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**VeteranSon** · 05-27-2023, 05:33 PM

Hello! I'm the son of a WW2 infantry veteran (90th Infantry Division, 357th Infantry Regiment) and retired Army myself. Like so many WW2 combat veterans, he didn't talk about it much - only opening up ever so slightly when I served in Germany just before the Wall came down where his unit served in occupation forces after the war - and I'm ashamed to say that it wasn't until after I'd commanded a company and done some reading on the topic that I recognized so many of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress that he had displayed while I was growing up.

I am mostly trying to identify some items and corroborate likely provenance of some items my father brought back after the war before donating them. My father had a number of cloth SS insignia - about a dozen cuff ribbons, 3 dozen collar insignia, some miscellaneous patches and an M42 tankers hat and M43 fez that he described as getting from what sounds like a clothing depot, and I am trying to determine if anyone has heard of similar items being recovered from the SS Bekleidungslager (clothing depot) in Grafenreuth, which he may have marched through before he entered Flossenbürg Concentration Camp about a week and a half after it was liberated. While my father said that he got them 'at Flossenbürg' (Grafenreuth was a subcamp), corroboration would be appreciated as his division museum is interested.

Another item - which he almost certainly got at the same location - is a Polish Forced Laborer badge that was apparently sewn around canvas backing into a rectangle to form a collar tab. I've never seen something like this, at the Holocaust Museum or online.

I'll be asking abut these with pictures once I can post.