This set belonging to Unteroffizier Prahl:  Set of Reiter Regiment 4 shoulder boards  One Uffz Reiter Regiment 22 shoulder board One Uffz Reiter Regiment 3 shoulder board KVK 2nd Class with Swords Document Reiter Regiment 22 – Signed by:Kurt Feldt (22 November 1897 – 11 March 1970) was a general in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany during World War II. He was a recipient of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross. He was the German commander in the Battle of the Afsluitdijk on 12-14 May 1940. Shooting Award – Awarded by Reiter Regiment 22  Photo of Prahl on horseback Comments: A desirable little grouping to early Cavalry units and very desirable shoulder boards. 

Zoubek was from Vienna, born in 1926 he was enlisted into the German Army in May of 1944.  Point to note before looking at the action reports for the Bulge, is that the 506th Easy Company fought this unit which is super cool…  Serving with the 2nd Panzer Divisions Stab (HQ), he was at some point during the battle assigned to:  Stabs Kompanie, Panzer Grenadier Regiment 304 (2 Panzer Division)  For the Ardennes Offensive 2. Panzerdivision was attached to the XLVII. Panzer Korps commanded by General der Panzertruppe Freiherr von Lüttwitz. In addition to 2. Panzerdivision, the Korps consisted of the Panzer Lehr Division and 26. Volksgrenadierdivision. As soon as the Volksgrenadiere of 26. Volksgrenadierdivision had secured crossings over the Our and Clerf Rivers, 2. Panzerdivision was tasked to breakthrough the American lines, bypass Bastogne to the north and race towards the Meuse and capture the bridges there. Only one day before the start of the offensive Oberst Meinrad von Lauchert took command of 2. Panzerdivision, so he was unable to meet all his commanders before the start of the offensive. In the pre-dawn hours of 16 December, Pioneers and a battalion of Panzergrenadiers crossed the Our river in rubber boats in order to capture the village of Marnach. This was meant to clear the road from Dasburg towards Clerf and further towards Bastogne, but the soldiers of the US 28th Infantry Division entrenched there held the village stubbornly. Only in the evening, when Pioneers finished a 60-ton bridge, were the division’s tanks able to cross the Our and join the fight. The defenders were then slowly pushed back. In the morning hours of 17 December an advance guard reached the town of Clerf, less than two miles west of Marnach and headquarters of the US 110th Infantry Regiment. The advance guard was stopped by Shermans of the 707th Tank Battalion. They lost four Panzer IV tanks in the fight, but destroyed three Shermans in return. The defenders of Clerf were furthermore reinforced by a tank company of the US 9th Armored Division, but in the evening all the American Sherman tanks were either destroyed or forced to retreat.  Clerf was finally captured. On 18 December what was left of the 110th Infantry Regiment was forced to withdraw to the west. However, the stiff resistance of the 28th Infantry Division had played havoc with the German timetable. Meanwhile, CCR, US 9th Armored Division established two roadblocks east of Bastogne, the northern one near the village of Lullange, where the road from Clerf entered that leading to Bastogne. The second roadblock was further south near Allerborn. In the morning hours of 18 December the forward elements of Kampfgruppe Böhm reached the northern roadblock. With the tanks of Panzer Regiment 3 close behind, the roadblock was soon surrounded and annihilated. The southern roadblock was overrun shortly after dusk. Oberst von Lauchert now turned his Division to the northwest so as to swing past Bastogne in the north and maintain the momentum of the westward drive. All the delays allowed the American reinforcements to reach Bastogne before the Germans. One of these was Team Desobry from CCB of the US 10th Armored Division which deployed at Noville. The little village north of Bastogne was directly in the way of 2. Panzerdivision. Covered by the morning fog, the tanks of 2. Panzerdivision manoeuvred for an attack on the village. When the fog suddenly lifted, more than thirty tanks were revealed to the defenders of Noville. Accurate fire from the American tanks and tank destroyers caused the attack to fail. At midday the 1st Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, under Lieutenant Colonel James L. LaPrade reached Noville and immediately counterattacked. However, the paratroopers were unable to reach the ridge lines due to the withering German fire. Elements of 304. Panzergrenadier Regiment infiltrated toward the south of Noville. Threatened by the prospect of being surrounded and short of ammunition, the defenders of Noville finally retreated towards Bastogne on the afternoon 20 December, but they held up the advance of 2. Panzerdivision for nearly two days and caused heavy casualties. The Highwater Mark Shortly after midnight Kampfgruppe Böhm, which had bypassed Noville to the north, captured a bridge over the Ourthe River at Ortheuville. This opened the road to Marche and Namur invitingly, but 2. Panzerdivision did not move, as their tanks had run dry and they had to wait for fuel. This allowed the advance elements of the US 84th Infantry Division to occupy Marche. When the advance finally resumed at nightfall 22 December, stiff resistance was encountered at Marche. Lüttwitz ordered Lauchert to turn the bulk of his division west towards Dinant and the Meuse, and to leave only a blocking force towards Marche. Kampfgruppe Böhm raced up the highway towards Dinant, followed by Kampfgruppe Cochenhausen, finally reaching the woods near Celles before daylight on 24 December. The advance elements of the division were only 9 km away from the Meuse crossings. The remainder of 2. Panzerdivision was stretched all the way back to south of Marche with the dual mission of continuing the westward advance and of protecting the northern flank. Meanwhile, the American 2nd Armored Division began to arrive northeast of Celles. Their CCA moved south into Buissonville, while the 24th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron occupied Humain, blocking 2. Panzerdivision route of advance. The leading Kampfgruppen were cut off. In the meantime Kampfgruppe Böhm had reached the village of Foy-Notre Dame were it encountered several tanks of the British 29th Armoured Brigade. Losing several vehicles to British fire and running out of fuel, the reconnaissance battalion went to ground. 2. Panzerdivision was stopped less than 5 km short of the Meuse crossings. On 25 December CCB of the 2nd Armored Division launched its attack on the cut off German Kampfgruppen. It was a clear day, and the attack received excellent air support. Kampfgruppe Böhm was soon destroyed. Lauchert ordered a relief attack to be conducted by Kampfgruppe Holtmeyer. The attack began on…

An interesting and a unit not often seen, Weiss took part in the attack on Poland with Infanterie Regiment 360 as a Machine Gunner likely a MG34.  But he had an issue with his knee and was sent to the WUG (or Wehrmacht Prison) these prisons were not a nice place, many executions took place in such prisons. And according to research Döllershem, and Larger Kirkenholz where he served was the scene of much terror. Please see below for the lists of those executed and the memorial to those that decided to flee as opposed to fighting for Nazi Germany.  WUG Favoriten Wiess was sent to a rather rare unit, which is responsible for as Tessin puts it, harassed the prisoners under the harshest of circumstances.    Feld Strafgefangenen Abteilung 16 (1. Fallschirmarmee)  https://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Gliederungen/FeldstrafgefangenenAbt/FSGA16.htm “In the field prisoner departments, convicts whose sentence was suspended until the end of the war were grouped together. The departments were set up by the Wehrmacht prisons. The origin of the prisoner detachments was an order from Adolf Hitler on April 2, 1942, which was implemented by the OKW on April 14, 1942. From May 1942, three prisoner detachments, each with 200 men, were set up in Glatz, Germersheim and Anklam. Field punishment units were formed from this. The soldiers had to be at least kv (fit for war), gvF (fit for garrison in the field) or gvH (fit for garrison at home). From 1943 onwards, members of all parts of the Wehrmacht served in the field prisoner departments. The following were not used in the field prisoner departments: – members of the Wehrmacht with sentences of less than 3 months – members of foreign national units – officers – soldiers unfit for service – people convicted for the first time, whose act was probably a one-time lapse – “asocial people who were difficult to train” – “homosexuals” There were until the end of the war 22 prisoner detachments with four to six companies each. On average, an estimated 20,000 men were deployed there. The unarmed service on the eastern front was required to do “the toughest work under dangerous circumstances”: building bunkers and positions, clearing mines and recovering corpses. The men had to do physical labor 7 days a week. Only in exceptional cases were reliable prisoners allowed to be armed and deployed to fight in intervention companies. It was important that the relatives not degenerate physically and mentally despite the heavy workload, since they were to be assigned to the front-line troops again after they had served their sentence. This was often contradicted by the behavior of the guards, who, hardly trained, harassed the prisoners. At the end of the war, individual departments were also deployed in the West.” Weiss was taken POW in 1945, and served with 805 Division under Allied Command. He survived the war.  Comments: An interesting Soldbuch to an odd unit, they were obviously not nice guards doing horrible work. This is evidence of the many depictions of the forced work of Wehrmacht Prisoners.