One of the nice touches done at the March on Rome event was the distribution of Feldpost letters for the German troops and the mail call for the Allies… It was a welcome surprise… even more so was to receive a letter from my friend Wolfgang who is posted on the Russian Front! Amazing that a letter would get through in late 1944! It was a welcome treat just before our date with the advancing Allies…
Here’s the envelope, quite nicely done…
And the letter from my friend Wolfgang…
Expanding my historical interest in POWs in America I’ve acquired a piece of POW art from an antique dealer in Minnesota. Nice piece with a preliminary drawing on the back, it even fits my decor.
Here’s the front side, quite nicely done…
The aborted image on the reverse side…
I grew up reading about POWs in Germany, my earliest readings were Eric Williams’ The Wooden Horse and Pat Reid who wrote the book on Colditz prison.
More lately I’ve been reading on the POW camps in the USA for holding Axis POWs. I started with Dr. Arnold Krammer’s book Nazi Prisoners of War in America (Editorial aside: of course you know the publisher appended “Nazi” to the scholarly work to put ‘zing’ in their sales effort - MBA’s at work monetizing everything…). I loved Prof. Krammer’s book it put a lot of what I’d seen in dropping by the former POW camps at Navasota and Hearn TX into proper context. The Navasota camp is near Camp Anderson which is one of our reenacting sites.
What sealed the deal were my visits to the internment camp at Fort Stanton. Amazing experience to see the industriousness of the internees in constructing the Gate House, Olympic pool and the Gymnasium.
The front of the gym, built by the internees in 1944, served the community up until the late 60’s then abandoned to the elements.
The interior, slowly degrading…
From the back side, showing the boiler room and basement entrance.
My friend Aaron contemplating a dive into the shallow end of the pool…
Looking from the pool shelter end of the pool, dirt has collected in the deep end…
The guard house, gutted by fire at one point…
One major difference between the Fallschirmjäger and the US Paratroopers was that the Fallschirmjäger jumped with only a pistol and his main fighting weapons were dropped in a parachute container for him to recover when he landed. This was a major problem in Kreta since many of the drop canisters (Abwurfbehälter) fell behind the lines of the British troops the Fallschirmjäger were to attack with disastrous results.
I’ve been toying with the idea of building an Abwurfbehälter from scratch. The version that I’ll try my hand at is the steel one. I’ve found quite a bit of information and posted it on a new page on the site here: DropCanister.
It shouldn’t be too much problem since I’ve already built two airplanes out of aluminum and have the skills and tools… Stay tuned…
A video shot and edited by one of the 984 soldaten… really good!
Unfortunately since the video won’t allow linking you have to get there by clicking on the photo above.
This photographer; Sergey Larenkov, takes WWII photos and merges them with the modern day view, not a side by side, but one over the other… for a really cool result.
Here’s a link to his site sergey-larenkov.livejournal.com
Wow we just wrapped up the March on Rome event… what an incredible experience. I’ll write more when all the other work I have to catch up on gets done but for now here are a few photos…
KvR Panzer III positioning for a shot at the Hellcat.
Hydration break while preparing for a counter attack.
Sani rests in the back of the Protze.
Armour moves out for a counter attack.
Scouting mission in the Kübel.
It’s just over a week left until the big event! March on Rome and I’m packing my gear - mountains of it (communications, pioneer, weapons and Fallschirmjager) also since I have two vehicles participating - the Kubelwagen and the R-71 there is final prep, tune up and loading to do.
I also have to lay out uniforms - my personal load out is different this time since I’m the overall Axis commander. I have to pack up quite a few items for other people that I’ve promised to outfit… hope I don’t forget anything…
This should be a very cool event. Oh and one other thing… it’s the first event where I’ll have the new PoV HD camera too!
Cheers!
Happy Independence Day! I’m spending mine rebuilding the carburetor on my Kübel… an entirely self inflicted wound. Like a dunce I used one of my jerrycans without checking it first. Duh, it was full of fine rusty particulate matter that is now blocking my carburetor jets. The Kübel won’t idle at all and runs really poorly with no power. I barely managed to limp home.
Fortunately rebuilding a VW carb is way easier than the Carter Thermoquad on my Dodge; and with only two bolts holding it on and one wire and a throttle linkage to disconnect is it removed in minutes.
I dissembled it on the bench and cleaned out a lot of fine rusty goop, soaked the body and jets, cleaned the fuel and air passages and reassemble it all in less than an hour. Here’s the cleaned carb back in place.
The Kübel purrs like a kitten again…
I don’t usually rant, but today I’m prepping for March on Rome and I need to reconfigure my zelt tent to make a sun tarp for the registration area…. and argh! the damned holes don’t properly line up on mt repro zelts. (No yes I have some real deal zelts that do work like a champ but I’d like to save them for lighter duty; they are valuable historic items.)
But why in the world can our suppliers not make something even a little bit faithful to the original…mainly because we buy them. It’s time for that to change… It’s time to start the official zeltbahn registry and authentication!
So as from today! Measure your zelt! No vendor I’ve found can consistently make an zelt of the correct size. If it doesn’t measure up correctly - send it back! It will be useless to you in the field except as a decoration.
To be of use the zelt must be able to mate up exactly with other zelts - to make your tents, to make a litter… to be of use to you and your kameraden it must be made to the original specifications. Let’s all join together and insist that our gear be of quality.
Unfortunately the zelt it is often one of the shoddiest pieces of repro gear. Originals are expensive and increasingly rare and so repros are attractive. However… fully 100% of the repros I’ve purchased have huge sizing flaws. The key being that the space between the buttons is not consistent. I’ve even had some zelts where the hole spacing even varies between the sides of the same zelt!
Why does this matter? If you are only a day soldier and all you ever do is button the zelt around you it is only a minor . However if you are making a shelter if they don’t match it renders the zelt that is nonstandard useless.
It’s hard enough if you supply all the zelts and have sorted through them beforehand. However in the field when you and kameraden are trying to build a shelter in the face of the coming cold night mismatched zelts are a huge handicap.
Now why the repro companies cannot (or will not) produce a zelt to the original specifications is a matter of conjecture. I suspect that some MBA has figured out that by making the holes 190mm apart instead of 210mm as the originals will save 1 square meter of cloth per zelt and hence a 50 cent savings per item for his bonus maybe?
Here’s a list of vendors that supply a zelt that matches the standard.
If anyone knows of one please let me know I’ll happily add a link here and send every Jager your way. - feldwebel@fallschirmjager.net
Tags: rant
