bob lembke

Tom and Chip;

Where are we with the photo in post #440? Are we still thinking that the guy is a Bavarian soldier, but wearing the simplified tunic, not the Bavarian tunic? While Garde=Reserve=Pionier=Regiment (Flammenwerfer) , being Prussian Guard, was not limited to recruiting within a single army corps district, I don't think that it was possible (or legal) for them to recruit in the territory of the three other royal armies. However, a lot of distinctions melted away as the war went on, but that prohibition would seem to have been rather basic. Rather odd for a Prussian Guard soldier to wear a Bavarian cockade.

Bob Lembke

Herbert;

If he had become an officer pre-war he cound be found in Ranglisten, but the vast majority of officers created during the war were some sort of reserve officer, and are generally not found in published references. Some but not all units published unit histories after the war and typically an officer can usually be found in them. Unfortunately the Prussian Archives were burned in a fire raid in 1944 or 1945. You might want to give us his full name (did you?), someone might have a useful source.

Chip is an outstanding expert and collector on uniforms and especially shoulder straps from various units and hopefully he can figure something more out.

My paternal grand-mother lived in Hamburg and I have her address (there were family problems that made her not too active in family life), and I made a "cold call" (actually an e-mail) to the Hamburg City Archives and they were extremely helpful and looked up useful information I did not know. But their records from, I think, 1926 to 1944 were destroyed in the great Hamburg fire bombing. There was an annual city directory and possibly it might mention something about his military service; possible, not likely, like the 1917 edition mentioning his unit or rank.

Bob Lembke

Although, in this case, the soldier also wrote in pencil on the card his unit - RIR 202.

Rick;

By Prussian military mail regulations, all Prussian military mail from very early in the war should have an "Absender Block" (The more easy Bavarians did not require it, I believe.). This very valuable bit of information, usually written on the text side of the PC, usually top center, and often up-side down, and usually in two lines, gave the sender's rank, name, and unit, often including the Korporalschaft, Zug, Kompagnie, Bataillon, und Regiment, while the round postal (inked) stamp usually had the field post office # and the division, plus the date and even hour of cancellation. Additionally, there often is a third unit stamp, often a rectangle, often from the company or battalion level. So normally a Prussian Army PC had a wealth of information on it about the sender and his unit. So if you have a Regiment #, you should have a wealth of other information, often written with the typical intensive German abbreviations.

If anyone wants to "go off the rails" on this topic, the German postage stamp society has a working group on Feldpost, which when I, in a moment of madness, almost joined, had about 120 members about the world, and which you could join for a modest annual dues of about $25, which included a quarterly newsletter, which, since it was issued by Germans, was, every quarter, exactly 50 pages, not 48, or 52, or whatever. I think these guys have references which, given a field postal station number and a date, could tell you where on the Eastern or western front the post office was. A lot of the numbers were #s like 600, I guess there were 500 or 1000 of them, and they occasionally moved.

There! More than you ever wanted to know about German military mail.

Bob

Hi, Rick;

I recall reading somewhere that reserve regiments had a "parent" active regiment... Or maybe I am just imagining that idea.

In 1914 most German active infantry regiments had what I call a "shadow" reserve regiment, which usually carried the same number, but did not carry any honorific name; for example, Infanterie=Regiment Nr. 31 von Bose probably had a related reserve regiment, it probably was called Reserve=Infanterie=Regiment Nr. 31, but it could not use the "von Bose" appelation. The reserve "shadow" regiment would be based in the same area of the army corps district, I believe.

But after 1914 there were all sorts of units formed, sources of men, etc., so one cannot assume that RIR 202 was based on a IR 202. There was no IR 202 in 1914; I think that the count was up to IR 176 or thereabouts. A IR 202 or RIR 202 would have been created during the war.

At any rate, I have a RPPC with a feldpost stamp for Rekruten Depot, Reserve-Infanterie Regiment Nr. 202. (Other known facts; postmark is Coepenick 1917; RIR 202 was from Berlin)

Coepenick is a suburb of Berlin, I believe. Recall the movie "Captain from Coepenick".

On the front are a group of young looking recruits, but their schulterklappen clearly have a unique cypher (rather than the number I would have expected) - almost looks like a backwards 7 with a crown. Perhaps this is the cypher for a parent regiment?

The Pickelhaube covers for a reserve regiment had an "R", and then, below, say "202". As I said above, the reserve regiment probably was not allowed to use the honorifics for the active regiment. Perhaps the men were not from the reserve regiment (or from a special detachment in or attached to it), but was mailed from the regiment's post office. One of my father's PCs or field letters from Verdun was mailed from the private post office in the HQ of Crown Prince Wilhelm; I'm not sure how he managed that, maybe just walked into to mail his letter. I know that sometimes he just hung out outside the HQ and watched the action; once he pigeon-holed the Crown Prince's photographer (he was a photographer, even taught to make his own film) and caged from him a photo of the Crown Prince and General von Mudra, a Pionier=General.

The Pal Chip in the US is the guy to ask about shoulder-boards; he has an amazing collection of same.

Yes - I know - a scan of the cypher!!

Well, my wife is the photographer expert and promises she will shoot a snap AFTER I complete some chores!

Just thought I'd give you something to start chewing on until I return...

Could you please give me a quick 'how to' research Bavarian soldaten on line

Jay;

Others may have more info, but I would think that it is not possible. The Bavarian WW I archives (unlike the central Prussian) still exist, but you have to go there, I believe, as I don't think that they have put anything on-line. By Soldaten I assume you mean EM, that also is much harder than officers, generally, but I don't know lots about the Bavarian records. However, if a soldier managed to get killed, he has a good chance (say 40%, I would guess) to be in the war graves association's data-base, which is on-line.

Bob Lembke

Heiko;

Early in the war the Germans formed three (I think) battalions armed with the Danish Madsen LMG (Musketen=Bataillone), but as these were lost or wore out (some may have been transferred to other uses) they were replaced with captured Lewis guns. There were conversion kits to adapt them to German use and I think that they were converted to 8 mm Mauser ammo. My father's unit adopted the French Chauchaut, which was horribly made, but was a bit better than many people think. But when they were made in US 30-06 ammo by the French for the Americans, they were truly awful, and in the English literature they are generally considered the worst MG ever made.

The Germans generally considered the Lewis a good gun.

Bob Lembke

Never heard of the "Flieger Abwehr Kanone" translation, but most of my reading (mostly in German) has been on WW I. Likewise, I never heard of anyone inventing a second translation of PAK, or "Panzer Abwehr Kanone". Is Bender a German?

Bob Lembke

I have a unit history of an infantry regiment that was named "von Bose", I think IR Nr. 31. I will rummage about and find it and look in the foreword, it might give you a clue. I can also look in my oldest Rangliste, 1879, although he probably was aus Dienst by that time.

Bob Lembke

Then I think that it was weird that Mannerheim, an Imperial Russian officer in WW I, got WW I EK I and EK II. Not a medal guy, but I thought the EK was only for combat services, not peace-time merit. But my father got his EK II in 1921 from the War Ministry, as his company command were soreheads about him being a bit unruly; he shot and killed his first company CO (coward and thief), shot a sergeant in the butt during manuvers with sharp ammunition, and kicked another sergeant in the face from above with the sole of his hob-nailed boot. So they were mean-spirited, and would not give him a well-deserved EK II. But at least his delayed EK II was for war-time service in the German Army, not the Russian Army. Weird!

Don't drink vodka, but I gather that the supposed second-best Polish vodka was the stuff I kept for guests, was it called Zubrovka, for the buffalo grass that it was flavored with, with a few sprigs in the bottle. But I have not even seen the supposed ultimate Polish vodka is Starska (translation: "old stuff"), which was made by putting the finest straight vodka in a Potton, or a small permeable Hungarian Tokay cask, and burying it in a horse midden (basically, a cesspool) for 20 years, in other words, flavoring the vodka with liquid horse poop for 20 years. (I hope the alcohol proof was high!) I would prefer the Tokai azu.

Bob Lembke

Found this as a link from another forum; it's a website selling scanned pdf files of out-of-print Imperial regimental histories.

Looks like a goldmine. Five euro seems like a bargain. But is it too good to be true?

Rick;

I connected with Patrick when he was just starting out; advised him to scan Sturm=Bataillon Nr. 5 (Rohr), and he later told me it was his best seller. Several years ago he was still grinding thru university. A nice fellow and a great service, especially in the US where these unit histories are very hard to come by.

I have to cruise thru his listings again to see if I need anything that he has added recently. Even several years ago these unit histories often or usually cost over $100, and shipping and the possible loss in the mails is a headache. Plus storage; I have walls of groaning bookshelves. (My wife, the Super=Librarian, rents an apartment from me for her killer cat, her weight-lifting equipment, but mostly for 8000 books she can't fit in my house.)

Bob Lembke

LTC Stahler;

There may be more to this. There is a fellow, who I think is active on another forum, perhaps not here, who lives in the UK, but whose grand-father, if I have that right, served in the 27th Jaegers, again if I have that right, which was a unit of Finnish Jaegers (sorry, no Umlaut avail.) being trained by the Germans for action in Russian Finland if the occasion presented itself. I don't know if they ever saw combat, but I believe (either from a post from this fellow, or from a PM, that many of the men of this unit later became Finnish leaders. I believe that this fellow said that his grand-father organized a visit of Hitler to Finland in the WW II period, and was a colonel or something of that sort in the Finnish Army in the WW II. Mannerheim might even have served in this Jaeger unit. Jaegers were famous for scouting missions and the like and you can see how a unit of Finnish Jaegers would have been valuable if Russian Finland would have been invaded.

You can see how the Germans might expect some sympathy from many Finns in the era, but also there were Finnish units in the vanguard of the Bolshevik movement who were legendary for Communist fanaticism. I think that some nasty stuff went on there toward the end of WW I.

Gruss aus Philadelphia,

Bob Lembke

I was only kidding. Sounds like an interesting book.

Bob

Luke;

Sorry, this has struck the old nostalga bone, going to veer OT for only a bit. Have you ever gotten up in the mountins? Gives you a sense of those conditions. But in Alpine-style climbing at least you are continually climbing (In my crazyist climb, Dom in Switzerland, in 19 hours of climbing we stopped about 3 times for 2-3 minutes, and once on the summit for say 10-15 minutes, in 19 hours, so you are lightly dressed, it is about minus 20 degrees Centigrade (probably lower at the 4545 m summit, we had gone up the north ice wall, its first ascent that year, without our ice hammers), but you constantly moving. (My guide was always puzzled by me, I was always a bit slow, but what we did not know was that I had quite severe cornary artery disease, and had three heart attacks a couple of years later.) But being up there for day after day, moving little, maybe hugging cold rock most of the time, probably insufficient food, frozen drinking water (sit on your canteen for half an hour to take a sip?), bad clothing w/o modern miracle hi-tech materials, just an awful thought.

No question these are/were tough people in these mountains. I lived in Slovenia for three years and hiked/climbed a lot of the mountains on the Slovenia/Italy border in the Julian Alps where a lot of the fighting took place in WWI. Using Kobarid, Slovenia (Capparetto - also scene of Hemingway's book "A Farewell to Arms") as a base, you can trace a lot of the Isonza (Soča) Front; including the area where Rommel writes about in "Infantry Attacks".

I drove thru Kobarid say 10-15 times over many years before I realized that it was Caparetto of "A Farewell to Arms"; I just thought it was to the west in Italy. I was not a student of the war then. I thought that my father was at the battle, his Flammenwerfer unit was, he told me a few stories about the battle, but I know from his Militar=Pass that he was in hospital at that time, his worst wound from Verdun having flared up; he did not place himself in the stories, so he was repeating stories from his comrades, and I just assumed that he was there.

The WW I museum in Kobarid is quite good; new, and has won some European awards.

The Trentino and the Tyrol were even worse conditions - the fighting at San Matteo had to be insane.

Every 11 Nov for a Veteran's Day ceremony we'd climb Mt. Krn (2245m); last time I started my day with a short run in shorts along the Soča (this is the Slovene name for the Isonza River), but mid-day however, I was slogging through almost two meters of snow to get to near the top of Mt. Krn and the ceremony. Of course, many of those making the climb were old partisans from WWII - no shortage of tough souls and strong drinks. I could only imagine how it was to fight in these mountains during WWI. Many of the fortifications and tunnels still exist as they were at that time.

The second time I climbed Triglav, in Slovenija, I climbed with my Slovene (lady) friend and an American (buddy) lady friend, and there were young Slovene men climbing, fairly drunk, they gave my American friend two canteens to take a drink from, she gulped, twice, choked twice; they had given Suzanne 120 proof cherry moonshine and 140 proof (estimated) apple moonshine; I had the sense to take a tiny ceremonial sip, she gulped. I asked Marijeta, the Slovene teacher, what she thought of young people climbing drunk; she philosopically replied that it was better that they were up there somewhat drunk rather than rolling in a gutter completely drunk back in Ljubljana. (The climb on standard routes is not technical at all, only 30-40 feet of scrambling in perhaps a 8000 foot ascent. The 6000' foot vertical rock face would be inadvisable to climb drunk.

Driving the Vrsic Pass as described by Bob even today can be harrowing in the winter - assuming it's open. For the truly rugged, in June/July there is a marathon that runs up this road built by the Russians.

I have a Slovene male friend who was a competative Alpine runner. Really nutty!

To remind: Mt, Krn was the area of the initial assaults along the Soča River after Italy's entry into the war in May 1915. Italian Alpini achieved the first major victory on the Soča Front with the capture of Mount Krn, when they wrested this 2245-meter peak from the hands of from its Hungarian defenders on June 16, 1915.

I have stood at the top drinking all sorts of fire water with Hungarians, Austrians, Germans, Slovenes, Italians, and a few crazy Americans!

Footnote: Great trout fishing in Kobarid and Tolmin along the Soča River. In Kobarid is one of the best restaurants - serving seafood of all things - in which I have had the pleasure to dine anywhere in the world.

Never heard of the restaurant, perhaps it wasn't there when I was there. I learned not to eat seafood in the mountains by having mussels in a crazy Italian nightclub in Zermatt and getting food poisoning. But Kobarid is a lot closer to the sea than Zermatt is.

There was an inn on the lovely road that wound down from the Alpine Vrsic Pass through Kobarid to the Adriatic; it had a trout stream 50' behind the inn, which specialized in pan-fried trout from the stream. Last time I was there was with my friend Suzanne from the Triglav climb. Across the room I saw my friend Marijeta's father, sitting with a group of his Slovene Alpine friends, they were drinking and singing mountaineering songs, he looked really happy. I didn't even go over to him (I had known him say 15 years, knew his brother in New York, etc.), he hadn't seen me. I knew that he was dying of stomach cancer, he looked really happy. Later I visited his grave with Marijeta and we quite illegally planted protected Edelweiss plants on his grave.

Bob (suffering an acute attack of nostalga)

Hi, Hardy;

Do the postal authorities stop them at the border?

Bob Lembke

Although Trieste was a larger city and probably the larger port, Pula and not Trieste was the main naval base. Great Roman ampitheatre, still seats 25,000.

Bob Lembke

PS: The Biggins books are fantastic. My wife wants to kidnap his youngest child and hold the kid for ransom until he promises to write another book for the series.

Have done a good deal of climbing in the various Alps years ago, and the conditions in August are usually not bad (been up to 4545 meters), but the Alpine fighting went on all year, and in winter, or when doing something crazy like trying to pull a field-piece up a mountain, the conditions were impossible. And of course they had to be up there all night for days and days, not being able to retreat to an Alpine hut or to your chalet in the valley. And building any sort of trench on solid rock was a night-mare.

There is an amazing road going over the Vrsic Pass (bit over 6000' altitude) in western Slovenija, built during WW I mostly by Russian POWs to supply the Alpine front near Caparetto, and there is a wooden Russian-style chapel at the low northern foot of the road, built to remember 300 Russian POWs swept away by an avalanche while working on the road during the war. My Slovene guide has a Russian name (Sazonov), as his father was a Russian POW who had the sense to never leave Slovenija after the war was over; he died in Slovenija at age 95.

I have a particular interest in flame-throwers, and they were used in mountain-top fighting in the Italian Alps, and on much lower mountain tops in the Vosges in Alsace, during winter, including Christmas. Speaking of combining a number of unpleasant circumstances!

Bob Lembke

PS But a lot of tough people over there. The first person I climbed with was a Slovene woman, a PT teacher, and we climbed Triglav, highest mountain in Jugoslavija and Slovenija, about 10,000 feet. Sometime later she climbed it with her new husband, in winter, with the huts closed, and she said in a phone call that she climbed it with a load of fire-wood on her back to stock the fuel supply (for strangers) in the emergency hut next to the closed regular hut. This mountain has seven glaciers on it in summer. Shortly after that I spoke to her sister and was a bit surprised that when she told me that her sister had climbed the mountain in winter with a load of fire-wood when she was 8 months pregnant with her first child, while 40 years old. While Triglav is not that high, you start climbing from about 1000', not 6000' or 10,000' like in Switzerland. My Slovene guide was once asked to guide the then Communist President of Slovenija on a climb of the 6000' rock face, on the west flank of Triglav, one of the highest rock faces in the Alps anywhere in Europe. Not what you would expect a "Communist President" to be doing, thinking of those wonderful athletic Russian Communist Presidents.

I have a fair ammount of Kemmel information, but not surprisingly Flammenwerfer information, mostly, not artilley info.

Bob Lembke

# 9 - 75-77 mm mountain gun? Did any field guns have such a short barrel? Sometimes when a 75-77 mm field gun was converted to an "infantry gun" or "accompanging battery gun" (I have about 30 dictionaries, but unfortunately no English dictionary. When I was a "suit" I thought that I was a good speller, but I only had a good secretary.) the barrel was cut down for lightness, and smaller wheels fitted, as they were to be man-handled on the battle-field. Sometimes Russian 76.4 mm parapet guns, light to be man-handled about a fort, and captured in the forts in Polish Russia in 1915, were somewhat modified (e.g., better German sights) and made a good infantry gun (supposedly Sturm=Bataillon Nr. 5 (Rohr) liked them the most of the at least 5 models that they tried), but supposedly the Russian barrel steel wore out quickly. I think most captured guns used were long-barreled Fuss=Artillerie calibers. This allowed the firing off of the sometimes vast (e.g., Russia) amounts of Allied artillery ammunition captured early in the war.

#11 - Some mechanical details obscured, but almost certainly the same gun as # 9.

#12 - Is the shell bigger than 10.5 cm? Possibly something between 10.5 cm and 15 cm? Or 15 cm? But the gun seems, by size, not by detail, 77 mm to 10.5 cm. Perhaps the shell does not match the gun? The inscription suggests the West Bank of the Meuse at Verdun.

# 14 - See the comments on the Fuss=Artillerie in my earlier post. There is no person in the photo for comparison for sizing, but the barrel seems very thick, as well as long. Fuss=Artillerie 15 cm Kanone?

# 23 - 75-77 mm field gun.

# 24 - 21 cm Moerser.

Bob

Not an expert here, but I will run at a few. I don't know the variants within a given caliber/gun type, like the models of the 15 cm schwere Feldhow.

# 1 - by the apparent shell diameter, I would say the light 10.5 cm field howitizer.

# 2 - The Fuss=Artillerie had 9 cm, 10 cm, 12 cm, 13 cm, and 15 cm Kanonen. All were classified as "heavy artillery". (The 10 cm gun did actually weigh more than the 15 cm heavy field howitzer.) In addition to German-made guns, they used considerable numbers of Russian and French guns, say in 12 cm, and the publications of the Reichsarchiv generally identify these in their tables of order of battle. Additionally, I was just reading Band VI of Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918 yesterday, and it mentioned that in November 1914, when the ammunition stocks for the heavy guns in Flanders were running very low, they ordered that older models of guns of these calibers be rushed to the front, along with the plentiful supplies of shells on hand for these older guns, the guns arriving in about three weeks. Additionally, many fortress guns were taken from the forts, such as at Metz, put into some sort of carriage, if necessary, and rushed to the front. So the Germans were using many sorts of long guns from 9 cm to 15 cm. (Additionally the gunners of the Marine=Division and a few months later the Marine=Korps were also using naval cannon in land mounts; additionally one brigade of the 1. Marine=Division was naval gunners serving as naval infantry, but when Antwerp was captured they were used to man the guns of the captured Belgian forts.) So the Germans were using at least 10-12 models of guns of this general type, and I am not the guy to sort it out the details.

# 3 right - probably 15 cm Kanone.

# 4 - 15 cm schwere Feld=How. or possibly 21 cm Moerser.

But you need a gunner to sort out the details.

If this is useful I will poke thru the rest of them.

Bob Lembke

Rick;

Way off, I am sad to report. It seems that he received 65 Marks, probably marching-out money. Nothing there to say he was in the Reichswehr, unless I missed something. It seems to be the usual amount that men got when pushed out the door in 1918 or 1919. Certainly not a unit designation. Don't feel bad, I have done these for years, still not good. The story of what I thought my father's Pass said the first time I tried is hilarious, but a bit too long to recount now. These things have patterns and when you get to do a number they fall into a pattern.

I have a great artillery Pass, guy had a rich combat history in the war, then shuffled into a Freikorps, and then into the Reichswehr, all in one document.

Bob

Hat beim Bezkdo (possibly abbreviation for underwear - long shot), Rock, Hose, and Stiefel "umge__auscht" am 29.4.19 X? 13.4.20

Bob

God bless our native speakers.

Bob

I believe that it was the Bavarian Kriegslazarett xxxxx Nr. 20, but I am not sure of the word "xxxxx". Note that by comparing the letter from above (a "g" - flying from memory here) with a similar letter in the same small sample, one can see that the letter above does extend into the word "xxxxx". If there is more writing in the same hand elsewhere on the page or in the Pass you may be able to have samples to compare. It is a lot easier to decypher this writing if you have a larger sample; there is a lot of variation in this script (or scripts). A lot of this is written in Suetterlin, Kurrent, and Modern all at the same time.

Bob Lembke

PS: We may want to conspire about my grand-father, who started out as a Prussian heavy artillery NCO, probably in III. Armeekorps. In a few days I am getting an important and quite rare book about the Prussian artillery, only about four copies cataloged in the US, 1510 pages of good stuff. He wrote an article in it.

Rick;

Are you just interested in 1n May 1914 or also other years? The regt is probably on one page. How can I get it to you? I think I sent you my e-mail.

Bob

(Can't erase the below stuff from my PDA.)

Bob, these officers were gleaned from the internet. I do not have any Ranglisten.

I am just starting these regimental histories; based upon what I can easily find. Certainly, there is more info out there; I am just not sure where I should draw the line. At some point in the future, I may start a website representing all regiments of the German Imperial artillery. I just am not sure what I would want each page to look like. At this point, I am just fascinated by whatever I can find...

Rick;

In post # 5 you only identified a few officers of the regiment. Am I missing something, or do you have access to Prussian Ranglisten? The 1914 issue had the entire officer corps of the regiment as of May 6, 1914, their seniority, posts within the regiment, decorations, usw. I have about 30 or so Prussian Ranglisten for many dates from 1879 to the 1926 Ehrenrangliste covering 1914-1918, so let me know if you don't have access to this info. (Or did I just fly to an incorrect conclusion?)

Bob Lembke