Fallen Officer, Berlin 45

[Lassemaler]

Hi there!

Anyone here who knows who have info on this fallen officer?

Some say Danish, Swedish?

[lennardg]

I've read he was from the Charlemagne Division - the French volunteers. You can tell because he wears a scarf around his waist. Reportedly the Charlemagne soldiers found rolls of cloth material in the colour of the French flag -the tricolore- in a bombed out department store and tied it around their waists for their last stand against the Russians.
If he wore the helmet lying on the ground next to him, he wore a German paratrooper's helmet and also carried an FG 42 assault rifle issued to paratroopers, (on the ground to the left) but in the last days of the battle of Berlin you probably just picked up anything that was available to you.

[Le Page]

Reportedly the Charlemagne soldiers found rolls of cloth material in the colour of the French flag -the tricolore- in a bombed out department store and tied it around their waists for their last stand against the Russians.

What is your source for this info?

Cheers, Lepage.

[Lassemaler]

Same person, different picture.

[Rob - wssob2]

Looks like he's a Captain from SS-PGR24. That ought to narrow it down a bit. Anybody care to venture a guess? I wonder if the street is identifiable as well.

[Inselaffe]

I wonder if the street is identifiable as well.

Umm...It says Friedrichstrasse on the caption above

[Le Page]

The caption to that photo is probably correct. Danmark was a component of Division Nordland, which was in that sector. The well-known photo of the Nordland armored car in Berlin is allegedly on the same street.

[Inselaffe]

The well-known photo of the Nordland armored car in Berlin is allegedly on the same street.

That photo can be seen here http://www.feldgrau.com/sweden.html According to the Feldgrau article that one was taken on Friedrichstrasse close to No 107, about 200m north of the Spree.

We could probably place the other picture reasonably accurately assuming it is the same street. It looks like a U-Bahn station to the rear of the Soviet soldier to the left of the picture. There are several on Friedrichstrasse but the layout of the road in the background might narrow things down.

[Rob - wssob2]

Hi Inselaffe - thanks for your post that is exactly the kind of location information I was wondering about.

Could this be Rudolf Ternedde, III Battalion commander?

[Inselaffe]

Rob,

I'm pretty sure I've read on this forum somewhere that Ternedde wasn't KIA and lived well into the post-war period. I'll have to check that and don't have time at the moment.


Cheers.

[Inselaffe]

OK, this thread http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 9&start=30 from 2005 Marc Rikmenspoel states that Ternedde "only died a few years ago".

[Heimatschuss]

Hello,

The well-known photo of the Nordland armored car in Berlin is allegedly on the same street.

That photo can be seen here http://www.feldgrau.com/sweden.html According to the Feldgrau article that one was taken on Friedrichstrasse close to No 107, about 200m north of the Spree.

We could probably place the other picture reasonably accurately assuming it is the same street. It looks like a U-Bahn station to the rear of the Soviet soldier to the left of the picture. There are several on Friedrichstrasse but the layout of the road in the background might narrow things down.

I'm reasonably sure that the dead officer is lying in front of Friedrichstraße 113. That would make the underground entrance in the background the northernmost entrance to the underground station 'Oranienburger Tor'. The street that hits Friedrichstraße from the right two houses down the road is Oranienburger Straße (plus Linienstraße). The bend in Friedrichstraße you see in the background is where Friedrichstraße changes into Chausseestraße.

Best regards
Torsten

[Inselaffe]

Regarding the location, as Le Page stated earlier, Nordland were definitely in this sector. More specifically,Beevor has Danmark "round the Kochstrasse U-Bahn station on the Friedrichstrasse" on 1-2nd May. ('Berlin' p.380) Could this be the station in the background?

[Le Page]

Regarding the location, as Le Page stated earlier, Nordland were definitely in this sector. More specifically,Beevor has Danmark "round the Kochstrasse U-Bahn station on the Friedrichstrasse" on 1-2nd May. ('Berlin' p.380) Could this be the station in the background?

Ahhh - yes, that's it. I was trying to locate the location yesterday, and did find a contemporary photo of an intersection which was Friedricstrasse/Koch. It looked very similar to the photo we're discussing, but I wasn't sure. I will find it and post it.

[Rob - wssob2]

Thanks all for filling out the details - Rudolf Ternedde was just a guess on my part; I wasn't sure if he survived the war or not.

So who could it be then? There were only a finite # of Captains in the regiment, so it shouldn't be that difficult to identify the fallen officer.