Something new to talk about... JFS Para

[Lorenzo Brown]

Here is a scan that came up on this Forum about two years ago. Since that time I have never seen nor heard of this badge discussed again.

So...what do you think? Real? Fantasy?

It is a "JFS" marked Para badge with a distinctive hollow-wreath and crimped hinge and catch assemblies. Personally, I find it intriguing ..but like I said, I have never seen one in person nor seen it discussed on this Forum.

Does anybody out there have one? If so...please share it with us.

[Lorenzo Brown]

Front

[Frank Heukemes]

Dear Lorenzo,

Very interesting! Also something I have never seen or even heard of.
The unique wreath design ( I have never seen a design before on other makers or fakes that has the laurel leaves tips ending out of center of the next leave) is a good sign IMO. Eagle might be unique too, I didn´t check thorougly yet.

And then the typical JFS numbered badges hnge and catch.

Could be the real deal, but who so F****NG scarce???

Cheers, Frank

[Gene]

I have only heard about this badge in the past but I can't remember who had. Bob Hritz, maybe?

[Yuri D.]

Yeah. I've never even heard of these.

Yuri

[stogieman]

Interesting!

Hinge, pin, catch and maker mark look very good. i think it's encouraging that there are not piles of these around. IMO, it would stand to reason if it was a fake, there'd be an awful lot of them about!

[Mark S.]

Looks pretty convincing, but if it werent for the mind reeling top shelf copies of numbered badges with similiar hardware, I would probably even consider it...

Never know though..maybe it was a badge that never was, but samples were made, and subsequently "liberated" at wars end?

reminds me of the numbered badges they made. Pretty cool, regardless.

[Mike Kenny]

Hi,

My eyes when I saw these images loaded a couple of years ago. I liked it then, I like it now. I've only ever seen the images of one other, and it had the standard wide-bellied numbered assault badge pin as well. It's imaged in an old edition of IMM, along with most other LW Para Badge types. I'd buy one of these in a heartbeat - preferably with the wide pin though!

Regards
Mike K

[Yuri D.]

I was digging through my old Militaria Magazines (German) and found an article from August 1992 by Christian Von Tettinek. Here is the JFS paratrooper badge that he shows and describes for all you German readers:

[Yuri D.]

Here is a closeup of the badge obverse:

[Yuri D.]

and a closeup of the badge's reverse:

[Yuri D.]

The badge in this article looks very genuine to me. Just something about the roughness of it appeals to the late-war air in which it was made. Lorenzo, can you measure and weigh your badge to see how it compares to this one?

Yuri

[Mike Kenny]

Hi Yuri,

Yep, that's the article and the badge that I was referring to.

Regards
Mike K

PS: Yuri, have another read of Lorenzo's first post - it's not his badge. I can't remember who owned it either.

[Philippe DB]

Hi Guy's

Don't ask me why but I like it.

Interesting thing; in the article posted by Yuri it states that their seems to exist a Radio engineer badge with that same JFS setup also.

KR
Philippe

[Don D.]

Don't want to be a negative nellie here but before we all jump on the feel good band wagon we need to look at the facts as we know them.
1. We have only heard of 1-2 examples.
2. We have an article from 1992 which shows an example of the award.
3. We have no period proof that JFS made para badges.

Reminds me of a story I read about a guy in NY that counterfeited $1&$5 bills by hand. When he was finally caught the police asked him why he did such low denominations and why he didn't use a printing press to make more. He said he didn't need alot of money at the time.

Could've been an old Fritz putting something together for some beer money.

The badge might be good but with 60 years gone by and only a few examples I wouldn't bet on it.