Need help with unit marking on E.L. 24

[Muncher 1953]

last month I won this E.L. 24 at auction. one of the auction house principals posted some questions here on the forum, including the meaning of this particular mark but in an old thread & received no responses. the photo below is copied from that thread.

the mark is: ‘I/J.R. 20.2’ which I “think” means ‘1st battalion Infantry regiment 20’ but the last ‘.2’ ? The indication of battalion by roman numeral at the start of the string rather than company number by arabic numeral seems a bit unusual, so perhaps a property mark on training equipment assigned to the regiment?
I found some info about the 20th IR, but conflicting about which divisions it may have been part of.

https://www.k98kforum.com/attachments/img_0018-jpg.441366/

 

[Muncher 1953]

EL24 in new home......
dot 44 barreled receiver & custom magazine assembly from one forum member, WGL stock from another, WGL HG from a 3rd. Thanks, guys!

 

[AndyB]

it should be numbered as weapon nr.2 in headquarter of I.Batallion of IR .20., or it was part of 2.Company wout exact number of item.

 

[Muncher 1953]

Thank you.
from a variety of online sources, I believe this set belonged to 1st battalion, 20th IR, 7th division of the Weimar era Reichsheer, based in Munchen. That would fit the timeframe of the device, I haven’t found a reference for E.L. 24 serial numbers yet.
As there was no case with it, that info source is lost.

 

[Muncher 1953]

From a variety of sources:
I.R. 20 of the Reichsheer 7th Div (Bavaria) became the seed unit for the 10th ID-Regensburg of the Wehrmacht Heer in the expansion of 1934-35, participating in Austria, Poland & France before being converted to a motorized div in ‘41 and subsequently to a panzer grenadier div in ‘43. Serving in southwest Ukraine in August ‘44 they were destroyed in actions there, withdrawn for rebuilding with only the 20th reg remaining, the sister regiment 41st was dissolved. Deployed as a kampfgruppe to Poland late ‘44, destroyed there a 2nd time early ‘45, ‘reconstituted’ again, eventually surrendering to russians in Czechoslovakia in May. Comparatively few Knight’s Cross holders (3) some divs on the Eastern Front had dozens to 1-2 hundred awarded.

(note: I’ve greatly simplified the twists & turns, as the pre war charades of unit naming aren’t that interesting, IMO)