Adrian Davies kindly sent me this photo of 3 gas detection brassards. All came from a British lightweight respirator bag.
On of the markings was already in the list, which is the first time I have come across an identical marking twice.
Please keep sending me the markings of your brassards, so I can add them to the list. Maybe a pattern (other than month/year) emerges that can tell us a bit more.
I’m looking for accounts of US paratroopers who earned the Soldier’s Medal. I recently bought an original WWII slot brooch Soldier’s Medal and case, and I thought it would be interesting to create a kind of ‘hall of fame’ of all paratroopers who received one.
This medal is quite rare compared to all other combat decorations, because it was awarded for heroism not involving combat. For example, in the 508th PIR, only 7 were awarded the Soldier’s Medal.
The Soldier’s Medal was worn after the Medal of Honor (1), the Distinguished Service Cross (14), then the Distinguished Service Medal (0), the Legion of Merit (3), the Silver Star (118), and before the Bronze Star (378). The numbers between brackets are the numbers of awards for the 508th PIR during WWII, in order to give an idea of the rarity of this decoration.
Heroism not involving combat often involved rescuing civilians or other servicemen from fire or drowning, but surely, each citation will be worth reading.
My earlier post about SSgt. John (‘Jack’) Urbank from 2017, and again in 2020 has just been updated with some new (old) information.
The information I received from Gary Grand included some newspaper clippings from Jack’s local newspaper, the Akron Beacon Journal. I completely overlooked the attachments at the time and only noticed them when I was contacted about Jack again.
It includes a piece from 1963 when he attended the première of The Longest Day, an interview from June 1964 about his D-Day experiences 20 years earlier, and an interview with his wife Edna Urbank from 1990 about her wartime job as a riveter at Goodyear Aircraft.
The picture on the right is from the Akron Beacon Journal, June 6, 2014.
This picture was sent to me by Karel Menard. It came from a Canadian soldier who was trained in Canada during WWII, but was never deployed overseas.
This gas detection brassard looks identical in shape and construction to the British made ones, but the colour is more dark brown and the stitching is brown instead of white.
What mainly stands out is the different stamps on the inside. It is marked with a logo in an oval with a J, R and C? It’s hard to make out, but presumably, this would have been the manufacturer. The date stamp is NOV 13 1942. There’s also a Canadian broad arrow stamp on the inside, not visible on the photo.
These Canadian brassards are quite rare. More so than the British made ones.
Have you also struggled to keep the different French and Belgian fourrageres apart? They all seem to be red and green, don’t they? Or is it green and red? Photos in ads and articles are often of low quality and are a poor aid for hunting down the right ones for your collection.
Who was awarded which type of fourragere? How to identify an original WWII fourragere? In a new article on this website, I try to shed some light on this.
I’d like to share here the great pleasure we had of having Joris Nieuwint of The Battlefield Explorer as a guide for our latest battlefield tour in May. Our base of operations was Hotel Courage, right at the Nijmegen bridge. I also warmly recommend the hotel and the very friendly and helpful staff!
Joris speaks fluent English and knows his war history. On the first day, he guided us around Nijmegen, the Groesbeek Heigths, Grave, The Island etc. It was very enlightning to ‘walk the ground’ and see the lay of the land (and the bridges) with our own eyes. Joris is very knowledgable and has learned us a lot about the movie myths (and truths).
On the second day, we visited Arnhem, Oosterbeek and the surrounding area. It really brought home the massive scale of the operation, and the desperate situation for the British parachutists. We visited some sites I had never heard of or that I had only seen on TV and never quite understood how everything tied together. I’m sure there’s more we could have seen. In any case, Joris could keep on telling us about units, individual soldier’s stories, tactics and strategy.
We took part in the Sunset March at the bridge that was erected 10 years ago, on the sacred site of the infamous Waal River Crossing. Every day since the opening of this bridge, one ore more veterans have led an evening walk across the Waal, following the 48 street lights as they are lit pair by pair, at walking pace across the bridge.
Nijmegen is also a beautiful place to stay in its own right, and has much to offer to tourists. We enjoyed great food and drinks each day.
So don’t hesitate and book your tour with Joris. Tell him I said hello 😉
Alan Stanczik sent me the link to this interesting archive video about the ‘BUPS’. According to this, the AN/UPN1 & 2 would have been the actual BUPS, and not what most collectors commonly refer to as the BUPS, i.e. the long bag with the telescopic antenna and ground stakes you can see in the photos below, which is actually the AN/CRN-12. This was a post-war device (the manual is dated 1951).
Interestingly though, the paratrooper on the right carries the bag of CRN-12 antenna, along with the CRN-4 beacon, which came in the two padded bags you see here. The CRN-4 was a WWII device and it was used by American pathfinders during Operation Market Garden. From after action reports of the 101st Airborne, we do know that the antenna originally intended for the CRN-4 was replaced with another one after the drop on Holland, but I haven’t been able to find any further details about this.
The AN/UPN-1 & 2 is quite a large device and not really field portable, as you can see in this video:
If you know more about this, please comment here, or send me an email.
Fort Benning was the primary training center for the new US parachute troops, and it is the place where it all started in 1940 with the parachute test platoon. So, its newspaper is a potential trove of information about the training period.
In 2021, I found old issues of the newspaper still available online, although they have apparently moved to another address by now: https://www.benning.army.mil/Library/Bayonet/Index.html. These are immense PDFs and it took me a long time to go through them and filter out all paratrooper related content.
The first issue of those still available is from September 17, 1942. The Bayonet paper looked like this and maintained pretty much the same layout until the end of the war:
First issue of the Fort Benning Bayonet
As you can see, in the first issue we can already find an interesting paratrooper related article, 26 Canadians Awarded Wings.
This tells us that Canadians also trained parachutists in the US, not only in Great Britain, but also that this was probably only the case for this particular group of 26. It says they returned to Canada to form the nucleus of the Canadian First Parachute Battalion.
The same issue also reports 505th Parachute Troops To Present Colors Initial Time. Since its activation, this was the first presentation of the colors at a regimental review ceremony, under command of Lieutenant Colonel James M. Gavin.
I have made a selection of clippings of only the paratrooper related articles, but only for 1942-1943, and the file is very heavy.
1944-1945 also looks very promising, but I haven’t gotten to it yet. It’s hard to read from the screen and too many pages to just print everything.
Along with many new comic book releases around Saint Nicholas’, we finally get to read and admire the second part of the story that started with volume 9 – Black Boys, which came out in April 2021. It was worth the long wait! You can really see the craft en dedication that Philippe Jarbinet put into this new album.
The story takes us into the Belgian Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge. The black soldier and the white airborne officer again cross paths, and again they have to rely on each other to survive.
In the end, this unlikely combination of two men develops a friendship that will last a lifetime.
The scenario is strong, and even though it’s emotional, it does not become cheesy.
All the uniforms, equipment and vehicles look very realistic, but maybe the most impressive achievement is how Jarbinet manages to capture the sensation of the winter. The watercolors really come to life in the snow, the tracks in it and the wrecks of vehicles half buried in it.
I hope that new albums of this same standard will keep coming every year.
Kees Smulders sent these very clear pictures from a Canadian made luminous disk in his own collection. He bought it 30 years ago at an army surplus store in Arnhem. It’s a Canadian disk, marked R.L.I. 1942 (RLI stands for Radium Industries Limited). It is still complete with its brown nubuck leather pouch with a brass press stud, and a tie down cord. I had never seen one like this in such good condition and with a pouch.
Front of disk and pouchDetail of pouch stud and labelMarkings on the back