Hi Friends,
Many of you know I've been after an FJ RKT mini medal bar/grouping for quite some time. Well, recently a trade opportunity arose and it looked as though a dream was about to be realized. Luud and I made a trade. Some very nice and exceedingly rare Assman badges for this wonderful and excellent bar.
I received the bar this past Thursday in good condition and was quite in love with it. The set came with two veteran reunion tokens, a small cardboard carton and an unquestionably original receipt from 1963 for a 10 spange mini bar. Sadly, the recipients name had been not only been thoroughly blackened out with a permanent marker, but it had also been scribbled over by a ball point pen as well.
Naturally, I wanted very badly to find out who the recipient was, of course and I began to dig into some research.
As part of that process, I tried many different methods attempting to read through the blackened area of the receipt always ending in disappointment. Finally, I scanned the receipt and used software called "GIMP" to alter the image to see if I could make out the name on it.
After well over an hour of working on it, the name became CLEAR! VERY CLEAR! Clear enough to read!
That's where things went wrong. What should've been a moment of triumph, turned out to be a bust, well, sort of anyway.
The mans name is "Ernst Urich." There is no RK winner by that name! What the ??? I thought.
So, I turned other directions to determine who this man is and with Luud's help, we found the man! He's a very real FJ veteran of all the campaigns and awards on the bar, except for one, the RK! It turns out he was a DKiG winner only.
That got Luud and I digging further still. Many questions arose at this point. If the man was a DK winner, that meant the RK bar had been added at some point. If the RK bar had been added, there should only be a receipt for a 9 place bar. Why is there a receipt for a 10 place bar then? We both began to consider what had happened and came to this conclusion: This bar, a 9 place bar, which both Luud and I thought was earlier than the 1963 receipt date indicated was Urich's first BW bar.
The receipt for a 10 place bar was for his SECOND bar which by 1963 needed to include a 1962, Hamburg Sturmflut award. See the pic below.
The 10 place bar, with HH Sturmflut medal in the portrait photo of Urich in his BW uniform is a set with the receipt Luud got from the seller.
The person who sold to Luud apparently added the RK bar with the 9 place bar and the 10 place receipt and sold it to Luud to increase the price. On this point, there is yet another possibility and that is that Urich was an "unofficial RKT." That is, at wars end he was up for the RK an in his BW days, felt he was entitled to wear it. I have it from very good sources that it did happen. That would explain the perfectly matched mini's, aging, wear, discoloration, etc. between all the pieces of the individual bars.
So, on the bright side, I have a very nice, attributed FJ DK bar and that's a good thing. On the down side a DK bar is not as desirable as an RK bar.
Naturally, Luud being the very good fellow he is, is making the situation right by me.
Our only hope is that the person who sold the bar to him will do the right thing and make amends for what certainly looks like intentional deceit.
An FJ RKT bar proves yet again to be one elusive bugger! Well, maybe someday. The search goes on!
(I've blackened the address information in this post for the sake of any remaining family members)
I'll add more about Ernst Urich's military history in later posts.
Many of you know I've been after an FJ RKT mini medal bar/grouping for quite some time. Well, recently a trade opportunity arose and it looked as though a dream was about to be realized. Luud and I made a trade. Some very nice and exceedingly rare Assman badges for this wonderful and excellent bar.
I received the bar this past Thursday in good condition and was quite in love with it. The set came with two veteran reunion tokens, a small cardboard carton and an unquestionably original receipt from 1963 for a 10 spange mini bar. Sadly, the recipients name had been not only been thoroughly blackened out with a permanent marker, but it had also been scribbled over by a ball point pen as well.
Naturally, I wanted very badly to find out who the recipient was, of course and I began to dig into some research.
As part of that process, I tried many different methods attempting to read through the blackened area of the receipt always ending in disappointment. Finally, I scanned the receipt and used software called "GIMP" to alter the image to see if I could make out the name on it.
After well over an hour of working on it, the name became CLEAR! VERY CLEAR! Clear enough to read!
That's where things went wrong. What should've been a moment of triumph, turned out to be a bust, well, sort of anyway.
The mans name is "Ernst Urich." There is no RK winner by that name! What the ??? I thought.
So, I turned other directions to determine who this man is and with Luud's help, we found the man! He's a very real FJ veteran of all the campaigns and awards on the bar, except for one, the RK! It turns out he was a DKiG winner only.
That got Luud and I digging further still. Many questions arose at this point. If the man was a DK winner, that meant the RK bar had been added at some point. If the RK bar had been added, there should only be a receipt for a 9 place bar. Why is there a receipt for a 10 place bar then? We both began to consider what had happened and came to this conclusion: This bar, a 9 place bar, which both Luud and I thought was earlier than the 1963 receipt date indicated was Urich's first BW bar.
The receipt for a 10 place bar was for his SECOND bar which by 1963 needed to include a 1962, Hamburg Sturmflut award. See the pic below.
The 10 place bar, with HH Sturmflut medal in the portrait photo of Urich in his BW uniform is a set with the receipt Luud got from the seller.
The person who sold to Luud apparently added the RK bar with the 9 place bar and the 10 place receipt and sold it to Luud to increase the price. On this point, there is yet another possibility and that is that Urich was an "unofficial RKT." That is, at wars end he was up for the RK an in his BW days, felt he was entitled to wear it. I have it from very good sources that it did happen. That would explain the perfectly matched mini's, aging, wear, discoloration, etc. between all the pieces of the individual bars.
So, on the bright side, I have a very nice, attributed FJ DK bar and that's a good thing. On the down side a DK bar is not as desirable as an RK bar.
Naturally, Luud being the very good fellow he is, is making the situation right by me.
Our only hope is that the person who sold the bar to him will do the right thing and make amends for what certainly looks like intentional deceit.
An FJ RKT bar proves yet again to be one elusive bugger! Well, maybe someday. The search goes on!
(I've blackened the address information in this post for the sake of any remaining family members)
I'll add more about Ernst Urich's military history in later posts.
) you can´t track down the family.....it was his adress from his BW HQ 
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