Can anyone tell me some info about my grandfather's military artifacts from WWII?

by mikeman9412

Hey everyone! My grandfather fought with the American army during WWII and collected a number of artifacts during his time in Europe. I was just wondering if anyone can give me some info about any of the objects in the photos, especially the patches as they seem a little harder to figure out exactly what they signify and such... Thanks so much!

http://imgur.com/LhzOoK8

Spark_77

Front right, large green eagle looks a bit like this: http://www.snyderstreasures.com/eBay/Images/2011/022711/DSCN0145.JPG and look here too : http://quanonline.com/military/military_reference/german/badges/police/police_patch.php

Both are police arm patches, so I would suspect your one is too.

The chevrons were used to indicate long service, it might be luftwaffe due to the grey cloth, look about a quarter down this page: http://snyderstreasures.com/pages/germancloth.htm Then again, this page (half way down) would suggest it could also be panzer corps : http://www.thehistorybunker.co.uk/acatalog/Panzer_and_Heer_insignia.html

The eagle badge in the front centre of your pic would be worn on a luftwaffe tunic.

The epaulettes are tough to track down, I can't find an exact match, this is similar, suggests army - but must signify rank I would have thought ? http://www.hobbyswoodmilitaria.co.uk/single-ww2-german-army-uniform-epaulette-green-9481-p.asp

If you look here it continues the police theme, again not an exact match http://www.themilitariashop.co.uk/pair-of-german-feldgendarmarie-field-police-epaulettes/

They might even be SS or SD uniform, the pattern is different but the colours look correct : http://www.ulricofengland.com/prodshow/SS_SD_Epaulettes__Matched_Pair_/g005246.html

The silver badge behind the epaulettes I can't see well enough, but appears to be something similar to http://www.warrelics.eu/forum/verwundetenabzeichen-forum/ww2-german-army-wound-badge-produced-after-ww2-13417/ and http://vintagemoonbeams.ecrater.com/p/2677595/wwii-german-military-nazi-wound

The cap with the red/pink piping and black visor is German army, similar hats exist with braids instead of the strap, these are officer caps. According to this: http://www.germanhelmet.com/1403.htm your one is for an NCO.

The brown leather helmet is a police motorcycle helmet, this page is terribly slow to load but if you search it for the word "dispatch" it shows an identical one: http://www.snyderstreasures.com/pages/germanhelmets.htm

The helmet on the far right is a regular army helmet I think.

The gold coloured belt buckle and the one on the belt look very similar to this one, again German police: http://jimsmilitariacollection.com/shop/german-polizei-police-belt-buckle-brehmer/

Maybe the gold colour indicated a higher rank ?

The other belt buckle, I can't find an example of, but this page shows an identical one (top right). On that page he also has examples of the other two. http://www.svmilitaria.com/GermanWWIIBuckles.htm