imgur.comPosted May 25, 2017, 2:10 AM UTC
It's the insignia of the 25th air engineer regiment
A real unit, but afaik they didn't take part in the D-day landings. Then again my french sucks ;)
Wow, thank you so much! I searched for hours - how did you go about finding this?
Well, first i googled french units that took part in the D-Day landings. There's only a few, and none had anything resembling this. There were a couple paratrooper units, and from that i googled french paratrooper units and the first link is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_paratrooper_units, and the first subdivision was Air Engineers, et voilá. :)
EDIT: BTW, on how organized French forces took part; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_France
Hey all, I picked this up from a small shop when visiting Juno Beach. The shop certainly catered to tourists, however was not one of the brightly lit super touristy shops seen in many major tourist cities. The shop sold a few items like this, but mostly antique furniture.
When purchasing I had no idea if it was authentic or not, however was looking for something to help me remember my time at Juno Beach. The visit meant a lot to me. I have kept this close ever since, while always unsure about how I should feel if it was an authentic piece recovered from someone who gave their life during D-Day.
I'm wondering if anyone would know if it is real or a fake, and if real, where it may have come from. The man who sold it spoke little English and we spoke in French instead, and my French is shaky at best. As far as I could tell he was mentioning something about French Engineers and D-Day, however I do not understand how an organized force of French Engineers would have been there then.
If there is any more information I can give I'd be happy to. The numbering on the back is '969', however it looks like some of the material used to secure one of the two loops has partially obscured the first 9. I am confident the number is 969.
Thank you for taking the time to look!