Convolute with Questions ?

[Albion]

Hello Gentlemen,
Bought a small convolute last Saturday at the flea-market. A signals Unteroffizier - Alois Engelhardt killed in the last days of the war in Berlin. The convolute consist of "KVK with swords" Urkunde, a two page Croatian award document "Order of the Crown of King Zvonimir 2nd Class with Oak Leaves" a congratulatory notification from his unit leader on the Croatian award, the soldiers death card, a invitation card to a church remembrance service held a year later for the soldier. I didn't get the EK2 Urkunde, it was missing.
Researching the soldiers company Funk-Kompanie F (mot) 672 has been harder than I expected, apart from getting the Feldpost Number 45702 -28/2/41 till 21/5/45 nothing at all, can anyone help?
First dealing with the KVK document, the signature I take to be from General P. Bader overall commanding officer of the German Forces in Serbia, I know the wehrmacht held a strict protercol about who signed what, still surprised me to see a generals signature on a lowly KVK document have any other collectors encountered this ?
King Zvonimir 2nd Class with oak leaves award document, describes Engelhardt's company so - Nachr. Kp. Urbach - does the name Urbach mean anything to anyone ? There a number of classes and variants both military and civil of King Zvonimir's medal, I've looked extensively through the internet but not managed to find a medal that matches the award document yet, King Zvonimir 2nd Class with oak leaves military version. If anyone has a picture, would they mind posting it.
Best Wishes

[hucks216]

It might not rate as highly as an EK but a KvK wasn't exactly a lowly award. The KvK Mit Schwertern was meant to be awarded to military personnel whose courage was above the call of duty but didn't fit the criteria for the EK, such as bravery not under direct fire or planning/leading operations or for meritous service over a period of time. Hence it is very common to see General rank officer (up to and including Generalfeldmarschall) signatures on a KvK citation, in fact the vast majority of them are. Sometimes you will see someone of a lower rank signing on behalf of a General, and sometimes you will see one signed by an Oberst but by and large the majority of signatures belong to General rank officers. In fact it is usually a cheaper way to obtain desireable signatures on award citations as KvK citations tend to be cheaper then EK ones.
I'm afraid I can't help you with the unit information as I have nothing that covers such units.

[hucks216]

As for Order of the Crown of King Zvonimir 2nd Class (not to be confused with Medal of the Order of King Zvonimir) here is an image with a link to the 2nd Class and an explanation for the addition of the oakleaves...
http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=4147

...and here is an image of the 2nd Class taken from the link...

[Albion]

Hi Kevin,
Thanks for the posts and link. I understand more now, the importance of rank order accorded to urkunden signatures. I know you are a collector of high-ranking officier signatures, as a matter of interest do you have General Bader's signature, if so how does it compare to the one shown on my citation? I think finding information out about the unit ( always seems difficult dealing with Nachrichten Units) will be a tougher nut to to crack - found nothing on Lexikon der Wehrmacht. Again thanks for the help.
Regards

[hucks216]

I don't have an example of his signature I'm afraid. It looks ok to me though so I don't think you need worry about that - and now you have an example of his signature why not post it in the Signatures of Notable Wehrmacht & Waffen-SS Officers thrad here...
http://worldwarmilitaria.com/forum/showthread.php?p=54794#post54794

Good luck with your quest for information on the signals unit. As you say, there is very little information out there, especially for such a small unit.