Imperial sidelining....

[Chris Boonzaier]

I started collecting WW1 Iron cross award documents as a side line collection years ago.
The collection has gained importance to me, when at one point I realised that I had 150 iron cross documents sitting next to me in binders, from machine gun units, from pilots, uboot men, balloonists, gunners, doctors and commisars.... and all these 150 documents wouldnt get me one cased L/12 Knights cross.

Then I sat back and thought...what history these 150 docs represented. How much mud, bombs, bullets and bayonets, mustard gas, killing, dying and suffering are synthesized into 4 binders..... and I saw the light.

Screw the Knights cross, I have had 3 of them, but none has given me half as much pleasure as I get from flipping through the binders and seeing an EK1 doc to a "machine gun sharpshooter"unit or an EK 1 to a Uboot man who spent 3 years in a sardine can sinking english ships.

This weekend I am celebrating the 200 mark, which I think is a proud figure to have reached, but once again, it is not only the joy of reaching the magic 200 that comes into play, it is the feeling of being touched by history when I look at the shelf with the 200 documents on them, and think of what the collection represents.

[Chris Boonzaier]

So that at least one man, klement Lengering, of a regiment that comes from a City no longer even in Germany is not forgotten, here is the man I drink to today.

[David S]

Yaowzah! Yet another has seen the light!!

A wonderful document.

Pieces like this go unnoticed in the stampede to get the Knights Crosses, and they shouldn't. These are the soldiers who fought and died for very little, if they were lucky they lived, if they were luckier they received the EKII.

[Frosch]

Couldn't agree more

Congratulations Chris

I had been watching that auction but decided not to bid because I knew the price was likely to go too high when I saw your bid.

Quite apart from the fact that I am genuinely pleased you added another excellent item to what must be a terrific collection, I also feel that relatively mundane items representing the experiences of the common man, without any of the perceived glamour attached to famous names or well documented exploits, contain much more history than a single high award.

While a RK may be the ultimate achievement (or investment) for some collectors, I far prefer trying to find out the circumstances of and the personal story behind a simple document group or award citation.

With more than 100 Militärpässe for the period up to 1918 and 50 Wehrpässe and associated citations and photos to research, I look forward for the next piece of the puzzle to click into place and know that I will certainly appreciate my next battlefield tour more than I ever would from just reading about general campaign histories or the exploits of a few famous names.

Chris, are there plans to include any of your documents in the forthcoming Imperial EK section? I would certainly welcome the opportunity to see them some day.

All the best,

David

PS My draft Imperial document listing currently only covers the tip of the iceberg. Simply writing up brief summaries for each person seems to take forever and a day. Still, it keeps me off the streets ;-)

[Chris Boonzaier]

Hi,
Rick and I are gonna get to that, I am attending a course at the moment and have not had time to get around to it yet.

here is a bavarian beauty... they have the best EK docs.... the prussians kinda lagged behind...