Translation help with photo reverse.
 

Hello all
Hope everyone is safe and well.
I wonder if any member could help clarify the writing on the reverse of this photograph. Some of it is obvious, but the bottom line and some of the script is hard to decipher (for an Englishman at least)! I would be interested to know where it was taken.
Any help would be great.

Thank you in advance

Re: Translation help with photo reverse.
 

In a hurry, this was when Göring visited JG 2 on 31 Oct 40-there are quite a number of him meeting with the pilots with Wick in the background

Re: Translation help with photo reverse.
 

"Reichsmarschall H Göring on 31 Oct 1940 in (?) in conversation with Major Wick".

Re: Translation help with photo reverse.
 

The place named on the reverse is Cherbourg-West.

KR

Jochen Prien

Re: Translation help with photo reverse.
 

Thank you everybody for your help, very much appreciated.

Re: Translation help with photo reverse.
 

I also have some other photos including these two, I think the reverse writing relates to his 55 kill ?

Re: Translation help with photo reverse.
 

"Major Wik (sic) on returning from 55th aerial victory"

Re: Translation help with photo reverse.
 

So hours before he was killed

Re: Translation help with photo reverse.
 

"Wik" and "Zurük", spelling was not this guy's strongpoint.

Spelling
 

Perhaps the caption was not written in November 1940 but in March 2020 and not by a German person but by a seller from some other country? I find it hard to believe that a German could have made both these spelling errors. At the time Wick was extremely famous to Germans (many articles in dailies and in "Der Adler" etc.), likewise "zurück" (back (from...) was, and still is, a very frequently used word, especially about combat missions: "He came back… He didn't came back" etc. It's exactly the same thing as if an Englishman would write "bak" instead of "back": hardly credible isn't it.

About Helmut Wick: Galland hardly made any spelling errors but he wrote "Wieck" in his book "Die Ersten und die Letzten" (The First and the Last) - but then, he was in Argentina when writing, and probably had got only few documents… In the meantime most of us have read the correct Wick many times (benefit of hindsight).

Re: Translation help with photo reverse.
 

I've found spelling errors to be a recurring feature of wartime documents, particularly where personal and place names are concerned. (The latter point is equally true of the RAF, which wasn't immune to grammatical errors either).

Re: Translation help with photo reverse.
 

Correct if you write a personal name or the word "Katarrh" but not the word "zurück" ... it's the same in Germany as if you can't write your own name ... or ... you are a 6th grade student at a German school in 2020 :-)