Hello my friends,

Last week I came back from a 17-day trip to Germany and Romania. I was invited by my good friend Martin Drewes to the Ordensgemeinschaft der Ritterkreuzträger Meeting 2009. The meeting happened this year at Bad Honnef, a beautiful town near the Rhein. After spending two days at Frankfurt, I took the good Deutsches Bahn train to Bad Honnef, and guess my surprise to immediately see RKT Herbert Fries at the entrance of the hotel! Wow!!

I tell you, they put together a wonderful event, not too big, but very organized and beautiful. It's a two-night event: the friday night is popularly called "freijagd", because is when everybody takes something to be autographed by them. On saturday night, it's much more formal - no autograph requests allowed.

This year (unfortunately) was the first one the meeting didn't have a Schwerterträger - Gunther Rall had passed away the week before, leaving just three of them with us: von Gazen (too weak to go), Rudorffer (who doesn't like to talk about the war) and Herrmann (who wasn't there I don't know why). Actually there was only one Eichenlaubträger there, "our" Martin Drewes (I say this as a Brazilian). Martin always makes sure to put a Brazilian flag at his table, and this year, six of us went with him (and he was very happy about it).

Well, there were several other RKs there. Günter Halm (who is president of the association), Franz Weber, Othmar Hermes, August Kaminski, Ludwig Bauer, Erwin Kressman, Kurt Bischof, Herbert Fries, Eberhard Heder, Heinrich Sonne, Hugo Broch, Heinrich Südel, Achim Wunderlich, Artur Becker-Neetz and the most funny man I met there: Max Zastrow. He was just great. There was also a very nice man called Ernst Büntgens, who is EK I.

I can say that the friday night event went better then I expected, as everyone was very warm with me, and I got several autographs. People were very curious about us - coming from Brazil just for them? Hehe, I blessed my luck to be there, and said to them that it was an immense honor to me.

On the morning of saturday we made a boat trip in the Rhine, sailing to Remagen, where the pillars of the famous bridge are still there, and back. On the afternoon, we had the cerimony at the cemitery, where we laid a crown of flowers to honor the dead soldiers. At night, we had the last meeting, where new RKs showed up: Gunther Frenzel, Gunther Braake and Hans Klaus. Great party, great guys. The band was perfect and closed the night with nothing less then "Lili Marleen". It was thrilling to see the RKs singing along.

Hope to be back.

Here, some photos, the way I published on my website:

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www.saladeguerra.net

Hi Julio, glad to see and hear you had such a great time with those Gents. This sure does bring back alot of great memories about my times with teh U 181 Guys @ Bad Camberg, RKT Remy Schrijnen @ Hagen, about 40 other WWII KM vets @ Altenbruch, more Uboat Vets @ Laboe, Moltenort, Bremerhaven and the unexpected meetings that Susanne and I had with RKT Michael Possinger. The place your meeting was held at is similar to where the U 181 guys had theirs at-just in another City ;-))

Thanks for your story and photos my friend. I should have asked Paul if he were going to attend the meeting this year? but forgot to ;-)) He gave me a nice pic of him with Zastrow-at a meeting he attended with him a few years ago. I also got a nice card signed from an RKT who was a Nashorn KDT and the card was signed by a few other RKTs as well.

Your experiance was a once in a lifetime one and glad to see that you got to go with Herr Drewes ;-)) Man this sure does bring back some great memories. When I was at the U 181 reunion, they started by: Dieter Hille, serenaded Susanne and I with Lili Marleen ;-))

I just recently found my rolls of film that I took at the reunion and with Remy. I need to get more copies made as I gave all the sets away I made years ago-gave sets to a few U 181 vets who couldn't attend because of health reasons, I gave a few sets away to friends including Remy. I'll try to get more made and will see if I can get these all on CD at some point, then will see if you want a copy of these. I think you would enjoy a pictorial "tour" through Remys home ;-))

Take care Julio--Carl.

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Lost are only those, who abandon themselves) Hans-Ulrich Rudel.