bob lembke

"Coinguy89";

Looked at your item, and the only specific comment I have has to do with the soldier's (seems to be a flat-out private) cap. You see the two cockades? The top one is the Deutsche Kokarde and shows the Imperial colors, black, white, and red, in concentric rings, and was on the cap of every soldier. The lower cockade was that of the German state that his army was from (there actually were four German armies, plus units from other smaller states), the Landeskokarde, and most soldiers wore the Prussian colors of black and white. The picture is hardly perfect, and of course in black and white, but it seems overall to be lighter than the Prussian cockade, possibly it is the Bavarian cockade, blue and white (the Bavarian blue is fairly light), or less likely the Saxon cockade of green and white. (The Prussian cockade was black and white {nothing ambiguous there!}, and generally appears darker in most photos.)

The cap itself, with a leather peak, was possessed by all ranks, including privates, but at the front only officers and NCOs were allowed to wear them. But this picture was probably taken in a "state-side" studio. The cap was called the Dienstmuetze.

The inscription is hard to read but says "Aus xxxxxxzeit", or out of xxxxxxx-time", as in "out of war-time". The script seems to be post-war.

Bob Lembke

JensF;

Very interesting. Clearly from your information, not surprisingly, the shell weight is strongly dependent on shell wall thickness, as solid steel is clearly heavier than powder. The one shell weight that I cited, 2550 lbs, is for a heavily "armored" shell, with thick walls and a massive nose, meant for plunging deep into a fort before exploding. In one case, both fuzes failed, and the shell ended up skidding down a corridor deep underground in a Belgian fort. I read a description of the structures that that shell went thru, which could be reconstructed, as the shell had not exploded, and the penetration was quite impressive.

The shells in your posts are H. E. (high explosive), and would have thinner walls, as the weight of powder tossed on the target was in most cases the thing that you would want to maximize, in most H. E. applications for such a gun, where typically explosive power would be of more importance than weight of fragmentation. Being hit with a fragment from either shell would usually be a definitive "lights out".

My grand-father told my father that already in 1914 they had two weights of shells for use against the forts, giving different ranges. Since for "fort-busting" you would want to maximize the angle of the high-angle fire, for penetration, it would be more effective to try to keep the angle of fire as close to the 70 degrees that the gun could shoot at, and get more range with a lighter shell, rather than reduce the elevation to, say, 55 or 60 degrees with a heavier shell, and risk the shell rickoshaying (how is that spelt?) off a steel or concrete coupola or other feature and burst elsewhere.

The book that you scan seems to be of the period, rather than recent, and of course is in English. Can you give a citation for that book? Clearly it is over 200 pages and must have many goodies between its covers.

Bob Lembke

Rick;

Great photos! Can I assume that you have the album?

Is the shipyard up in the Golden Horn? Would have been the safest place to berth valuable ships.

The Naval Museum in the European shore of the Bosporus about a mile north (toward the Black Sea) of the Golden Horn is quite nice and worth visiting. They have quite a collection of very old torpedoes. I believe that Whitehead established a torpedo factory at Istanbul about 1885.

Just ate yesterday in a Turkish restaurant in Philadelphia, and discussed with the owners which train station my father must have arrived at when he arrived at Istanbul in 1915. Quite a scene at the station.

Bob Lembke

Hi, JensF;

Very interesting and largely correct discussion of this gun and related matters. I can see a few things that I feel are not quite correct, but I don't want to get into a big discussion, especially as the authors give absolutely no sources. I will say that I have seen a variety of shell weights quoted, and they all are heavier than those given in the article. However, the weight cited may well have been that of one of the seemingly large assortment of shells made for this gun. (One source is a letter written by my grand-father from the location of a battery of these guns firing on a Belgian fort. As he was a Feuerwerk=Offizier and the Id of the Generalkommando of III. Reservekorps, and so was responsible for supplying the shells to these guns, and 30.5 cm mortars as well, so he must had a good idea of their weight.)

But the article and photos are very informative and must be largely correct. A lot of rubbish is written on such topics. I would be very interested in seeing their sources.

Bob Lembke

Hi, Ulster!

Thanks for your kind response. I do know Patrick, the young German lad that churns out official history CDs, and I have some of them. I sometimes read 4-6 hours a day, more in German than anything else, but I am sure that I will never get thru them all by the time I am "pushing daiseys". I had purchased this history, as I have reason to believe that my father had provided flame support to the regiment at some time, but ran into this extraordinary description more or less by chance.

Having made this appeal, I must mention that many e-friends have already given me useful leads, both solicited and unsolicited, and I hope that I have thanked them, and do so again.

Bob Lembke

Gentlemen;

As you may know, I am new to this Forum, but I recognize that some of the very "heavy hitters" in the area of research on the Kaiserszeit=heer populate this Club.

As some of you know, my major area of interest is the German flame warfare effort of WK I, which was sparked by my discovery of my father's letters from the front some years ago. (He was a Flamm=Pionier.)

Last night, reading the history of a German infantry regiment, almost at random, I came across a 16 page description of a flame attack on the Western Front, by far the longest description of a flame attack I have ever found in seven years of research. I do not generally read regimental histories, and the two histories of the flame regiment are, unfortunately, only 22 and 53 pages long. Many officers writing these histories for various units also choose to not mention the participation of FW in attacks by their unit; for example, while the Sturm=Bataillon Nr. 5 (Rohr) even had their own Flamm=Trupp, as well as often borrowing FW from the flame regiment (my father had this duty several times, and enjoyed working with those professionals), the documentor of S=B Rohr, Graf von Schwerin, an artilleryman, almost never mentioned FW in his history, even in descriptions of important attacks where I know from other sources that FW had a prominent role in the success. (But he of course endlessly mentioned the battalion's infantry gun battery, an admittedly interesting topic.)

So I ask that if someone sees such a description in the course of reading regimental histories or the like, they give me a "heads up" to a source that I might never find in the course of my own reading.

I thank all in advance for any leads. You probably know that I share a lot of the results of my research on this and other fora.

Bob Lembke

What we see in this picture is indeed a 42 cm "M-Ger?t" in use.

Yes, I have just seen another photo of the 42 cm gun, with some of the trail details, which match this gun; the gun in the picture is certainly not a 30.5 cm mortar, Austrian or German. The extreme size of the gun in the photo is disguised by the short focal length of the lens the photographer used. The mistake was probably made because of the publicity that the Austrians gave their 30.5 cm guns, in contrast to the secrecy and deception of the Germans in regard to their 30.5 and 42 cm guns. This factor led my father to make a similar mistake in identification of a large Austrian gun at Gallipoli. While photo PCs of the Austrian guns are common, I have never seen an early-war photo PC of the 42 cm gun (in its several models, as Jens refers to), and I have some art PCs that are very inaccurate and may even may be intentional in order to deceive the enemy as to the characteristics of the 42 cm guns.

As to these big guns being used in Russia, I will paraphrase a letter of my grand-father's from a Russian winter from memory: "Yes, I finally have a billet. But it is as cold as Hell, the house has no windows; when we took this town we had to use my big guns, and they broke every window in town. And I left my cute little stove in Belgium." The "big guns" were not actually "his", but he said that in his letters sometimes; he was in charge of the supply of all artillery and infantry ammunition to his army corps, both in Belgium and in Russia, and as an old artilleryman he seems to have hung about the firing positions of these guns as much as possible, wrote letters from these positions during actions, some of which I have, and generally was rather possessive of them. (I have not specifically mentioned the Russian town and date of the letter, and the exact text; I would rather not see it in print before I publish my own book on my father and grand-father.)

Chip, photos of these 42 cm guns in action seem to be very scarce. As to them breaking windows, I have seen reports of them being fired in urban areas in Belgium, and breaking the windows for two blocks about the gun. As to where they landed, a shell might destroy a house or two, but I am sure the detonation of the explosion broke windows for quite a distance. I have heard reports of these guns being fired electrically so to allow the firing crew to be some distance away.

Bob Lembke

Divisional level telephone detachment of the 233.Division. On the date given, the division was in training, away from the front, so the actual event that caused its award probably happened earlier.

Chip

Chip's translation is quite correct.

As a tip to the non-Huns, the word "Abteilung" had, like many German words, several meanings. The general translation would be "detachment", and therefore could be of variable size, but usually suggesting a smaller detachment, company-sized, or smaller.

However, in regard to artillery units, an Abteilung was actually a battalion, usually of four batteries. Useage might be "II. Feldartillerie=Abteilung / FAR 24.", or "2nd Field Artillery Battalion, 24th Field Artillery Regiment".

Also, small elite MG battalions were formed, called "machine gun sharpshooters' Abteilung", a battalion of three small MG companies of say 110-120 men each, probably with 12 heavy MGs (MG 08) each, usually fitted with telescopic sights. (Did German MG companies go from 6 to 12 MGs each mid-war, or was it from 3 to 6? I think the former.) This usage seems to mirror the artillery usage of the word.

Bob Lembke

With a unit history of 414 pages, you have a good chance of finding him mentioned. The regiment that my own studies are centered on has two "official histories", one regrettably 53 pages, the other 22 pages.

I.R. 64 was in the 6th Division of the 3rd Army Corps. My family traditionally served in III. Armeekorps and III. Reservekorps, but more often in the 5th Division, as the family farm was not far from Frankfurt am Oder. My father was sworn into the Army by Pionier=Bataillon Nr. 3 "von Rauch" of the former; my grand-father served in the foot artillery of the 3rd Army Corps as a NCO, and later, as a Feuerwerk=Offizier, served as the Id of the Generalkommando of the latter in 1914-15. But our traditional family service was in Ulan=Regiment (1. brandenburgische) Nr. 3. "Tsar Alexander II. von Russland".

I owe Glenn a lot for previous help in sorting out some of the above, using some of the amazing resources he has collected. Thanks again! (Not sure how to get a beer from Philadelphia to Germany.)

Bob Lembke

Hello Bob,

Thanks for the comments. He isn't on the Volksbund site so may have survived and the local library gave me a shocked look when I asked about official Great War history books. They did take a look in the vaults for me and came up with one whole book which was about the Prussian army in the 18th century.

Tony

Only about one third of the German dead ever ended up in a known grave; the % is probably higher for officers. So the graves web site often does not list a man who died.

You may have to do some research yourself and then ask them to borrow a book from another public library. The best library in Germany for pre-1945 material is the Deutsches Buecherei Leipzig, which may have recently been re-named. I use their on-line catalog for seeing what books were published, you can search on the unit. I unfortunately have not used it for a while and don't have the web address in front of me; a Google should get it in seconds. You can go into the site for the national library system and steer towards Leipzig.

I know a Brit living in Germany who was allowed to take home a German official history with a market value of at least $10,000. He posted: "Who says this book is scarce?" Well, it is.

I find the German library people so cooperative that I have never gone to Germany to dive into a library, which I have done in the UK and Austria. They happily copy and mail most books at reasonable cost; the British Library, for example, flatly refuses to copy any more than 10% of any book.

Bob Lembke

Did this officer exist?

I have a box with the name Ltn. D. Res. Thier Inf. Regt. 64 written on it.

I can't find any trace of him so can anyone help me out please and tell me if he really did exist.

Thanks

Tony

Being a reserve officer, it is harder. There are fairly comprehensive references for "regular" officers.

There probably is an "official unit history", these are expensive, but if you are in Germany your local library may be able to secure a copy for you to borrow. The history may mention him, especially if he managed to get killed.

Also, he may be listed in the on-line data base of the German grave protection association, again assuming that he got killed.

Bob Lembke

This pic is also on the same subject. Here French prisoners of war. I have placed also the back of the card because there might be important information there.

Eduardo

Odd that a PC, probably German, is sent by a person writing in French to a woman living in La Havre. Was he a prisoner?

Bob

Bob. Here I am posting a few pics of details to see if it is possible to learn something else. Tks.

Eduardo

Everything seems to say early in the war, 1914, 1915. However, you can't see the Germans at all well, and the French troops could be Territorials and have older men, equipment, and uniforms. Scond or third-rate troops were usuallu assigned to escort and guard POWs.

Bob

Eduardo;

Between my eyes and the small size of the figures in the PC it is hard to study them carefully. I see no helmets, so we can probably assume that it was taken in the first half of the war, before mid-1916.

Close-up scans of the German and French soldiers might allow a better determination.

Also, some expert on French postal matters might be able to suggest a range of dates from the postage stamp. However, that would be the date of mailing, which could be much later than when the photo was taken.

Anything on the reverse?

Bob Lembke

The above post was badly expressed. (It is 3:45 AM here on the East Coast, and I have not slept yet.) Several Americans that I know are knowledgable about FW, and have exchanged material and guidance with me, and have been of significant assistance. One of them quite possibly knows a bit more than the others, and also is more prone to publish his work (and has produced a classic in the process), and this gentlemen was the "third party" that I referred to. This mention is not intended to minimize the knowledge of others, nor the help that they have extended to me.

Bob Lembke

Hi, Chip!

I have heard rumors that Schiffer will publish a book on German flame thrower (FW) troops this year, and if true I cannot think of anyone else who might be the author, except an individual with whom I collaborated with for a couple of years. I only know of one other American who knows a lot about WW I FW, and I occasionally correspond with this third person, and he recently gave me some very rare FW materials, so I doubt that this third party (someone whose name would be instantly recognizable, with great respect) will be the author. (The above, of course, assumes that the supposed author of the rumored work is an American.)

I think that I have seen you post about this possible book publication; I can not recall if I have heard this from others. One account suggested a title. I may contact you privately, there might be touchy issues here.

Bob Lembke

Hi, Chip!

I think that I have "Education before Verdun" by Arnold Zweig, in German, on my shelf of WW I fiction, which is quite small. I have become so obsessed with my studies of the war, and writing, that I rarely read fiction anymore, and little on things not related to the war, and even rarely read secondary sources on the war. In my particular interest, flame throwers, flame troops, and their role in the war, almost everything in the secondary sources is bunk, IMHO. I think I poked thru the Zweig book when I bought it. I will be swept with guilt if I sit down and read it from cover to cover.

My father hated Remarque and his "All Quiet on the Western Front", as "defeatist", as he put it. He traveled to Berlin and joined a Freikorps to kill some sailors after an armed Red sailors' patrol set upon him in the streets of Hamburg in December 1918 while visiting his mother and stripped him of his greatcoat and boots at gunpoint. He was quite quick-tempered, even thuggish, and had been a storm-trooper for 2 1/2 years, and he was very angry. He was able to take part in the flame thrower attack on the Vorwarts building in January 1919, and particpated in shooting in the forehead 26 sailors of the Peoples' Naval Division who were among the 300 men taken in the attack. So he got to kill his sailors. He told me many times that the war was the high point of his life, he was one of that 2-3% that loved the war, but he did not enjoy the civil war that much.

Bob Lembke

Falkenhayn had been the Chief of Staff since shortly after the war commenced, but as the Battle of Verdun sputtered to a bloody stalemate, mid 1916, he was asked to step down and the team of Hindenburg and Ludendorff came from the East and took over the Highest Army Command for the rest of the war. Although judged not the man for the supreme command, Falkenhayn was a capable general officer, and when the Romanians entered the war on the side of the Allies he was chosen to command the army sent to deal with the new Romanian problem. The difficulty was that the British-French attack on the Somme was in full swing, leading to a very tight resource situation.

Romania, prior to their declaration of war, was leaning to the Allies, but had a certain flexibility. My father's unit, a detachment of replacements for the German volunteer Pionier=Kompagnie serving at Gallipoli, entrained on a civilian train through Romania in civilian clothes, their kit having been sent ahead by some other means. It is a certainty that the Romanians knew that they were German soldiers. One of the German leaders at Gallipoli, probably von Sanders or Oberst Kannengeiser, complained in his memoirs that the Romanians were prejudiced against the Germans, and to smuggle men or materiel thru Romania they had to pay bigger bribes than the Allied powers were forced to pay for a similar blind eye, a "Nelson's eye", to look the other way.

Bob Lembke

Chip;

The more that I look at the photo, the more sure I am that it is a 42 cm. I have a German book on the 30.5 and 42 cm guns, and the author got into the Krupp archives, and I can't recall ever seeing such a 30.5 cm gun; I think that the only howitzer in that range was a 28 cm, and the gun pictured certainly is a larger caliber. I have never seen a photo of an Austrian or German 30.5 cm gun with a gun shield.

Note the perspective of the photo. It clearly was made with a shorter-than-normal focal length lens, i.e., a wide-angle lens, and the front part of the gun appears smaller than it was. Note the considerable difference in the apparent size of the men on the trail and the breech portion of the gun. Compared to the men standing near to the breech, the shell and breech certainly appear larger than 12".

I have seen many photos of Austrian 30.5 cm guns, and have a few, but I have rarely seen a photo of a German 42 cm, except for the archive photos in the book that I mentioned, which are for some reason quite poor in quality, unsharp. (Incidentally, the Austrians also seem to have come out with a 42 cm gun in 1916.) I suspect that the German sense of military secrecy suppressed the taking of photos of this gun. Two notes: On secrecy, my father's correspondence never directly mentions Flammenwerfer, but hints at the weapon, as in grousing on getting oil on everything; likewise, my grand-father sometimes wrote surprising military secrets, but never mentioned the specific calibers of the big guns, which he discussed often in oblique ways, calling them "very heavy" and "the heaviest". My father, a student in 1914, once wrote and asked if a "52 cm" gun would be useful for shelling the UK, and g-f wrote back that such a caliber would be impratical. I once found a full-length book by a senior Italian naval officer in the National Library in Vienna; the sole topic of the book, published about 1915, was that a 42 cm gun was impossible, and had to be rumor or dis-information. The author wrote a very learned and silly book, relying in part on 15th century ballistic data to "prove" that such a big gun was impossible.

Bob Lembke

Chip;

Many thanks for the two useful nuggets of information. Since I also mostly need the Uemlauts (see, I haven't remembered the codes yet), I will follow your lead. But Dave's lead will also be useful also. I write a fair amount of French, and am currently translating the diary of an Italian flame thrower officer, so I sometimes need a variety of special characters.

My father told me when he first joined the army (sworn in by Pionier=Bataillon Nr. 3 "von Rauch" of "the Brandenburgers" in early 1915) his issue boots were older than he was. The hob-nails and heel horse-shoe took most of the wear, but he said that with age the nail-holes opened up and the hob-nails loosened and became a problem. I have the lengthy correspondence between my father and grand-father; the latter, always practical, and having seen the results of reckless bayonet charges in Belgium, wanted father to especially not join the infantry, but join the pioneers, where "you will learn something useful"; further, to be trained within the III. Armeekorps, and then get transferred to Reserve=Pionier=Bataillon Nr. 3 of my grand-father's army corps, where, as he wrote: "I know all the officers, and have trained most of them." G-f was a Feuerwerk=Offizier (Explosives Officer), and probably had trained the pioneer officers in the use of explosives. Although he had other duties (He was the Id in the corps' Generalkommando) he was sometimes detailed for special blasting jobs; he once wrote about having a major blast to set up, 1200 kg. of explosives near the Russian lines, and being a bit nervous handling so much explosives close to the Russians. He reported that the physical conditions in Russia were nightmarish (He wrote that: "You don't have to lie down; you merely have to look at a bed, and you are covered in lice.", and he contracted malaria in 1915.

I venture into the personal, but I think that some will find this sort of detail interesting. I fortunately have a lot of family Feldpost and oral history, which has surprisingly proved exceptionally accurate.

Bob Lembke

Chip;

The gun was used to reduce the fort, I suspect, not defend it.

Looking at the photo, I am beginning to think it might be the Krupp 42 cm gun. It certainly is a howitzer of a design close to the Dicke Berta, not a mortar. I had thought the German 30.5 cm guns were of a design similar to the Skoda Moto=Moerser, but without the neat transportation system designed by, yes, Dr. Ferdinand Porsche. The 42 cm guns got lighter as time went by; there were a number of models, and I have (in a book), a photo of one with a long barrel!

But I had thought that the gun was physically larger. But the shell and chamber bore seems, to me, closer to 16.5 " than 12". The 16.5" shell came in a number of variants, not hard as they were made in small batches. My grand-father mentioned two shell weights for different ranges. The fort-buster shell had, I believe, two explosive charge chambers, each fuzed with a seperate time fuze. Heavy-walled, really armored, it could be fired at 70 degree elevation and probably go up 5 miles, falling that distance, with a weight of perhaps 2550 lbs., it surely could punch thru a lot of fort.

At a very interesting attack at Verdun 42 cm guns, possibly with shot-out barrels, dropped shorts on the German troops assembled for an attack, paralizing (sp?) the survivors of the assembled assault troops, but they eventually were rallyed and successfully attacked.

How was the designation of the photo as a 30.5 cm gun made? Printed, hand-scrawl?

Bob Lembke

Tony;

My point is that "5. G. R." could reasonably be used for either of the three regiments that I identified. I don't know beans about unit markings per se, but do read and use German period documents, books, etc. a lot, and am quite familiar with the ways the Germans abbreviated unit designations. Another correct detail is the type of numerals involved. To explain this, let me cite a series of correctly written unit designations. 2. Kompagnie, II. Bataillon, 2. Regiment (more usually Regiment Nr. 2.), II. Infanterie=Brigade, 2. Infanterie=Division, III. Reservekorps (couldn't resist slipping in my grand-father's corps), 5. Armee.

See the pattern? The alternating Roman and Arabic numerals? This added clarity and allowed even starker abbreviations, which the Germans loved. In a source like a history from the Reichsarchiv you can see a unit designation like "2./II.", and, with the right context, you know that this is 2. Kompagnie/II. Bataillon". About 10% of the time an Arabic numeral will be used when a Roman numeral is standard; I don't think that I have ever seen the reverse (e.g., "II. Kompagnie") in reading many hundreds of period sources in German. The very strong abbreviations are often used on maps of battle situations. Also remember the way the capital letter "J" is often used for the capital letter "I", as in "5. J. D." for the 5th Infantry Division.

So a "II. K." marking on something for the 2nd Company is very fishy indeed, like the charioteer with the wristwatch in "Ben Hur".

Above a bit pedantic, but I hope it is useful to some.

Bob Lembke

Tony and Chip;

I know nothing about unit markings, but sheer ignorance has never kept me from posting.

I picked up a Prussian Rangliste that conveniently was sitting by me, and it suggests that it is a coin-toss to pick between the two 5th Guards Infantry Regiments and the 5th Infantry Regiment. There was a 5. Garde=Regiment zu Fu?, and additionally a Garde=Grenadier=Regiment Nr. 5; both were based in Spandau, just to the west of Berlin proper, and together formed the 5. Garde=Infanterie=Brigade, the latter formation was probably broken up during the course of the war. If this was not confusing enough, there was also a Grenadier=Regiment Koenig Friedrich I. (4. Ostpreussisches) Nr.5, based in Danzig. All three of these regiments were very old and elite and also very Prussian. Chip is correct that "C." as well as "K." or "Komp." could be used for "Company". I assume that this is is an archaic form from the French, just like how Prussian second lieutenants were "Premier Lieutenant" (I am too lazy and it is too late to actually check this spelling, but it is probably OK) till the mid-1890s, when the rank was referred to as "Oberleutnant". (It was Bismark, I believe, who convinced the Prussian Foreign Ministry to start writing their internal correspondence in German, rather than French.) The use of "C" for Kompagnie would have been more likely in an "old" regiment, I suspect, or might suggest an older date for the inscription.

Can I ask the well-informed Chip a couple of questions? Can you say a few words about the term Garniture as it applies to marked clothing and equipment? Aside from the common use of the term, I am not familiar with this, and I assume that others may suffer the same handicap. Secondly, how do you insert the special German characters, like the "ss" above (I stole your character for Fuss above), or an Uemlaut? I gather that there is a way to produce special characters, but I have never seen a table of the characters and the keyboard manipulations needed to insert them into text.

Finally, I am made nervous about the way that a common article could be made more valuable by a few characters scratched or punched into it, just like I am wary of a few words scrawled on the reverse of a period militaria photo that indicates a very exotic topic and increases the value of the photo. (I am just a suspicious type of guy.) The use of an archaic form like the "C" for company hints at authenticity. I used to collect Roman coins; one I have has interesting (and obscene) graffiti scratched into it; when was that done, 1700 years ago, or a week before I bought it? I can remember being in an Orthodox church on the Jugoslav coast with a bookish Croatian friend in 1971; a mosaic had something like "Kilroy was here, March 17, 1804" dug into its lower edge in Cyrillic with a knife; I wondered alowd if it was actually from 1804, or a recent joke; my companion pointed out that one of the Cyrillic characters used in the graffiti was dropped from the active alphabet about 1850, suggesting an old date for the inscription, or a rather scholarly graffiti artist, which one hopes would be an oxymoron. Likewise the use of the "C" suggests authenticity.

Bob Lembke

Thanks for that info Rick. Unfortunately, no date on the back of the photo. There is a message in schrift which I can only partially make out as it is somewhat faint. The uniforms (M07/10) would fit in with that period, but I have no knowledge of whether this gun existed at this particular time.

Chip

P.S. I looked through von Stein's notes and found the "Schwere K?sten-M?rser-Batterie Nr.6" attached to the 6.Armee and armed with one 30,5 cm Mrs.

Yes, the Austrian Skoda 30.5 cm mortars were heavily publicized by the land of Schmaltz=Musik, while the Germans were very secretive about their 30.5 cm guns, made by Krupp, as well as the 42 cm howitzers. (The designation of them as coastal defense artillery was intended to throw off enemy MI if they heard of these; they were designed to bust up the French and Belgian forts.) My grand-father "worked" with these guns in Belgium and later in Russia, and as an old artilleryman he hung about their batteries when he could, and I have letters where he discussed the 30.5 and 42 cm guns with his son, but always in generalities, no specific caliber mentioned, the shell weight roughly described in Centners. With the info in the Antwerpen volume of Schlachten der Weltkrieges, written by the guy he reported to as Id of III. Reservekorps, I can geographically place at least one of the battery firing positions from which he wrote these letters from quite closely.

I am sure some of you have seen some of the many PCs the Austrians published showing their Moto=Moersers in Belgium, and I have seen a letter posted from one of these batteries whose military postmark actually depicted a 30.5 cm mortar. Of course this remarkable gun was one of the few bright spots for the Austro-Hungarians in a generally miserable war for them.

Bob Lembke

Gary;

There were two ID booklets of this sort kept for each German soldier. The one you have, the Soldbuch ("Pay-book"), was carried by the soldier, so, although it has a lot of info, it did not contain information that would have been of particular interest to enemy military intelligence. For example, on your photo #3 (post #3) the left page has, among other things, the soldier's shoe size, height, and decorations, while the information on the right page includes specifics on at least nine cholera and typhus injections. The book also not surprisingly covers the receipt of pay.

The other book, the Militaer=Pass, contained a lot of additional information, such as family and domicile information, the various units the soldier served in, the weapons he was trained on, his more serious wounds and illnesses and hospitalizations, and the battles that he fought in. Usually one document was issued for the soldier's entire career, and I believe was only given to him when he was de-mobilized. I suspect that they were generally kept at the regimental level during war-time, and periodically sent to the company HQ for the entry of new information; these entries are often entered say six months after the event described.

I have about 20-30 of the latter document (the name could be translated as "military passport"), including my father's, and have studied about 40 in detail, and every one teaches you more things about the German Army of the period. They are not easy to figure out; not only do you have to read German written in the Fraktur type and in the Suetterlin and Kurrent hand-scripts, but also a lot of extreme abbreviations and curious forms of description are used. For example, "k. v." means "fit for combat" in regard to physical condition based on a medical evaluation, perhaps after being wounded. My father's stated: "k. v., kein Flammenwerfer", or "fit for combat, but not with flame throwers", which was my father's weapon for most of his war; this evaluation was after the second of his four wounds.

If there was a central registry of these in the hands of cooperative collectors they could provide a rich source of historical information. Unfortunately there does not seem to be any sort of association of the collectors of these documents, at least af far as I know. I only know of one or two people in the US who collect and can decypher these, although I am sure that they are others.

Bob Lembke