Greece 1943

[werner geier]

and, all of a sudden, i remembered that last year 3! IF8´s had been found in a barn in Upper Austria with remnants of orig. paint and stencils. guess what unit emblem the carts featured!
this all makes sense, as the 117 Jäg.Div surrendered in Steyr/Upper Austria. but by then they most likely had lost all their Raupenschlepper. What a melodramatic Hollywood-ending this could have been: homecoming RSO´s in front of the bombed Steyr plant...

[werner geier]

cont.

[werner geier]

the purchase of a Wehrpass & Soldbuch lot last week at Niemann´s unexpectedly solved this riddle. the le.Art.Abt.(RSO) 109 provenance was my reason to buy, but a look at the Gefechtskalender proved to be the real surprise: arrival in greece on the 1st of August 1943. this date and all others match the captions on the photos!

[werner geier]

http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/...tReg/AR109.htm
i was never too happy with the 117. Jäger-Division allocation, but now also the vienniese coat of arms in the unit emblem makes perfectly sense...

[werner geier]

a snap taken in the port of Patras.