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.................................................................................................................................The next Fandance is Sat 18th May 2024......................................................................................................................
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Having taken into account the current COVID restrictions that currently apply in the different parts of the UK, we have made the difficult decision to cancel the 2021 reunion.
The Chairman Nick Butler will be heading up the Fan at 0930 hrs on Saturday the 15th May and he will lay a BAFC wreath on behalf of the Club at the summit.
He will also toast The Fallen.
If other members wish to make their own pilgrimage up the Fan at their own risk please follow the relevant COVID restrictions that will be in place.
As a Club we are not able to accept liability for members safety and well being over the weekend of 14/15 May. Our Clubs insurance that normally covers Fandance will not operate this year.
Update to follow reference Aldershot 10 Miler on the 20th November 2021.
.........................................................................................................................The 10 Miler will be held on w/e Saturday 23rd November 2024........................................................................................
Can any of the airborne history buffs amongst you tell me what makes this photograph more interesting than other photographs of German parachutists from WW2 or, in this case, just before WW2 (Clue)?
You spotted that the NCO nearest the camera has an Army belt buckle and Army collar patches. These men are from the Army's Fallschirm-Infanterie-Bataillon, which was absorbed into the Airforce's parachute branch as of 1.1.1939 as II./Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 1 or 2nd Bn, 1st Parachute Light Infantry Regiment. The FIB was based on the Fallschirm-Infanterie-Kompanie, formed on 1.4.1937, after the formation of the first Airforce parachute unit in 1936. They are wearing helmets with Airforce decals, which dates the photo to early 1939, as store supplies of the M38 helmet with Army decals had dried up. However, many of the FIB men did not immediately receive their new Airforce uniforms and so continued wearing their Army kit for a while.
schwarzman.jpg
In fact, one of the Knight's Cross winners at Moerdijk, Olympian sportsman and FIB Winter Training and Sports Instructor Alfred Schwarzmann was photographed in hospital after the battle in his Army officer's uniform. The Army parachutists had their own version of the Parachutist Badge, which was abolished on 1.1.1939 but reinstituted on 1.1.1943 for Army parachutists of the Brandenburg airborne sub-units. Between those dates, Brandenburgers and Mountain Troopers (Narvik 1940) had received the Airforce type.
You can see Schwarzmann's Army jump badge in the photo. Above are three examples from my collection. From left to right: 1st pattern from 1937/38; 2nd pattern from 1938; third pattern from 1943/44. The first two are struck in high-grade aluminium and the mid-war badges were in what the Germans called "feinzink". Many original early FIK/FIB badges show extreme signs of wear with multiple repairs as they were rare and hard to find even at the time and ex-Army Paras were very proud of them, literally wearing them out.
all that gear is worth a few bob now i am lucky to have a badge from that unit good fighting troops they never quite recovered after jumping into malta, a good book on these lads is called "hunters from the sky"
lol yeah lads crete and i read the frakkin book wee mary has me running round like a mad dog with a giant honey do list birthday soon so iam hoping for some time off not!!!!! an officer wi a map strewth
Re Crete, My old man had great admiration for the German Airborne. He was part of the rearguard in Crete and eventually taken prisoner by them late May 1941. He said they would just keep on attacking even when losing a great many men.
In the meantime, here is a document from a group I have to Oberjäger Erwin Forkel of the Fallschirm-Artillerie or Parachute-Artillery. Student's signature is manuscript rather than facsimile. It is the award citation for the KRETA cuff title.
Alan's summary is quite on the nail. However, this man's trousers are most likely 2nd pattern FJ pants. He is wearing gaiters over his mountain boots. The tan-water smock was pretty cheap compared to the earlier patterns. But his look of exhaustion is probably due to the fact that the 500 had had very little rest since the Battle of Drvar on 25/26 May 1944, operating as a 'fire brigade' with General Steiner's Kampfgruppe on the rapidly tightening Eastern Front before being withdrawn and then sent to Budapest, all forty or so of the ones left standing of an 1100-strong battalion, which had already been all but wiped out at Drvar. Hummel_004.jpg
Now, here are a couple of interesting photos of Sgt Walter Hummel, who is still alive. They were in my collection for a while. The portrait was taken in a studio on the Adolf Hitler Straße in Neustrelitz, during the forming-up period of SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600 in October and November 1945. Note that Walter is wearing his M38 walking-out tunic with shoulder straps bearing the prewar SS-Regiment "Deutschland" monogram. The tip of an officer-quality Heer or Army eagle can be seen on his sleeve, supplies of SS insignia being scarce even at the time. He wears his Iron Cross 2nd Class and Winter War ribbons in his button hole, along with his Iron Cross 1st Class, Infantry Assault Badge, Silver Wound Badge and Luftwaffe-pattern Parachutist Badge, probably by the German firm of Assmann, who still produce the BW jump badge. The one I was given had the same A logo on the back.
On Walter's parachutist licence, a Luftwaffe document issued through the SS-Hauptamt, the thing that makes the mugshot interesting is that we know it post-dates the award of the Winter War 1941/42 Medal but he wears the prewar SS-Verfügungstruppe runic collar patch with the numeral '1' for SS-Regiment "Deutschland".
In other photos I have of him, he wears his "Deutschland" cuff title, as in the one above with his mother when on leave in Munich just after his jump course. The point is that, like any army, veterans took pride in wearing their old badges and gear to show how much time they had in. He is wearing the ribbon bar of the 1938 Czechoslovakia Medal. I have some photos of him and his mates by a sign pointing the way to Prague; they are marching there on foot led by an officer on horseback. In this photo, he wears his standard garrison cap and tunic with Luftwaffe-issue parachutist trousers and 2nd pattern jump boots.
Note that he wears the cloth version of the Luftwaffe Parachutist Badge. Late in 1943, the Luftwaffe made this purely unofficial version of the badge official so that young parachutists had something to wear as soon as they finished their training. There was even a special version of the award certificate that mentioned the badge was the cloth type. The metal badges and award certificates often took months to catch up with their recipients, and many a young Fallschirmjäger died with no badge or a badge that he'd had to buy.
In the case of the Army version of the badge, which was only given to the first few courses through the jump school in Serbia before the limited stocks ran out, some recipients received their documents and badges as late as November and December 1944, a year after their jump courses. This is proven by the dates on the handful of original certificates surviving and the entries in daybooks.
This well-known combat photo from Drvar shows Walter Hummel kneeling by the church cloisters. The church still stands today. He is armed with a Browning Hi-Power. Note the kneepads and the cloth gaiters around his jump boots, for added support.
If any of you have ever seen the Yugoslav film "Desant na Drvar", about the airborne raid on Tito's HQ, there is a sequence where a German Para throws his jump smock over the driver's slit of a light tank sent against the SS-FJ positions, causing the tank to veer about and then retreat rapidly. This was Walter Hummel. He already had both Iron Crosses and should have received the Honour Roll Clasp but Himmler, rotten little turd that he was, remained ever-mindful that the SS-FJ Bn wasn't his baby and that some 80% of that initial intake were bewährungs-schützen or disciplinary cases (not penal) who had volunteered in the hope of being rehabilitated both as soldiers and as citizens.
Walter, on the other hand, was one of four NCOs from the Das Reich Division who, to their great disgust, were posted to Serbia to retrain the volunteers, many of whom had been in labour camps and punishment units and were rusty in terms of soldierly skills. They didn't remain disgruntled for long as members of Der Idiotenclub, as the guys called themselves. They even had a song about it. So, coming back to Himmler, he made sure bravery awards were very hard-won in SS-FJ-Btl 500. The CO, Rybka, who was seriously wounded assaulting Tito's cave, got the Honour Roll Clasp when he ought really to have been awarded the Knight's Cross.
I suppose I had better find some airborne-related quiz material from other armies before you chaps get the idea that I sit in darkened rooms watching old Nazi newsreels and humming the Horst Wessel...
Curses upon you Mr Keating,for putting this enthralling stuff on in the morning when it has distracted me from my toast on the top of the Rayburn,and left it too burned to rescue! More,more!
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