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My nice new Golden German Badges

by Sporkmaster••18

Some of you may or may not know but there was a chance to earn the German Schützenschnur and Armed Forces Badge for Military Proficiency sometimes incorrectly refereed to the Sportsman badge. It was from June to mid July to complete all the requirements of the badges. Yesterday I finally received one of the badges. I am still waiting to receive the Schützenschnur but I have the personal action paper in my OMPF (Online Military Personal File)

I earned the Schützenschnur on June 6th. However I wanted to go in a corner and cry when people did not see the Irony of of earning a German award on the date of D-Day. Or perhaps it was the fact that no one knew that D-Day is on June 6th.

I earned the second one on June 22nd with the Last event of the 3000 meters in 14:30. It was nice considering that I did not get the EFMB last year and missed a chance to go this year. Now I just have to figure out how to put this Schützenschnur on or just be lazy and wear the other badge.

My name is Warren Andrews, and I am 40 years old. I live with my wife Christine and my 11 year old son. I have been in the Army for over 13 years and had one deployment to Iraq from May 2008 to June 2009.

My hobbies are, blogging, history, politics, table top gaming and computer games.

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18 thoughts on “My nice new Golden German Badges”

  1. Congrats…….its been a few lifetimes since I was stationed in Germany……is this the Troopendeinst (sp)?

  3. I never heard it referred to that name or any German name at all.

    Though the high jump was something that should have been on video. It was just that bad.

  5. Congratulations! In TOG we had a select few Soldiers try for the GPB (as we called the proficiency badge) each year. I never got the chance to try as they conveniently scheduled me for NCOES or other schooling–the one year I was present during the testing I was told that junior enlisted take precedence over NCOs.

    Incidentally, I do have a bag of these somewhere (though I believe they are bronze). Found ’em in the platoon CP during spring cleaning and figured I’d secure them; we all know how hard it is to locate foreign awards and other accoutrements (looking for 187th Regiment collar brass, remember seeing it as a Private on a couple NCO uniforms) when we need them.

  7. Congrats!

    My son earned this badge at West Point two years ago. He is very proud of it.

  9. I had to wait until I got home, as I wasn’t going to try my google-fu on my phone…but I was right, the German name is Abzeichen für Leistungen im Truppendienst

  11. Congratualtion Spork, to be honest have seen/heard earning of other nations’ jumpwings, but never heard of this award.

    “I earned the Schützenschnur on June 6th. However I wanted to go in a corner and cry when people did not see the Irony of of earning a German award on the date of D-Day. Or perhaps it was the fact that no one knew that D-Day is on June 6th.”- HAHA, not surprised but its still pretty funny actually.

  13. One note about the award–a Soldier does not have to be stationed in Germany to earn it. I don’t know the exact stipulations, but a German Army representative(s) is all that is required to oversee the training, just like with foreign jump wings (a jumpmaster must be present in this case).

  14. #13 Good to know. I brought up the jumpwings because they are probably the most common allied exchange award. Beyond that their is a plethora of foreign awards, country, and individual national circumstances upon which they may be issued or earned. A variable that is impossibly hard to in anyway remember.

  16. One that that made this interesting is that there were no German officials at all. Seems that a National Guard CSM was given permission to run and certify the events for the badge. Also all the weapons were US and not German. M9, M4, M240B long.

    The CSM judged three of my events personally when we did the 100 meter run, high jump and the shot put.

    One funny moment was during the 100 meter dash was that in the first time me and another person did it we were told we did not make it. I needed a 14 flat and I got 16 even. Then it was said that the finish line was placed over 100 meters. So we do it again and it was according to them 14.5 for me.

    Then the graders started to laugh(one of them was a guy from my work) and informed us that both of us were under time after the first attempt. They just wanted to see if we would try it again.

  17. Congrats! I was only ever able to get the Schuetzenschnur. I never tried for the GAFB since I can’t swim worth a damn.

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