Identifying the soldiers

Antoon Verweij marked down the surnames of the soldiers on some of the negatives. The names are provisional, because mistakes were made when they were written down. It is also possible that some names and portraits don’t match. We need your help to verify all this.

Frank van den Bergh of the National Liberation Museum at Groesbeek has started on the identification of the pictures. He used the following literature:

- Mike Chappell, British Battle Insignia (2) 1939-1945, London 2001
- Brian L. Davis, British Army Uniforms & Insignia of World War II, Londen, 1992
- Jean Bouchery, The British Soldier from D-Day to VE-Day, Parijs, 2001 (two parts)

His conclusion: British soldiers can sometimes be identified by their brevettes. At the front, however, the men often wore jackets without insignia in order to prevent the Germans from identifying captured soldiers by their names and ranks.

Presumably the men wearing battledress are British. Possibly soldiers of other nationalities were fighting on the British side in this area. Without clues it is impossible to tell. In those cases where there is no mention of rank and where insignia are absent, we have presumed these men to be plain soldiers. We know that the Americans only wore divison brevettes and that paratroopers wore qualification wings on their chest. But it is impossible to identify a regiment from a picture..

You will find the names and other details, discovered by Frank van den Bergh, next to the photos. Here you will also find a form that you can use for sending questions or corrections to us.

If you have any photos of Nijmegen during the years 1940-1945, we would like to receive a scan. You can use this form.