Ekm Pi Battalion 178 question?

[VietnamWarNut]

Hello,

I’ve become relatively confident with ekm’s however I wasn’t sure about this one. The wear looks natural but just wanted to make sure. This is like my 5th one but I just had kinda a weird feeling about this one…

Anyways, I would greatly appreciate any feed back anyone has and thanks for taking time to read my post!

[Eike41]

Looks great to me, original characteristics. They might have cleaned it with a wire brush however.

[VietnamWarNut]

Thanks for the response! Yeah the scratches are quite annoying the price ain’t bad.

[Austrian]

I agree with Eike. Good tag with terrible signs of "cleaning".

[RustyRelics]

I'm going to take a wild guess and say the seller is Russian? They seem to have a bad habit of over cleaning things.


Here's a unit history.

Set up on August 26, 1939 in military district V. Personnel from Pioneer Battalion 35 of the 35th Infantry Division were called in for the installation. The battalion was subordinated to the 78th Infantry Division.

On January 27, 1940, the battalion gave up the 2nd Company to set up the Pioneer Battalion 297 of the 297th Infantry Division. On November 24, 1941, the 2nd Company, which had been re-established in the meantime, was used to set up Pioneer Battalion 305 of the 305th Infantry Division.

At the beginning of 1943 the battalion was effectively disbanded. The 3 companies were incorporated into the 3 assault regiments 215, 195 and 14 as the 6th company on January 13, 1943. The battalion staff acted from February 1, 1943 as the staff of Pioneer Battalion 282 of the 282nd Infantry Division. The units were then brought together again in April 1943, but this time as Sturmpionier Battalion 178.

After its destruction near Orsha in June 1944, a pioneer battalion 178 was set up again. This happened on September 20, 1944. For this purpose, the Pioneer Company 1543 set up on July 13, 1944 was used as a trunk. This had already been renamed to Pioneer Company 178 on July 18, 1944. The battalion was initially set up with two companies. After the establishment of the 78th Volks-Grenadier-Division, which was renamed the 78th Volks-Sturm-Division. In April 1945 the battalion was even divided into 5 companies after the remnants of the Pioneer Battalion 1545 of the 545th People's Grenadier Division had been incorporated. The field post overview also shows another renaming to Sturm-Pionier-Bataillon 178, but this did not take place.

The replacement for the battalion came from Pioneer Replacement Battalion 35 in Karlsruhe-Knielingen.

[Eike41]

A really great book on Pioneer Battalion 305 is "Into Oblivion Kharkov To Stalingrad: The Story Of Pionier-Bataillon 305"

[RustyRelics]

A really great book on Pioneer Battalion 305 is "Into Oblivion Kharkov To Stalingrad: The Story Of Pionier-Bataillon 305"

I actually had an ID disk made for me, with 1/Kp. Pi. Btl. 305 stamped on it. I wanted to portray a soldier from that unit this June in Reading PA where they'll be having a WWII show. Looks like I need to add this book to my reading list.