Third reich feldmarschall baton

In the early 2000s, I bought the beautiful, but anonymous, ribbon bar of a Saxon officer that is the subject of this article. In this feature, I will detail how I went about identifying the original o

Three months after German forces captured Fort Douaumont in February 1916 (see issue 1 of Iron Cross) a calamity befell the occupiers, predominantly comprising troops from the Prussian Brandenburg reg

We ended last month looking at the soldier’s pocket books of the 19th century. Sadly very few of these documents survive. They are NOT included in any Army papers that have been stored over the years.

On a frosty New Year’s Day in 1944, a young soldier from Newcastle married the love of his life with barely four hours to spare. My father, Corporal George Bell, a conscript with the Royal Electrical

How the Red Army pushed back German forces and what they discovered in their wake as WWII turned

Musical instruments have power, simply as things. They speak. They generate emotion. They tell stories about life, death, happiness and sadness – and about the past, which they can resurrect with curi