Turkey Help with Campaign/Battle Bars

[mario]

I was fortunate enough to come across this ribbon bar, with two Austrian ribbons and the TWM ribbon. It came with two Turkish campaign bars. Would someone help me with to each battles they refer?

[mario]

[mario]

[Ed_Haynes]

The one in post #2, I don't think I have ever seen before. Let me look. The Germans and Austrians made a lot of unofficial ones.

The one in post #3 is for Iraq.

Edited May 16, 2007 by Ed_Haynes

[Ulsterman]

Bloody eck that is a nice bar. Wait til RR sees that!!!

[Ed_Haynes]

The more I look at this -- and I nearly gave mysely an injury dragging my copy of Tarihi's book down off the top shelf -- the more I think the red bar (on the Austrian medal, post #2) is merely a rough rendering of T?rkei into semi-Ottoman script. Something made in Austria to doll up the ribbon bar?

A lovely bar!

[Guest Rick Research]

The photo is a German officer, though I cannot make out his unit being unable to see his shoulder boards.

What does the BACK of the ribbon bar look like?

[mario]

Thank you all very much for helping me with this riddle. Ed, it is appreciated you are searching your books for that.

Yes it is confusing to me, and I have to agree I can?t find much information over the internet and wish I had a library nearby.

Yes he was a German Officer and one of his documents have a stamp from the KRAFTFAHRTRUPPEN Nr. 771.

Why he would have a ribbon bar with Austrian ribbons, Turkish bars and the TWM ribbon?

I will make a few additional pictures.

All, your help is very appreciated indeed.

[saschaw]

Why he would have a ribbon bar with Austrian ribbons, Turkish bars and the TWM ribbon?

He had at least one more German award, an Iron Cross 2nd class, as he wears the EK I on the photo. So I guess - if the picture and bar belong together - this is a IInd row bar ...

[Josef Rietveld]

I don't believe picture and bar belong together.

the ribbon ist the standard austrian kriegsband used for bravery medals, military merit crosses, military merit medals and merit crosses.

the picture shows an german officer. he could only get the miltary merit cross that would be one ribbon. the only possibility i see is that he was ensign (f?hnrich) before and received an austrian bravery medal (they were only given to soldiers, nco's and ensigns). there was the possibility of german officers receiving bravery medals for officers (issued 1917) but al l bravery medal awards i have seen so far for german officers were given post 1918. normally there should be the cypher K on the ribbon aswell. in this case maybe there wasn't enough space left.

haynau

[mario]

Additional material. EK1 document, in feld, 30/10/1918

[mario]

[mario]

[Guest Rick Research]

This is an EXCEPTIONALLY nice find. The EK1 was given for absolutely horrifying action during the complete rout when the Palestine and Trans-Jordan fronts collapsed in September-October 1918. Many tiny German units simply vanished, lost--literally--to the last man.

The EK1 document was signed by later Oberstleutnant aD Wilhelm "Malbrandt," who had gotten hot climate experience during the Herero-Hottentot War of 1904-06. He was born in 1875.

"Staff Officer Motor Transport Unit 771" (stamp) was retitled "Regimentskommandeur der Kraftfahrtruppen," and was actually the main headquarters unit for German motor transport in the Turkish Empire. It was located in Nazareth, until the collapse. Malbrandt was the commander of all German motor transport units in the Ottoman Empire.

Army Group "F" was the major German combat force in Palestine. Despite the grand title, all forces combined barely made up a weak 1918 brigade.

This mentions that Leutnant der Reserve Paul Wilhelms was "Leader, Instruction Command of Imperial Ottoman Motor Transport Column 19." The official strength of German "instruction personnel" was 1 officer and 25 men. These were actually German units with the polite fiction that they were Turkish formations. All of the units mentioned on the award document operated in the zone of operations of the 6th Turkish Army.

So Wilhelms was the only officer in a unit which had, by that time, probably only 12 or 15 men.

And that is about typical for the non-infantry and non-artillery support units of the German Near East forces in 1918.

[mario]

I would like to thank you again for helping and sharing all this amazing expertise and knowledge on this subject. I still have to learn a lot about the WWI German-Turkish campaign. If you could give me some leads as to where I can look for additional study sources it would be greatly appreciated.

This is a fairly large lot, I will be taking more pictures over the weekend and will be a pleasure to share them with you.

[Guest Rick Research]

There are a number of articles on the German motor transport units during the 1918 collapse in the 1930s magazines of the Bund der Asienk?mpfer, the "Orient Rundschau." My copies are bound, and since they are on cheap brown newpaper paper, cannot be scanned or the volumes would fall apart.s

I've looked through and have not yet found a reference to Wilhelms by name, and none to his "Turkish" command, which may have been away from any other German units. The accounts focus on individual German M.T. units, without mention of the "771st," which was a headquarters only. (They seem to have gotten away.)

The general picture was that the front collapsed, and the Arab allies of the British, across the Jordan, and the British Commonwealth forces, up from Palestine, simply overwhelmed ther German and Turkish forces... overrunning them. While those rolled over by Commonwealth forces were able to surrender, the Arabs butchered anyone who fell into their hands, leaving no survivors to ever account for where SQUAD or PLATOON sized units were massacred, let alone nurses and medical staff at hospitals whose wounded could not be gotten away in time.

There was never any detailed German "Official History" of this end of the war period-- because there were simply so many units about which nothing could ever be discovered. The author of the motor transport articles earned an official rebuke for publicizing "classified" information that had not been cleared for publication!

I doubt there was ever anything else on these tiny units.

What German accounts I have seen focus on the little individual unit memoirs of survivors, or of the "Yilderim" forces of "Army Group "F" " which were able to hold together-- and went into captivity as units in Egypt.

British accounts never bother mentioning unit designations for German stragglers overtaken on the roads. From the Arab side.... nothing.

[Ed_Haynes]

The story that Rick tells is pretty much what is said from the other (victorious) side. I have looked at a number of the war diaries from this theatre, and I have gotten the sense that they were simply moving too fast (and having too much fun winning -- for a change) to care very much about who the opposition was (or used to be). The sense that things fell apart on the Ottoman-German side is very much the tone of the British and Indian war diaries.

The Arabs, of course, were far more honest about how they dealt with the eshik Turk ("donkey Turks") and their friends. A very "gentlemanly" war, but by very different rules. Was was, after all, then as now, a sport where you'd better expect to get your القضيب cut off.

Edited May 18, 2007 by Ed_Haynes

[Ed_Haynes]

An afterthought:

All this being the case, it is a bit strange that he got the "Iraq" clasp to the HM rather than the "Canal" clasp. I guess it is a matter of where he was when, or how the Ottomans drew their lines of qualification for the clasps (that were, in any event, post-war). But service in Palestine as "Iraq"???

What we really do NOT know, is the Ottoman side of the war. I have friends who are trying, though the language skills and patience with chaotic Ottoman archives required are stupendous.

[Josef Rietveld]

@Mario,

the 'badge' witrh the cypher K shown in #13 belongs to an Austrian-Hungarian Bravery medal for Officers. It looks like a golden one. as illustration a picture of a bar from the WAF (dave danner)

haynau

Edited May 18, 2007 by haynau

[ricky1972]

This is a fairly large lot, I will be taking more pictures over the weekend and will be a pleasure to share them with you.

Gents,

Fasten your seatbelts ?cos this lot is amazing

Cheers,

Ricky

[Guest Rick Research]

Without having Wilhelms' "Auszug aus der Kriegsrangliste," no way of telling WHERE he served. "Canal" was for 1915 and 1916 and there were no motor transport units involved. My Bavarian flak platoon mechanic's unit went along as man-and-camel-hauled direct fire artillery. Things were always "loose" at the most distant end of the supply chain.

While that action was... episodic (couple of trans-Canal raids), I don't know as there ever were any cutoff dates on any of the other fronts, other than at the Dardanelles, where fighting also had a beginning and end during the war. Because Wilhelms was actually staffing what was nominally a "Turkish" platoon, he may have been off with an as yet unknowable Turkish division on the "Lawrence of Arabia" sector. I can't place such microscopic Ottoman units.

The German accounts in the BdAK magazines are uniformly of horror and panic, of unexpected onslaughts that were either beaten off, or resulted in units being wiped out. Right up until the Nazis shut down such "uncoordinated" veterans groups in 1938, there was a section in every issue looking for anyone with knowledge of the missing in action.

There SHOULD be full citations for any Austro-Hungarian awards he got at the War Archive in Vienna. The citations are called "Belohnungsantr?ge." But just his name and rank is probably not enough, without place and date of birth.

[Ed_Haynes]

The "Iraq" clasp would suggest he was, obviously. in Iraq, though not in the Kut operations (for which there is a separate clasp). What clasp (if any) covered operations in Palestine is unclear. Likewise, there seems to have been no clasp for the Caucasus front, some of the nastiest operations the Ottomans faced.

[mario]

I will be adding a few more things. Thank you very much so far. It has been a pleasure to be supported by such knowing and generous people. I hope to help a little more with this.

[mario]

[mario]