Need help for 2 unkown german id tags

[annieg]

Hi there,

Let me introduce myself, I'm Pierre, I live in Belgium and have been metal detecting for the past 25 years in some Battle of the Bulge places.

Today I found these two ID tags with VERY UNCOMMUN markings. XXXVII. I found them in a woods near an old castle wich was occupied by the german in WWI , in Mai 1940, sometimes during the course of the war...and again during the Battle of the Bulge.

It appears that the smaller one was nailed onto something at some point...also the lone hole at the bottom of the other one seems to have been made by hand...probably in order to nail it also....after some thinking I came to the conclusion that those two tags were probably nailed on wooden crosses

I asked the owners of the castle if by any chance they had ever heard of some temporary cemetery in their woods in WW1 or WWII but they didn't know.

Could someone tell me if they are WW1 or WWII and what XXXVII stands for.

Thanks in advance

Pierre

[annieg]

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[Matt L]

Hi Pierre,

Well the first disc is unlikely to be a WWII type since by then there was a standard form that included the three Trennschlitzen in the middle and the single hole in the middle of the lower edge; what you have is like the first 'standard' type from WWI that was a large disc only with two holes for the cord (Halsschnur)- the addition of Trennschlitzen came later and the single hole later still.

What exactly the marking means is hard to say; usually large Roman numerals refer to an Armee-Korps- I have one myself from a soldier of Württembergisches-Infanterie-Regiment 413 that includes the marking 'XIII A.K.' for the thirtheenth Armee-Korps. You'd need a WWI military organization expert to tell you if there was a XXXVII Armee-Korps though. I have no idea just what a disc with even the AK number and a serial numbe would be though- since identity discs were only necessary for people in danger of being killed and requiring identification, and given that soldiers' discs at the time had a HUGE amount of information on them, one so simple as yours is very odd. I can tell you it's not the other major user of Roman numerals- the WWII Wehrkreis; there was no Wehrkreis XXXVII.

[annieg]

Thanks Matt

Much appreciated

Pierre