I bought a great group of goodies (unfortunately no award docs) to a Lt Martin Karl August KÃœster or Kuester) in the 81st Hessen kassel inf regt... any cahnce of finding anything on him ?
I will post photos later.
I will post photos later.
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Top photo has the Freikorps V Randow cross, the bottom one shows him after a bad face wound.Comment
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He looks 45 in the top photo, but then the lower one... cover one side of his face, then the other. What shows is that he was actually very young, but so disfigured by that across the forehead, down over the right cheek, to centered on his chin below his lower lip-- an enormous "C" shaped wound, he looks like an old guy... when he was actually about 22.
Leutnant, ernannt 8 October 1917, means he was probably 20 years old then, all of 22 with the 1919 awards.
I don't find anything else. Küster is too common a name to tell infantry ones apart. Didn't make General.
I can't tell what the last three ribbons on his south German style ribbon bar are, always a problem with B&W photos of that style. He didn't get anything from Waldeck. From the jowls and gray hair, I suspect the 3rd ribbon is a Hindenburg Cross, and that was taken in the mid 1930s in his old uniform. The lower one, he still looks teenaged on the unruined part of his face.
This must be what Daniel Cole's HHOX winner looked like, from reading service records of a similar horrifying facial wound.Comment
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Hi,
The top photo is from 1943. probably had to proove to the wife that the uniform still fit ;-)Comment
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