Sturmbataillon and Flammenwerfer

[Chip]

Hello,

Can anyone add some information about Major d. Lw. u. Rgtsf?hrer Pistorius? Which regiment was he commander of? We know it was 26.Landwehr Division, so it had to be the 119.LIR, 123.LIR or 124.LIR. I wonder why the storm battalion's commander did not sign the EKII document? Perhaps it was because Sturmbatl.16 was also temporarily assigned to the 26.Ldwr.Division and had moved on?

Chip

[bob lembke]

Bob,

The document for Johanes Gruben is not mine. I had just found it in an old thread for Chris.

I do have an EKII document from Gardepionier Jakob Schl?sser of the 6.Kp. G=R=P=R. The document is dated 22.11.1917 and was issued by Sturmbatl. 16 of the 26.Landwehr Division and signed by a Major d. Lw. u. Rgtsf?hrer Pistorius. The division's poor combat record makes one wonder what pioneer Schl?sser was doing there. The division remained in a quiet sector throughout the entire war and was rated one of the worst because of it. Perhaps Schl?sser was there to try to get them interested in doing something. It was about the time the division captured its last prisoner of the war in 1917!

Chip

Chip;

Sorry; somehow I missed this interesting post. I have been juggling about four threads on a couple of fora, while attempting to have a bit of a life. I poked thru my roster for G=R=P=R, not just thru the Pioniere, but up the food chain up to Feldwebel. No hit. Regrettably, most of the men in my roster got there by getting killed (the death list of the G=R=P=R is, to my mind, extraordinarily accurate, for several reasons, not the least of which was the nature of the person that kept it up.) So Schloesser survived the war.

Sounds like this was not the Storm Battalion Nr. 16, if it belonged to the 26. Landwehr Division. What is a Landwehr division doing owning a storm battalion, especially one that never seemed to fight? Some line units formed semi-permament storm units from their own resources, but I have never heard of one bigger than a company. The true storm battalions were "owned" by armies, one to an army.

Or, perhaps this was the Sturm=Bataillon Nr. 16? Was the 26. Landwehr Division in the zone of the 16th Army at the time of the award? Was the date of Nov. 22, 1917 the date of the awarding of the EK II, or the date of the signing of the award? In one of the EK documents recently posted there was 5-6 months between the two dates. (My suspicion is that one was issued fairly promptly, and when the really neat forms became available a second one was written out as eye candy.)

If so, why did the Landwehr division issue the EK II, and neither the G=R=P=R or the S=B 16?

So many questions, so little time! The exact wording of the document may shed some light. Are there two dates? The award date was probably just after the incident triggering the award; most of the FW attacks in my time-line include the company of the attacking FW troops.

Bob Lembke

[bob lembke]

Re: Pistorius, one could poke about old Ranglisten and probably find him, due to a fairly odd name, but that certainly would not tell you what unit he commanded in the war. He would not have been put in the 1926 Ehrenrangliste 1914-1918, as he became a Landwehr officer, but I will peek anyway.

Bob Lembke

[Glenn J]

Chip, Bob,

I think the most likely candidate is one former Prussian Hauptman d.L. Pistorius of Landwehrbezirk I Breslau. Herr Pistorius was originally a regular Pioneer Officer commissioned on 14.10.80 into the Magdeburgisches Pionier-Bataillon Nr. 4. By 1891 he was serving as a Premier-Lieutenant in Pionier-Bataillon Nr. 16 and went into reserve status in 1891/92 in the same battalion. Transfered to Landwehr status in 1898/99 he retired from the Landwehr on 19 January 1904. Promoted to Major d.L. a.D. sometime after October 1916.

Second-Lieutenant: 14.10.80

Premier-Lieutenant: 19.11.89

Hauptmann: 16.6.94 Aa

Regards

Glenn

[Chris Boonzaier]

Or, perhaps this was the Sturm=Bataillon Nr. 16? Was the 26. Landwehr Division in the zone of the 16th Army at the time of the award? Was the date of Nov. 22, 1917 the date of the awarding of the EK II, or the date of the signing of the award? In one of the EK documents recently posted there was 5-6 months between the two dates. (My suspicion is that one was issued fairly promptly, and when the really neat forms became available a second one was written out as eye candy.)

If so, why did the Landwehr division issue the EK II, and neither the G=R=P=R or the S=B 16?

Hi,

a few notes...

There was no 16th Armee.

The SB 16 was attached to Armee Abteilung B, formerly Armee Abteilung Gaede.

26th Landwehr spent the war in their sector.

The GRPR or the SB16 COULD not award the EK, the divisional or Korps commander they were under was the level that could award the EK.

It is quite simply a case of the 26th LW div awarding an EK to a sub unit attached to them for an action.... is seen in many, many cases.

Nice find Chip !!!

[Chris Boonzaier]

most of the FW attacks in my time-line include the company of the attacking FW troops.

Bob Lembke

Do you have any attacks for the 10th of November?

[bob lembke]

Chris;

Nothing on Nov. 10, 1917, as far as I know. However, if an attack was so unimportant that Major Dr. Reddemann was not inspired to mention it in his several writings, and no flame troopers died, I might not have a record of it. The 6th Company does not seem to have been active at this time. On Nov. 12, 1917 the 3rd and 7th Companies conducted a major FW attack in Russia with 64 FW. later in the month there were one or more FW attacks on Mt. Tomba in Italy. Are we speaking of the 6th Company?

Incidentally, about late 1915 early 1916 the numbering of the flame companies started at 9 Coy, 10 Coy, etc., and then shifted to 1 Coy, 2 Coy, etc. Early in 1916 the then flame battalion had nine field/flame companies, a number that Reddemann admitted was inconvenient.

Bob Lembke

[Chris Boonzaier]

Hi,

I have to look it up this week sometime, but it seems to have been a 200 man raid, Landwegr Infantry, members of SB16, Lots of MW and 8 FW.

Will look it up soon.

Absolutely nothing unusual about the doc.

Teh Division approved the award. the SB16 had been acting under the command of the Landwehr Inf Regt 124... every thing is 100% Kosher in Chips description.

best

Chris

[bob lembke]

Wrote a long reply, wonderfully informative, as usual, and it disappeared into a cyber-black hole instead of posting. Rats! Will try again in a while.

Bob Lembke

[Chip]

Chris,

Thanks for helping clear that up. I did not think that anything was wrong with the document. Just not sure about the protocol. So there was actually a known raid during this time period?! It would be great to find out more about it. How did you find which regiment that Pistorius was commander of?

Perhaps the raid was the one when they captured their last prisoner of the war.

By the way, the document has the unit ink stamp of the Garde=Reserve=Pionier=Rgt..

Chip

Edited July 9, 2007 by Chip

[Chris Boonzaier]

Hi,

According to him the FW Zug for Rohr came from the Flammenwerfer Regiment Pionier Bataillon 36... which is obviously wrong, but potentially has an understandable error... I think the Pionier Bataillon 36 is the answer.

OK,

I was able to confirm this (more or less) today.

Rohr ersatz came from ERSTAZ Pionier Battailon 35 (and I assume 36).

Anyone have more info on this?

[Dave Danner]

OK,

I was able to confirm this (more or less) today.

Rohr ersatz came from ERSTAZ Pionier Battailon 35 (and I assume 36).

Anyone have more info on this?

This is what I have for Pionier-Ersatz:

Pionier-Ersatz?Kompanien (Die Zugeh?rigkeit zu einem Korps/ Bezirk ist diesmal in r?mischen Zahlen angegeben! Von diesen Kompanien wurden neun zu Pi.Kp. mit laufender Nummer. Eine wurde 4./Pi. 35 (Gas)):

• im Jahr 1914 aufgestellt: 1./G., 1.u.3./ 1., 1./2., 2./3., 1./4., 1./5., 2./6., 1./9., 1./10., 3./11., 1./12., 1.u.3./14., 1./16., 2.u.3./18., 1./21., 1./22., 1.u.2./23., 1.-3./24., 3./26., 2./b.1., 1./b.3.
• im Jahr 1915 aufgestellt: 1./7., 4./9., 1./11., 1./20., 2./26.
• im Jahr 1917 aufgestellt: 3.-5./13.

For flame and gas I have baked beans.. no wait, this:

Gastruppen:

• am 01.Mai 1915 aufgestellt: Pi.Rgt.35 und 36 zu je zwei Btl und MW-Kp.(Diese beiden Minenwerfer-Kp. wurden am 01.09.1917 aufgel?st)
• am 01.September 1917 aufgestellt: Pi.Btl. 35-38 mit je einer MW-Abt. (Diese entstanden durch Aufteilung der Pi.Rgt 35 und 36 und waren nichts anderes als deren ehemaliges I., beziehungsweise II.Bataillon)
• am 22.September 1917 aufgestellt. Gaswerfer Kp. 1
• am 01.Februar 1918 aufgestellt: Pi.Btl. 39.
• am 22.Juni 1918 aufgestellt: Pi.btl. 94-96.

Flammenwerfer:

• am 20.April 1916 aufgestellt: G.Res.Pi.Rgt. mit Stab, I.und II.Btl mit den Kp. 1-10.(waren vorher III. und IV.Btl. des G.Pi.Btl.)
• am 26.September 1916 aufgestellt: 11.und 12.Kp. des G.Res.Pi.Rgt.

Maybe this is stuff you all already know, though.

[bob lembke]

Hi, Chris and Chip;

My head is spinning a bit here on a couple of matters. You both have been posting details about this very interesting award document, about a Flamm=Pionier working with S=B Nr. 16. I guess that one of you has the original and one a copy. We all are talking about the same document?

I guess that the raid (200 men, some S=B 16, MW, 8 FW) occurred on Nov. 10, 1917, and someone involved recommended the recepient for the EK II, it had to be approved at the regimental or divisional level (I don't know these regulations at all), and at some stage the document was sent to G=R=P=R for stamping, and giving it out, along with the medal itself and the usual hearty handshake. The document was filled out and dated Nov. 22, 1917. OK?

8 FW is a typical number of FW used by the typical G=R=P=R Flamm=Zug in a combat situation. I think later in the war each flame company had one Zug modified for loan to storm battalions, with 2 more FW and perhaps less MGs. Sometimes a company was sent out, and the attack might have 32 FW. In the biggest FW attack, three companies were sent to Russia, and 130 light FW and 24 heavy ones were employed in the storm.

Is the G=R=P=R stamp at the company, battalion, or regimental level? Is there also a G=R=P=R signature, as well as Pistorius?

These details are interesting, and offer clues to how these units were formed and operated.

If someone gives me some idea where this raid occurred, I can poke about and see what I have. I only have a few German regimental histories; having been tipped off about the on-line French regimental histories, I have read about 70 in the last three weeks, I have (with a few duplicates) about 110 Reichsarchiv histories, and am building a variety of other organized sets of data, other time-lines, spreadsheets, etc. But I don't have anything at hand to readily tell me where 26. Landwehr Division was on Nov. 10, 1917. Give me a lead and I will sniff about. Often I also have testimony from the French or Brits who faced these attacks.

Bob Lembke

[bob lembke]

With this additional confirmation I will enter Schloesser in my G=R=P=R roster (he is not in there now, at any rank from Feldwebel on down, so he survived the war, presumably), enter the engagement in my baby time-line for S=B 16, and the raid in my FW time-line.

Bob

[Chip]

Bob,

Unfortunately, the ink stamp on the document is not completely legible. You can easily read "Garde Reserve Pionier Regiment", but there may have been more information on the bottom of the stamping. There are no other signatures on the document, but I did notice that what looks like the word "stelle" is inked in below where it says Regimentsf?hrer, so perhaps he was signing as a temporary commander. I will post the document later this week.

Chip

[bob lembke]

Bob,

Unfortunately, the ink stamp on the document is not completely legible. You can easily read "Garde Reserve Pionier Regiment", but there may have been more information on the bottom of the stamping. There are no other signatures on the document, but I did notice that what looks like the word "stelle" is inked in below where it says Regimentsf?hrer, so perhaps he was signing as a temporary commander. I will post the document later this week.

Chip

The posting would be great. I will be able to compare the G=R=P=R stamp to a number of examples that I have (I believe that I counted 11 transfers from one unit to another by my father during the war; most were into, out of, or berween different formations of G=R=P=R, so I have a good number of examples; and in addition the copy of another GRPR Pass that I happily have), and this may enable us to "read" parts of the stamp that are not visible. We may find that only the regimental stamp was round, and the company Feldwebel used a square stamp to stamp a company action. Possibly each Feldwebel also had a regimental stamp. The GRPR battalions do not seem to have had a lot of functions, as far as I can tell. I am a bit tentative here; I have not looked at my GRPR Paesse in a year or two.

I blush to admit that I have never posted an image, mostly because I never got up to speed on digital photography, Photo-shop-type manipulation, etc. I just finally got a digital camera, so I hope to get into this. I have been eagerly hoping that the document would be posted, but felt churlish to ask.

Bob Lembke

[Chris Boonzaier]

Re: Pistorius, one could poke about old Ranglisten and probably find him, due to a fairly odd name, but that certainly would not tell you what unit he commanded in the war. He would not have been put in the 1926 Ehrenrangliste 1914-1918, as he became a Landwehr officer, but I will peek anyway.

Bob Lembke

At the time Pistorius was regiments Fuehrer of the FW Regiment.

I finally found this thread again and can add the relevant details....

http://www.kaiserscross.com/40029/78001.html

Write up above....

[bob lembke]

Chris;

Why Pistorius is called the regimental commander is a mystery to me. Note that he is not identified as the "acting regimental leader". If he was regimental CO while Reddemann was on an extended leave you would think that he would identify himself as "acting" (stellvertreiter) CO. I have some info on him. I understand that Reddemann was the CO from late 1914 (Detachment Reddemann) right through to the end of the war. But I also get the impression that Reddemann sometimes did not mention things that annoyed him in his writings.

Bob Lembke

[Chris Boonzaier]

Hi Bob,

Regimentsf?hrer signals that he is not the commander of the regiment, that would be Regimentskommandeur.

Best

Chris

p.s. As the raid mentioned above can hardly be called small, and Reddemann does not mention it... it seems he did skip over a number of things, I have never had a full trust in his book.

[speedytop]

Hi,

it is a great differnce between a Regimentskommandeur and a Regimentsf?hrer. That is the same for e.g. a battalion or a company.

The Regimentsf?hrer is only for a short time leading the regiment (temporaray commander), when the Regimentskommandeur is absent (e.g. on leave or in a training course).

Normally you can find the signature of a second-in-command (for the document in the link above to kaiserscross) like this:

"Der Regimentskommandeur

i.V.

signature (Pistorius)

i.V. (in Vetretung) = as representative of (acting for)

Uwe

[Thomas W]

As the raid mentioned above can hardly be called small, and Reddemann does not mention it... it seems he did skip over a number of things, I have never had a full trust in his book.

Yup, he left out a few important details in his book. Like the existence of the IV. Garde-Pionier-Bataillon, for example, and the relationship of his regiment with Sturmbataillon Nr. 5 (Rohr).

I was only recently able to confirm that the flamethrower pioneers of Sturmbataillon Nr. 5 (Rohr) came directly from the Ersatz-Kompagnie of the III. Garde-Pionier-Bataillon and later the II. Garde-Pionier-Ersatz-Bataillon. After they served with Rohr's unit, they transferred into other units, such as the Garde-Reserve-Pionier-Regiment. They went to from Rohr's unit to Reddemann's, but not the other way around.

(In the beginning some may also have come from Pionier-Ersatz-Bataillon Nr. 36, which supplied replacements for the gas regiments. But by early 1916 they were coming from the Ersatz-Kompagnie of the III. Garde-Pionier-Bataillon.)

Rohr's flametnhrower pioneers also wore the death's head sleeve badge directly below the left elbow to distinguish them from Reddemann's pioneers. I have two photos that show a guy as a member of the flamethrower platoon of Sturmbataillon Nr. 14. In one, taken on May 19, 1918, he wears his sleeve badge under his left elbow, since he just transferred out of Rohr's unit. In the other photo, taken on August 9, 1918, he's moved his death's head badge down onto the cuff of his Bluse. I haven't been able to find a written order that differentiates the sleeve badges of Rohr and Reddemann's men, but there's no doubt that Rohr's men wore their badge below the elbow instead of on or above the cuff.

Although Reddemann never mentions Rohr at all, it's clear that Rohr had a very exalted place in the German army heirarchy. Only a few months ago I discovered that Rohr's flamethrower pioneers wore Garde-Pionier uniforms, but with a red "5" on the shoulder straps, like the rest of the men in the battalion. I found a crystal-clear photo, which I'm including in my upcoming flamethrower book.

Reddemann's book is a vital primary source. Even so, it's very flawed. In his book he says that three companies of flamethrower pioneers attacked the Russians at Skrobova on November 9, 1916, but in Das Ehrenbuch der Deutschen Pioniere he says it was an entire battalion. He also screws up the number of small flamethrowers used. He says in Das Ehrenbuch it was 130 Kleif, but if you add up the number of flamethrower shock troops (12 x 12 = 144), plus the number of flame shock troops in reserve (4 x 12 = 48), plus the number of Kleif squads put in the interval between the attacking flame shock troops and the infantry shock troops (2 x 12 = 24), you get a total of 216 Kleif, the number of weapons that armed an entire battalion.

I think he was just sloppy. He was a star and knew it, so he didn't take the time to be careful in his memoirs, and he didn't like to share the spotlight with anybody, like Rohr.

[Chip]

Just a small footnote to the earlier discussion regarding the source of the pioneers for the Rohr Sturm Batl. I have the Milit?rpa? of a member of the 4.Komp. and he came to the SB5 through the Ersatz Bataillon of Pionier Batl.Nr.35 (Wahn).

Chip

[Thomas W]

Chip:

The first two assault companies of Sturmabteilung/Sturmbataillon Rohr were formed from men of Pionier-Ersatz-Bataillon Nr. 7; the remaining assault companies and the replacements for all came from Pionier-Ersatz-Bataillon Nr. 35, which also provided replacements for one of the poison-gas regiments, No. 35.

Since we're all Rohr all the time, I just bought a photo of a member of the howitzer battery of Sturmbataillon Nr. 5 (Rohr), name and date unknown. He wears red shoulder straps with a yellow exploding shell and a "5," and he has a camouflaged helmet.

[Chip]

Thomas,

Super photo. My Konvolut consists of the Milit?rpa?, EKII and EKI documents, and twelve photos, which range over the entire war career of Unteroffizier Adolf Breuer.

Chip

[Thomas W]

Excellent. Maybe you might post some of the photos at some point?