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Here were have a pair of documents to Sepp Blaichinger of 1./SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 500. It appears that Blaichinger received the Gold Wound Badge for the Battle of Drvar. He was clearly in hospital for some time as the document was made out on 27.8.1944. Then we see that he was in 1./SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600 as SS-Hascha, which would normally make him the
Kompanie Spieß, and received the EK1 in February 1945, as this field-made document hand-signed by SS General Felix Steiner shows.
Wonderful ensemble, eh? As forgeries go, they're more intelligently done than a lot of the forgeries about which I am consulted from time to time. On 10.2.1945, when Felix Steiner apparently recognised the bravery of SS-Hascha Blaichinger of 1./SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600, 1./SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600 was pulling out of positions on Hill 63 on the eastern side of the Oder river in the Schwedt bridgehead above Grabow, a village on the Königsberg-Schwedt-am-Oder road. Some elements of 1. Kompanie remained dug in with elements of 2. Kompanie.
SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 500 did indeed spend time with III. (Germanische) SS-Panzerkorps in the late summer and the autumn of 1944 in the Baltic and the Memel but Felix Steiner was not the Corps Commander at that point, having handed over to Georg Keppler on 9.11.1943. In February 1945, SS-Obergruppenführer Steiner was commanding XI. SS-Panzerarmeee on the Oder Front.
At the end of January 1945, 1./SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600 had received their marching orders to join Otto Skorzeny’s newly-forming Division “Schwedt” in the Schwedt bridgehead on the Oder, where Skorzeny was preparing a defence against the new Soviet offensive. 1./SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600 was commanded by Hans “Fritz” Leifheit, who had just promoted Kompanie-Spieß SS-Oscha Aussenthal to SS-Hascha. The 1. Kompanie had recently returned from their mission in the Ardennes with Skorzeny’s Panzerbrigade 150 and were the only combat-ready sub-unit of the SS Para Bn.
1./SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600 was formed from the 500th's Feldausbildung und Ersatz Kompanie in October and November 1944, the combat elements of SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 500 having effectively ceased to exist. So, it is quite a coincidence that this chap Sepp Blaichinger ended up in an entirely new company and that this company, according to this extraordinary EK1 document, had not one but two Hauptscharführer.
Presumably this might explain why SS-Hascha Blaichinger was clearly detached from Division “Schwedt” – despite the desperate need there for experienced combat veterans like him – and sent off up north to join Felix Steiner’s XI. SS-Panzerarmee, where he evidently distinguished himself to the point that General Steiner himself rendered the horny-handed old NCO the compliment of signing this field-made EK1 document in person.
As for his fellow SS-Hauptscharführer in 1. Kompanie, Aussenthal, he was posted missing, believed drowned, on the night of 29.3.1945 when the survivors of the Zehden bridgehead withdrew across the Oder, many of them stripping naked or nearly so and swimming for their lives as the Soviet juggernaut approached.
This fellow Blaichinger was clearly quite a guy! Five wounds at Drvar! Gold Wound Badge! Either quite a guy, or a bullet magnet...or fragged by own guys. But he seems to have been quite low profile because his former OC, Leifheit, never mentioned him. So low profile, in fact, that the medical officers who reassembled our doughty Germanic hero after Drvar forgot to give him his VAiG and it fell to the Kompanie-Chef of 1./Fallschirmjäger-Btl 500 to sort out this document for the brave sergeant on 27.8.1944, during a brief rest in Poland when the battalion was down to ninety effectives and 1. Kompanie was about to be dissolved.
This incredible historical document was signed by an SS-Hstuf in command of 1./SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 500. There is a stamp on the document saying so! Presumably the actual commander of 1. Kompanie at the time, or what was left of it, was away. Perhaps he was on a course, learning command signals in the field or something like that and they drafted in this chap whose name begins with “Z” to hold the fort until Dröste returned. Yes, that’s the explanation. Must be. Makes sense! Trouble is, I have not been able to find a likely candidate, neither in diaries, period accounts, interview transcripts or even in the SS-Führerliste supplied by our very own John P. Moore!
Someone paid a lot of money, so I gather, for this document grouplet but they were made up - the VAiG document appears to be real - and filled in by someone with a period typewriter with the sigrunen key, a rubber unit stamp (the lines are too thick to have been made by a metal stamp) unlike any stamps on the various original documents I have studied, and a copy of Antonio Munoz's
Forgotten Legions, although he slipped up in having Steiner sign it, being too ambitious with the Wound Badge document and making the recipient a top NCO. Cunning fakes nonetheless. The Steiner autograph isn't a bad effort in comparison to some I have seen.
PK
The issue with the "Schiller kennkarte" is more that there are TWO copies public...one INcomplete and one complete; so whatever other more "technical" faults there are with them - and there are MANY 
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