The cloth Parachutist Badge was initially a semi-official item available for private purchase through retail outlets and regimental tailors. During the war, when the Germans were building their new Fallschirm-Armee, more and more freshly trained paratroopers were being posted to combat units and dying before their issue badges and documents caught up with them.
To boost morale by giving young paratroopers something to show for completing their course, the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe decided to award the cloth badge to paratroopers before they left the parachute training schools. In German military tradition, the document is actually the award while the medal or badge is merely a way of showing that one possesses the document. So the OKL introduced a special award document for the cloth badge. There were at least two types, one of which was a simple A5 document like this one. The other was an A4 document, folded in the centre, with a similar format faced by an heroic portrait of Adolf Hitler. Many Fallschirmjäger removed the Hitler portrait.
Newly qualified paratroopers also received a Parachutist Licence, parachuting being considered a form of flight. This licence was processed and issued at unit level during the fighting in Normandy. You can see Barth's cloth badge in the photograph. Barth's course was one of the last if not the last through the Fallschirmschule at Dreux, to the west of Paris, and they could probably hear the Allied guns as they floated down over the DZ once the engine noise of their plane had faded away. Barth clearly received the award document at the school but was then given a blank licence, which was processed and issued by his unit, which was part of 5. Fallschirmjäger-Division.
He survived the war, dying relatively young in 1964. Previously, he had served with a heavy flak unit. Now, who can tell us about 5. FJD?
PK