info on 27th (Penal) Panzer Regiment

[von thoma]

According to this picture, Sven Hassel belongs to a Kavallerie-Regiment.
Does anyone knows which was the real units, where he fought ?
Everything related with this man appears very confused.
Thanks.

Sven Hassel.jpg (54.61 KiB) Viewed 531 times

[Ironmachine]

According to this old thread /viewtopic.php?t=63672, it was Kavallerie-Rgt 5.

[Sheldrake]

According to this picture, Sven Hassel belongs to a Kavallerie-Regiment.
Does anyone knows which was the real units, where he fought ?
Everything related with this man appears very confused.
Thanks.

Sven Hassel.jpg

Is there any evidence that this is a photograph of the author Sven Hassel in a uniform which he was entitled to wear. His whole story stinks of Walter Mitty.
Here is a photograph of fraudster Alan McIlwraith wearing unjiform and an even more impressive set of medals than Sven Hassel.

https://www.arrse.co.uk/wiki/Alan_McIlwraith

There are many people who use their well developed story telling skills to create a false personal history. Here is a list of "Infamous Walts" compiled by the British ARmy Rumoure SErvice - a British social media website https://www.arrse.co.uk/wiki/Category:Infamous_Walts This includes the published historian Jack Livesey. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jack-Livesey/e/B0034OI948 (I wish I had is PR skills)

Now this list of fraudsters and fantasists dates from post 1945 Britian, when only a small minority of its population served in the forces. How much easier was it for the fantasists to pass themselves off as veterans when almost every adult had some war service, and before the internet and social media made it easy to compare notes. There must have been thousands of men who passed off their fantasies as military service. Walter Mitty is an 1950s film. The phenomena of men trading on fake war service for gain goes back at least to Victorian London. Henry Mayhew includes beggars claiming fake soldiers story as a category of low life.


There is a difference between Walter Mitty's like Jack and memories of actual veterans. Ken Tout a Northamptonshire Yeomanry veteran wrote "Tank! 60 hours in combat" based on his memory. He told me that he was then criticized by other veterans and re visited the topic, using proper historic method.

Robert Graves' First World War memoir "Goodbye to All that" was a fictionalised account based on his wartime experience in 1st and 2nd Battalions the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. It was his story, but re written for dramatic purposes - so he claimed. (It annoyed the hell out of the veterans of 2 RWF, including John Dunn who was inspired to write a really good history based on veteran's accounts - and aided by Siegfried Sassoon)






This