Posed 'photo of Waffen-SS Grenadier with MG34, showing the effectiveness of mottled camo in woodland conditions, probably 1940-'42 period.  Best regards, JR.

Fading into the background ...

An 89-year-old former German officer is to face a murder trial over the killing of 14 civilians in Italy during the Second World War. Josef Eduard Scheungraber will go on trial in Munich on September 15. Scheungraber, who was stationed in Italy as the commander of a mountain infantry battalion, is accused of ordering his troops to kill the civilians at Falzano di Cortona, near the Tuscan town of Arezzo, in June 1944. 
The killings were a reprisal for the killing of two German soldiers and had its most bloody episode when the troops shut 11 people in a farmhouse and then blew up the building.
Anton Winkler, a spokesman for Munich prosecutors, said the charges were based on documents and witness testimony, including that of a survivor of the massacre.

Josef Eduard Scheungraber

German StuG 40, recovered from a swamp near the russian town of Saratov, September 2007.