GUEST: My grandfather was born in 1922 in Schwarza, Germany. He's Jewish, and the 1930s weren't a good, good time to be Jewish in Germany. When he was 16 years old, he was able to take a train, the Kindertransport, to England, which really saved his life. He was one of, I think, several hundred people who were able to do so. And then, within a few years, he joined the Pioneer Corps. He was eventually able to join a combat unit after Winston Churchill realized that there were a number of German-born Jewish individuals who were considered enemy aliens in England. But they spoke fluent German, and they could actually be assets in war. Many of his comrades were, um, their parents and siblings and aunts and uncles died in the concentration camps. So these individuals wanted nothing more than to fight the Nazis. When the opportunity presented itself to actually join a combat troop, he had, I think, minutes to decide whether or not he wanted to join. And then, upon joining, had to change his name, uh, change his origin story. So overnight, being a German, he became English. He joined the Church of England. And, um, he could never tell a soul his true identity.

APPRAISER: So what you brought is a World War II No. 10 Commando archive. When you think about it, we, we don't have reconnaissance satellites at that point in history. There's limited aerial reconnaissance available. A lot of what was going to happen needed to be planned based on human intel, hands-on. And who better to do that than commandos? These folks needed to be problem-solvers. They needed to be able to think on their feet and think creatively, because if you go across the channel, courtesy of the Royal Navy, who would insert them, and you get caught in bad, it's up to you. Nobody's coming to save you. You have to figure it out. They needed a very special group of young men to do this. He did leave you a legacy-- he left us some artifacts. For instance, the uniform. It's a British battle dress jacket with these No. 10 Commando titles. Now, do you know which troop he was in within No. 10?

GUEST: I believe he was in Troop 3.

APPRAISER: Troop 3 was the troop that was primarily made up of Germans who were Jewish.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: Casualty rate among No. 10 Commando and No. 3 Troop, I believe I've seen references to 50%.

GUEST: Wow.

APPRAISER: So there just really isn't that much of this material out in the world. He's a staff sergeant, and you have the '39-'45 ribbon bar, you have the Italy bar, and then his, uh, Defence bar. So apparently, he made some raids in Italy, as well.

GUEST: Wow, I didn't know that.

APPRAISER: You’ve got photographs of him while he's serving. Here he is wearing the beret. Got his, uh, Fairbairn-Sykes commando knife. There's a lot to this that gives us at least hints of where he was and what he was doing. These were some of the few people who had an opportunity to train and go do something about it. And it just gives you goosebumps.

GUEST: It does.

APPRAISER: Being in the presence of that material. That cultural and historical value translates through to monetary value, as well. If we were to put an insurance value on this set, this would fall very easily into the $20,000 to $25,000 range.

GUEST: Wow. Never really thought about how much it would be worth monetarily, uh, because it is so sentimental. That's amazing.

APPRAISER: This is the kind of stuff that movies are made of, the things that these guys did.

GUEST: Yeah.