Some very early awards....

[Chris Boonzaier]

"I am spending my last day in the Fatherland with friends. Tomorrow I will be on the western border....

Tomorrow in the early morning I will go to church and entrust my soul and body to god.

Then off to battle in Lothringen. How happy I am to see the blue and white flag again. May God be with Germany,with you, with my brothers and sisters.. and hopefully with me!"

[Chris Boonzaier]

I saw this group a few times at shows... when I saw it this weekend the seller was pretty desperate to move it and I got it about 35% off.

I am very happy indeed, it is an extremely early casualty and has lots of paperwork.

Lt d Res Lieber was wounded (for the 2nd time) on the 3rd (according to death card or 6th (according to records) by a bullet wound in the lower jaw. He was in hospital in Strasbourg and died on the 26th of November 1914.

There seems to have been a race to award him some medals before he died. He lived long enough to get his EK2, the other two, although signed a few days before his death, did not make it to him. They were sent to his mother.

Here is his EK2 doc.

As is occasionally encountered, especially in with some early awards, the document took the form of a letter/notification of the award.

[Chris Boonzaier]

1

[Chris Boonzaier]

as is usual with the units on these... the unit is his parent unit, not the one he was with when he was awarded this.

[Chris Boonzaier]

in 1913

[Chris Boonzaier]

3

[saschaw]

Sad, but interresting group.

I wondered how he got the Baden award, then realized he used to be in KB 8. IR, whose honour chief weas the Grand Duke of Baden.

[Komtur]

Impressive, thanks for sharing.

Regards, Komtur.

[Chris Boonzaier]

Hi,

it was a bit of a problem finding out where he really was, but Hauptmann/Dan pulled the records for me.

He was in fact with the 8th Brigade Ersatz Battalion, which was serving nowhere near his parent regiment.

8th Infantry was in the 33rd division and the 8th Brigade ersatz battalion, along with another ersatz Battalion was off with the 30t reserve division.

there is a bit of extra correspondance of his family chasing down the medals and documents, nice group for a very short war...