 3, before he was forced to stand down because of the cancer that killed him in December 1940. Prager had taken over from Richard Heidrich as CO of the Heer's Fallschirm-Infanterie-Bataillon in 1938, before the FIB's transfer to Luftwaffe command. He won the Knight's Cross at Moerdijk in May 1940, where he was wounded in action . This is one of the hardest RKT signatures to find, especially in view of Prager's status as a former Heer patratrooper and Knight's Cross winner. PK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Boonzaier Posted October 8, 2009 Share Posted October 8, 2009 Indeed! The lower the rank the less paper they signed (as far as award docs go)So a Hauptmann signature is pretty hard to find. Take a guy like Sepp Dietrich and you trip over his signature at every website. Take Jochen Peiper... and you can look hard.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
equeen Posted October 17, 2009 Share Posted October 17, 2009 Definately agree that Prager's is one of the most difficult (FJ RKT) signatures to find. Here is a nice, unpublished image of him (circa 1938) wearing the army smock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
equeen Posted October 17, 2009 Share Posted October 17, 2009 And here is Hermann Reil with his wife (and nifty hand drawn Christmas card that he made for his wife) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PKeating Posted October 17, 2009 Author Share Posted October 17, 2009 Interesting to see the rank rings of tresse on the sleeve of Hauptmann Prager's jump smock, a system reprised for junior leaders in the early days of SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 500, when many of fellows there were banned from wearing medals and insignia of any kind because of their disciplinary status. Thank you very much, Eric, for posting both the photo of Prager and of Hermann Reil. Regarding the rank rings, this was not the only example of the prewar Fallschirm-Infanterie Kompanie/Bataillon being a bit of a law unto themselves where insignia was concerned, as the photos of other officers wearing the 1938 new-style field caps or 'sidehats' with the BeVo wreaths and cockades from the old-style field caps show. Are there any other documents from Hermann Reil known to survive? PK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
equeen Posted October 17, 2009 Share Posted October 17, 2009 (edited) The OCT 38 Medal is the only formal award document I have seen from him. I have a couple of file type documents that came with the photos I have. I like this one, kind of interesting. Unfortunately I had to reduce the image to the size of a postage stamp for the system to accept it. Edited October 17, 2009 by equeen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
equeen Posted October 17, 2009 Share Posted October 17, 2009 Another image of Reil. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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