Waffen SS Schirmutze

Very nice example of the Bronze variant of APB. Have you checked the WA article on APB ? It has a nice photo of an Italian Partisan marching alongside a German POW who is a recipient of APB. I pity his fate, as the APB recipients were usually shot.

PS - I wonder how many of the 47 APB in gold survived the war. I personally know of 5 examples.

WOW...is wry hard tell where they are or how may are survived.I know only one in an Italian collection.The problem is:are these original??The APB are very well remade with the original WW2 stamps.

Yes ,I know the photo on the WA Forum.

Can you post the picture?

Are you talking abouth the Italian parisan pic ?

Yes the italian partisan with german pow

Here you are. COPYRIGHT: Wehrmacht Awards LLC

Thanks for the picture

WOW...is wry hard tell where they are or how may are survived.I know only one in an Italian collection.The problem is:are these original??The APB are very well remade with the original WW2 stamps.

Yes ,I know the photo on the WA Forum.

Francesco, all the 5 examples that I know of are in USA collections. With your Italian one, there are 6 APBs in Gold. Wonder what happened to the 41 left.....

Alexei,do you have the book "Das Bandenkampfabzeichen" by Rolf Michaelis?

Is a little book dedicated to this abzeichen.There are some APB in gold pictures.Unfortunately there is not the name of the owners.

Maybe we can try to open a thread on the WA Forut to have some informations!??!

Hallo Gentlemen,

Very Nice Picture from the Italian Campaign.

BUT

I would say from the look of this picture the Germans (both blindfolded and being guided) are being escorted through the front lines, by British? soldiers to have a conference under a flag of truce, it was normal to blindfold the enemy when they were in your area, so they did not register the location where your machine-gun, mortars and infantry were, as when they returned to their own side the information could be passed on to the artillery or used to plan an attack.
If prisoners of War why bother to blindfold them??

The first german soldier is also carrying a nice pair of binoculars and has his holster on the belt left-side waist, and if a prisoner the first thing would have been to remove the holster & gun, and the insignia for souviners.

The soldiers escorting them all appear to be wearing British style berets and might be a British Paratroopers as the one in the leftside of the picture with a white flag has what looks like a para badge on the beret!!

Kevin A. Ryan in Deva.

Finally a pic of an unissued APB in Gold with Diamonds. Credits: Axis History Forum (Andre Huesken Collection).

Hope you like it.