Jäger vs Skijäger vs Gebirgsjäger

[Johnny R]

Desecration and sacrilege!

As my Grandfather always said- Being stupid is very expensive

[JPhilip]

If I remember correctly, the Jaeger battalions of Inf. Regiments such as (2, 4, 15, 17 etc) did not wear the Jeager insignia on the sleeve.

Yes you remember correctly.
Jäger units within Infantry Regiments didn't wear the oakleaves arm insignia because the latter didn't exist at the time. It was adopted for identifying Jäger as such when Jägerdivisionen were created.

[Paul Walmsley]

The topic of Jager is very interesting with little coherent gathered info in books on the subject.

The few Jager battalionen units before mid-war were a tradition and assigned to infantry regts , the only difference was their waffenfarbe. (They wore the traditional infantry cap, with green chevron.) The Jager were a german light infantry rifle armed tradition from at least the 1700s where they inspired open infantry tactics (Britsh Light and Rifle units("the Jaggers"). In WW1 they fought as numerous elite infantry battalions and even wore a greener (think Polizei shade blue green) tunic. Also had a different pickelhaube before the stalhelm of 1916. (The "Goslar jagers" were a battalion that retained these WW1 traditions and were Rommel's old unit from Wurtemburg). hey were part of an infantry division.


Later in the war specific Jager-divisionen were formed (1942?) and the "infantry "elements got the oakleaf badges (cloth sleeve and metal cap).

The point about jager divisions was their support elements such as artillery etc which was different to traditional infantry divisions. (lighter).There was little in the actual training of the "infantry" element though they assumed the gebirgsjager (GJ) traditional "elite look".

Not sure if they ever wore the gerbirgsjager cap. Suspect they did, after 1942, making them appear as GJ in wartime photos. Famous Painting (of Stalingrad jagers in a trench) show they did ,this being late 1942?. By 1943 would be issued the M43 cap

My question would be : what happened to the Jagers in Infantry divisioins after 1942? I tink they remained in these infantry divisions for the most part but did they get the new bages?

jagerr divisions were used for hill-low mountain warfare where lack of transport etc was not as critical and heavy artillery support not possible. Also the germans probably found that the intensive GJ training was too impractical/extensive/uneccessary for low-mountain warfare. GJ and FJ had to be used frequently as ordinary but elite infantry in the east front. Later jager divisionen were used in urban defensive positions, again where hard cover and panzerfaust warfare meant their lack of heavy artillery was less important.

Fallchirm_Jager for obvious resaons also had little in the way of Heavy artillery support and transport.

The large Ski-jager units were formed pretty exclusively from GJ units and initially wore GJ insignias. (some smaller ad hoc ski units (even doen to platoons) were formed from other units -even FJ -during Russian winters)