DDR Volkspolizei Hemdbluse, East German Volkspolizei Jack Shirt

1951 Volkspolizei Poster

Today's posting is a new, and unissued, East German Volkspolizei Jackshirt, known as a Hemdbluse in German.  This was the most common shirt worn by the career soldier or officer, of all ranks, in East Germany.  The jackshirt was designed to be worn untucked.  It is a cross between a jacket and a shirt and was designed to be worn with shoulder boards.  This allowed the shirt to be worn alone or with a uniform jacket.  You will notice that there are two buttons at the lower hem of the shirt, giving a distinct jacket appearance.

I received the shirt sealed in it's original plastic wrapper.  It had the usual cardboard around the collar and two plastic clips and a straight pin, to hold the folded sleeves in place.

The shirt has silver colored aluminum buttons, with two buttons on each cuff and two buttons on each waist adjusting dart.  There are the usual shoulder board attachment loops on the shoulders.

The date code on the collar size tag is "N", which indicates 1989 as the year of manufacture.  There is also a "care & content" tag inside the shirt, sewn into a side seam.

On this shirt, I attached a set of original Volkspolizei shoulder boards for the rank of Unterwachtmeister.

Along with the jackshirt, I received an original, new and unissued,  East German tank type t-shirt.  The shirt has a tag code of "G", indicating it was manufactured in 1981.

And to finish up this post, here is an archive photo of three Vollspoizei motorcycle officers wearing the Hemdbluse in the field:

Berlin Schutzpolizei Patch

Today's posting is about a great German Police shoulder patch that I picked up with a batch of BGS patches I picked up off of eBay awhile back.  The patch is a Berlin Schutzpolizei patch.  This would be from the pre-unification, West Berlin.

The patch is embroidered on a wool backing and appears to be unused or at the least in mint condition.  This style of shoulder patch was used by the Berlin Schutzpolizei from 1949 until sometime in 1976.  In 1976 they switched over to a more modern Polizei patch.  The patch was worn on the left upper arm.

The Schutzpolizei are basically the street level police of the city.  The cops who work the beat.........

As usual, here is an archive photo.............The Berlin Schutzpolizei make an arrest:

Bundeswehr Sportbekleidung Stoffabzeichen, West German Army Sports Uniform Patches

While scanning through some odd eBay categories, looking for BGS items, I stumbled across this offering of a strip of unused, Bundeswehr Sports Uniform Patches.  These patches are BEVO woven and are still in an uncut strip of 6.  I have always had a soft spot for these patches ever since I picked up a surplus Bundeswehr t-shirt while on a trip to the California coast with Sweet Pea 30 years ago.  I wore that shirt until it literally fell apart.  I cut off the patch and tossed the shirt-turned-rag.  The original patch is sewn inside the BGS Repli-Bucket bike helmet I made up for the BGS bicycle last year.

These patches were made to be sewn on to the old style, white tank-top type, physical training shirts that the Bundeswehr used from the 1980's on back.  They are BEVO woven in a nylon type fabric.  

I'll pick up a few new T-shirts and sew on these patches for daily wear........ with retro-German style :)

I have not been able to find a good archive photo of the old t-shirts in actual use, but I did locate this photo of a current Bundeswehr reserve unit that was doing a public display of all of their current uniform styles.  Here are a few troopers in the current Bundeswehr work-out uniforms.  You can see this patch on the warm-up jacket.... the t-shirts are now the silk screened type, no patches.  "Very stylish!"

DDR Deutsch Volkspolizei Schulterstücke, East German Peoples Police Shoulder Boards

Emblem of the Volkspolizei

My post for today is a set of East German (DDR), Volkspolizei shoulder boards for the rank of Unterwachtmeister.  The interesting thing about these boards is that they are nearly identical to the 1950's Bundesgrenzschutz shoulder boards for the rank of Wachtmeister.  

The Volkspolizei (VoPo) were the "People's Police" of East Germany.  They were responsible for the general law enforcement for the the state.  The VoPo were structured as a paramilitary organization with military uniforms, armored personnel carriers, etc.  The east German people nicknamed the Volkspolizei,  "Bullen" for "cops", and "die Grünnen", or "the greens", after their green uniforms.  After the reunification of the two Germany's, the Volkspolizei were abolished.

I plan on attaching these boards to the East German uniform from my previous post.  They will be a stand in for an original pair of BGS shoulder boards until I get the "real thing".

Here are the shoulder boards:

And what would one of my post be without a set of vintage archive pictures!  Here are two shots of the Volkspolizei in action:

Berlin 1989

Vintage Cigar Boxes, 1940's and 1950's

Today's post is on a great trio of old US cigar boxes.  This last weekend, Sweet Pea found the all wood one for me at the local Goodwill Store, and I picked up the other two a few weeks ago over at the local used building supply & miscellaneous store, Waste Not Want Not.  
 
I'll use the all wood box to store my medals and military pins in and after I clean up the paper labeled boxes, they'll be used for patch storage.  I'll let the pictures of these boxes speak for themselves:

The coolest thing about these boxes, aside from the great labels and vintage construction, are the original US Internal Revenue Service Tax Stamps.  The dates the stamps were issued and applied to the boxes is perforated into the stamp.........  If you look close at the tax stamps you will see the dates.  1942, 1945, 1952.