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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

Unidentified German shoulder straps


bierast

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This one has been vexing me since I picked it up very cheaply in a Berlin flea market.

mystery_straps.gif

Specifically, the shoulder straps seem to have a script 'J' and a number(?), something I've not seen fully described in any of the reference material available to me:

mystery_straps_detail.gif

I say 'fully' as this book contains a photo of a soldier wearing a Prussian shako and a waffenrock with Swedish cuffs and what appear to be the same shoulder straps (with numeral '6'). This is captioned as '6th Jäger Regiment'. As the Jäger regiments were simply late war agglomerations of multiple pre-existing Jäger battalions (e.g. Jäger Regt. 7, consisting of Saxon Jäger Btns 13, Res. 25 and Res. 26, formed August 1916), and such battalions are invariably shown wearing plain numerals or numerals plus hunting horn motif (for Saxons), this strikes me as implausible.

Can anyone solve this minor mystery?

The back of the card, incidentally, is no help - only that the subject's name is Hans and he is very fond of his sister:

mystery_straps_bk.gif

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Telegraphen Bataillon?

This was my initial belief, but apparently not:

telegraphen.gif

The Telegraphen 'T' has a much less pronounced leftward curl at the bottom - this one loops right round inside itself...

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Yes, defiantly Telegraphen-Batallion!

Cheers from Germany

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Has anyone got a good photo of the Telegraphen 'T' strap handy for comparison?

It occurs to me looking at it now, that the presumed 'T' on my photo looks remarkably like the Luftschiffer 'L' turned upside-down (with number added). Not disputing the ID, just wondering if 'corners were cut' somewhere in preparing the tailoring patterns for the various types of specialised straps...

ARL

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I don't have any, but ripepd these pix of the site of 'known' dealer...

Thanks - a 100% definite identification. :)

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