My Entire Imperial German Collection.....

[Bill D.]

...can be viewed in a single photograph.

A few ribbon bars, well-worn and otherwise.

Two black wound badges, well-worn and otherwise.

One of those badges, the one burnished nearly silver from wear, would together with the soiled ribbon bar make a long mournful journey before the end of the Second World War, traveling from the distant Caucusus, across eastern Europe, to a small home in Germany.

[Bill D.]

As not much more than a boy, he fought in what would be known as "The Great War", before humanity recognized the more expedient approach of numbering them. He was trained for a special unit, one tasked with engaging and, if at all possible, destroying the monsters of the new, mechanized warfare called tanks.

He found himself quite literally "in the trenches" on the western front. His combat service was brought to an end when, while engaged, he could not avoid inhaling the burning yellow mists of the mustard gas. Stumbling, lungs and eyes seared, he collapsed and became a prisoner of the French. His injury would be outwardly conveyed in later days by the small black badge,

When he returned home at war's end, he found that he was no longer in the trenches, but still in combat nonetheless. Germany was threatened, this time from forces within. He offered his services, consisting of an admirable ability with the written word and a now-replenished physical strength, to a small poitical party, led by a fellow combat veteran who also wore a wound badge, courtesy of the gas.

And serve the party he did. So genuine was his emotional and physical commitment to the cause that he was selected as a member of a small cadre which bore the name "Stosstrup Adolf Hitler", and who were committed to the absolute protection of their party's leader.

On two cold, drenched Munich days in November of 1923, he and a handful of others took to the streets in an attempt to make their vision of a New Order a reality. They failed.

What followed was a trial and, after that, imprisonment. Yet in prison too he served, working with the Party's leader in service as liason to the faithful in north Germany. He also published a satirical newspaper within the fortress walls, read with great amusement by prisoners and warders alike.

When a photo of the leadership of the imprisoned pary was taken in the visiting room of Fortress Landsberg, he was able to stand, relaxed, and display a broad smile for the camera, making him look like a young university student on holiday in the Alps rather than the political disciple that he was.

[Bill D.]

With the passage of subsequent years the tribulations of "The Time of Struggle", and especially of the cold, gray days of Munich, were replaced by the challenges of creating and maintaining the New Order that had become a reality. The memories of Munich, though, would be revived each year. The "old fighters", as they were known (most of them now certainly older, if not actually "old"), would make the pilgrimage together back to the streets of Munich, to the thoroughfares where some had stood the barricades; to the buildings where some had seized the masonry of power, if not the actual reins themselves; and a few, who wore a little seen but much honored embroidered title on their lower right sleeve, to the storefronts and halls and sidewalks where they had stood close by their leader, fulfilling their function as his protector. This they did until they were dispatched to hold a bridge of critical importance to the coup. As they stood at the bridge, awaiting the Police columns that they were certain would come, they wore even then a mark of distiction. The commander of the Munich detachment of the Stosstrup had concluded some time before that his men were distictive in their purpose, and as such should be distinctive in their appearance as well. He wanted them easliy recognized as an elite, and not simply as rank and file of the SA. But how to do that? The uniform was prescribed: A brownshirt; an armband, red with a swastika upon a white circle; a tie; breeches; boots. That was precious little to work with in the cause of esprit de corps. But the commander of the Munich Stosstrup had an idea, and distinctive these men became. On the days of gunfire and blood in Munich, these few men of the Stosstrup were distinguished by their armbands, for around them, above and below the swastika, the members of the leader's hand-picked bodyguard wore a black stripe. The party armband with dual black stripes would be adopted many years later by that group which would trace its lineage to the young men in Munich.

Each year the times past were remembered, and he would join others who were with him in 1923, to visit Munich again, and to march the streets again. He wore on his brownshirt sleeve the silver band of the Stosstrup veterans. And on his left breast he wore a small ribbon bar, and a black wound badge.

[Bill D.]

The story will continue.....