Help Please - Unknown Erkennungsmarke

[AlecH]

Bought this dog tag at the weekend - the stamping read -
1.L.J.KoL.423
15

The reverse has what I take to be is the wearers blood group O.
Please can someone tell me what the stampings on the front mean. Thanks in advance.

[Jan S]

I think that is Leichte Infanterie Kolonne 423 - a part of Infanterie Regiment 423
Lexikon der Wehrmacht - IR423

Jan

[AlecH]

Hi Jan,
I think you've got it, I'd forgotten the I in infantry on the dog tags looks like more like a J, which was how I read it. Thanks again for the help

[Matt L]

Yup, that's it- it's an 'early' type section that carried, among other things, the ammunition and ration stores; apparently this function was centralized in a Division in 1941. Such a low roll number- the KStN lists strength at 94 (leichte Infanteriekolonne)- suggests this man may have been one of the original members of the unit when the war started.

An interesting thing to note is that typically stamping follows German language rules and only nouns are capitalized- save when everything is marked in capitals. 'leichte' is an adjective and is not supposed to be capitalized, and is usually a lower-case letter on Erkennungsmarken. Clearly whomever made this disc had a lower-case 'l' since 'Kol.' is spelled out, so it's odd that the marking is 'L. J. Kol.' and not the proper 'l. J. Kol.' Also, there was usually only one leichte-Infanterie-Kolonne in a Regiment, so I don't quite get why there's a '1' there- it didn't have Arabic-numbered Züge, and its Staffeln were numbered with Roman numerals.