Great Grand Father's Unit help

Feldgrau's WWII operational map project, map research, archives, tools and techniques, and research requests.

Moderator: Abicht

Post Reply
JordanH
New Member
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon May 28, 2018 8:50 pm

Great Grand Father's Unit help

Post by JordanH »

Good Morning,

I'm looking to discover more information about my Great Grand Father I posted about it on reddit but I was given hell about it... I thought I'd come to a more appropriate place.

My Great Grandad served with the SS we are 99 % certain and was an Iron Cross winner. I'll give some background detail about him from what my Mother had said to me bearing in mind my family at the time lived in the DDR so things like this were not talked about much in the house hold when she lived with her Grand parents. She had described the uniform colour vividly I googled the types of uniforms and it brought up SS Panzer Regiments, he also polished his jackboots every week when he could when he wasn't having a malaria attack from the war. My Mother also mentioned about his Iron Cross but he would never talk about how he won it (i'd love to know his citation) His officers cap was stripped and his uniform of any unit identification. She had mentioned you could tell exactly that the skull had been there of the SS on his officer cap.

He had a "war trophy" which was a Russian soldiers water bottle which was engraved but he never mentioned how he got that either... He sadly fought with PTSD and Malaria he died just before I was born. I have all the relevant information with his name, DOB and his place of birth.

If someone could help me track down his unit I would be forever grateful and it's been a family mystery for decades!

Thank you
User avatar
Simon H
Associate
Posts: 637
Joined: Mon Sep 30, 2002 8:28 am
Location: UK/EU

Re: Great Grand Father's Unit help

Post by Simon H »

Hi Jordan,
The Deutsches Dienstelle WaSt in Berlin will have records of his service:
https://www.dd-wast.de/en/home.html

As a relative you will be able to obtain them if they have anything.

The award of the EKi or EKii is not unusual but unless you have his Soldbuch it will be almost impossible to trace, unless it comes up in the records. They should at least give you an idea of which unit he was in. From there you can perhaps begin to research his movements.

Kind Regards,
Simon
Simon Harrold

WW2 Battlefield Relics: German Erkennungsmarken decoded.
Post Reply