Article about: Thats some good investigation you have done so far! Yes, 58 is very old for a soldier, but it did happen in the Volkssturm at the end of the war. Don't know if the French used that old soldi
Yesterday I went to a birthday party, and got talking to a guy who digs swimming pools. Soon we got talking about finding ww1 and ww2 items when digging, and it turned out he had made some cracking finds.
One of them being a "German" engraved messtin he found some years ago. He left to pick it up, and after 15 minutes he was back with this item. Turned out to be French, and in very good condition. Normaly I'm not very interested in French stuff, but check out the engraving on it!
It reads on the front; Prisoner at Dunkerque, on june 1940 and the letters ML (his initials), on the back it reads; return to France on 194. (he never completed in the last date, so or he never made it back, or he wasn't bothered to finish it). On the lid he has engraved his name; LAFFORGLE MARIUS and the letters RC (don't know what they could mean). I told him I was a collector, and after a few whiskeys he gave me the messtin for in my collection. Other finds he had brought to show was very nice Luftwaffe dagger (pitty he tried to clean it up to bad), a German, a French and a British helmet and a French Lebel bayonet.
He's not a military collector himself, as he would have known the messtin was French and not German as he thought, but he just keeps all the artifacts he finds when digging swimming pools.
I'm very happy with htis piece he gave me, I'll clean it up a bit a put it in the vitrine. Maybe one rainey day I'll try and found out about this French soldier. I believe about 50.000 French got stuck on the beach in Dunkerque that day and taken POW. Anybody know what happend to those guys?
Good thinking ford369, could be roman catholic. Don't know how they spell that in French. I had a look in the phone book a discovered only 47 hits with that family name, so it's not a name thats common in France. It reads LAFFORGUE after checking the phone books and not LAFFORGLE as I first thought. The last U is a bit difficult to see.
a wonderful find indeed Feuerbach!!
Forget about RC for Roman catholic...If this man was a catholic,you would see just a "C" on the tin,and it's very rare to find an indication of the religious belief on a personnal item,here in France.(except on the identity card in the 40's,with all the disaster you heard about...)
In fact,i've found that this man was interned in the Stalag 17 B,in Gneixendorf,Austria.
I've sent an Email to a guy that had yet seeked informations on this man,in 2008,on a "family-tree" site(hard to explain with my so-poor english...)
Will keep you informed asap!Bye!
Thanks Feuerbach!
I had a reply from the guy!Incredible,cause his last message on the "genealogia site" was 3 years old!
Lafforgue Marius was his great-great father,born in.....1882.....
So for me,it's quite impossible he is the good guy.58 years old when captured,you can easily explain why France surrendered so fast...Ha ha ha !
I send him a new message asking him if he has infos on his ancestor's military time.58 is the age of an officer,high rank,in my opinion,not the kind of soldier engraving his messtin..
So,may be a dead end enquiry,but never the less,a very exciting cluedo!Keep you informed!
Wow! Check this messtin out!
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by WW2Hunter
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