Help - info on great uncles medals

Hi everyone,

I am new around here and i'm sure you get this type of question all the time, but i'd appreciate any help you can offer.

I currently don't have enough information to ask your help for service records ect. but there are some medals that i'd like to know a little about.

First of all my great uncle served for Germany during ww2 (infantry i believe, eastern front).

Most of his medals were lost due to a name mix up (probably will make finding records hard anyway). However there are atleast two medals we have plus one which i believe may have been added in later just as a decoration.

The 2 i know where his (meant to be 7) look like a helmet with crossed swords. They are a blackish colour though it could just be a dirty metal colour. Apparently a couple of them were a different colour though im not sure what colour that is.

There is also one (i think is added in later) that looks like an iron cross. It has a swastika in the middle and "1939" at the bottom. The reason i believe it was added after is it does not have a ribbon. Any thoughts?

Lastly there is an armband (not sure if it is genuine) that is grey and has "deutschland" written in black. Also i cant quite remember but i think there may have been 1 or 2 horizontal black lines. The armband itself is quite thin.

Any help will be appreciated.

kind regards,
Cam

 

Hi,

Can you post some pictures of the medals? That would help to ID them. The one that "looks like an Iron cross" is likely an Iron Cross 1st Class (that is the degree that didn't come with a ribbon). Here is a listing of the German WWII medals. Maybe you can pick them out: List of military decorations of the Third Reich - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alan

 

The badge with the helmet and swords sounds like a wound badge, the German equivalent of an American Purple Heart. The other is likely an iron cross, it's likely a 2nd class; but can roughly be easily distinguished from a few key features. If there is no ring on the top of the cross and a large pinback on the backside, or a large screw & bolt then it's a 1st class. If the ring on the top of the medal is oriented so that it is perpendicular to the medal, and is larger and mounted on top of the cross then you definitely need to post it, while unlikely it could be a knights cross. Since the KC was meant to be worn around the neck the ring spange it uses to attach to the ring on the medal itself is different than that used on the 2nd class version; and the medal will have numerious other hallmarks if it is truly a RK.

 

Sounds to me like a Black wound badge and an EK1. If it was a Kniights cross, however, it mayb be easier to track down info about your Grandfather.
The Deautchland armband sounds like it could be a cufftitle... if you contact me and show me pictures, I should be able to identify it.
Regards