Inf.Pz.jag.ers

[rich89]

Found this yesterday in a P.O.W. camp (UK) am I right in saying its to a Infantry anti tank unit? This would mean allot to me as I am also a anti tank (javelin) operator in the army myself!!!!!

How can I do more research on this guy? Did they never put names on them and why is this..........

many thanks for any help/comments

[Paul D]

This tag is for Infantry Panzerjaeger Ersatz kompanie 58. So in English it is Infantry Anti Tank replacement Company 58.

They didn't come with names on in WW2 as they had in WW1 and the chances of being able to identify the man via German records are nigh on impossible as they would only search for the Tag details if you were NOK or the tag was found with remains !!

cheers

Paul

[Matt L]

The parent unit is Infanterie-Ersatz-Regiment 58; the I.E.Rs had all the Infanterie-type specialist replacement Kompanien- Panzerjäger, Nachrichten, Pionier, Geschütz- and supplied these specialist troops to Infanterie-Regimenter ideally. In this case they'd be the troops in the 14. (Panzerjäger) Kompanie of one of the Regimenter from one of the following Infanterie-Divisonen: 30., 58., 83., 110., 225., 290., 416. (these are the ones IER 58 is listed as supplying). That's as close as you can come to identifying this soldier's unit though.

With all the Shermans and T34s these guys had to face, I'll bet they wished they had Javelins LOL

I don't think it's formally made clear anywhere just why they used units only, but its perhaps as much efficiency as anything. Discs were stamped by hand, usually with individual letters, so it'd take forever to put names and addresses, etc. on discs; the Germans didn't have a central roll so just a serial number wasn't possible and since each unit had its own roll with all the soldier's information, it's quite reasonable to simply 'refer' to that. Also remember soldiers carried their Soldbuch, which had all their vital info in it too. So there was no shortage of places to look stuff up it would seem. Interestingly, the very first Erkennungsmarken had unit and roll number on them, and they continued to have just that early on in WWI- it was only in 1915 I think that they started putting vital information right on the disc- and some have so much it must have taken a hell of a long time to mark them. Someone must have realized it wasn't such a great idea afterall and gone back to just unit and number in WWII...

And yeah, you have to be a close relative to get service records, and the Deutsche Dienststelle won't even work with just discs unless it's to identify remains. It was only 67+ years ago so privacy laws still apply.

[Thanatos]

"With all the Shermans and T34s these guys had to face, I'll bet they wished they had Javelins LOL"
And some tactical nukes in the East