New Source on Gallipoli

[bob lembke]

Guys (and Gals);

I have been actively preparing to write a military biography of my father for 13 years, and recently a friend of 65 years has been "beating me on the head and shoulders" to actually start writing. My father fought at Gallipoli in the German volunteer Pionier=Kompagnie, a unit whose activities is barely mentioned, usually a sentence or two in some of the standard German sources, like Kannengeiser and Liman von Sanders. Having started, I was looking thru some old note cards and discovered a 400 page book by a German officer who was a Leutnant in the Pionier=Kompagnie. The book covers a 45 year military career, but still it probably has a good deal of information on the events on Gallipoli, and the difficulties that German soldiers had reaching Turkey (he was smuggled there with false papers identifying him as a bank clerk, my father also told me interesting things about his trip, in civilian clothes.), etc.

Interestingly, this officer, late in the war, joined the Prussian Guards flame-thrower regiment that my father served in for much of the war, and took his training at the time and place where my father was training new flame-thrower soldiers (my father had gotten so shot up at Verdun that we was not considered fit for combat) , so my father and this officer might have met both at Gallipoli and at flame-thrower training at Berlin in 1918.

I do not have the book yet, but at least six libraries in the US do, and my librarian wife will probably have a copy in my hands in a few days. (I do have a book that suggests what this book may contain.) I am hoping that this book will push forward our knowledge about what went on there. Focused on this volunteer company, I studied it for about seven years, and I found enough material to possibly write a single page. Then one of our Pals found and kindly gave me about nine short German cables between Berlin and Istanbul that he found in the archives of the German Foreign Ministry, and that material provided more info than I had found in seven years, reading in about five languages.

When I have received and have digested this book (there seems to be exactly one copy on sale in the world, and so it is a bit pricy, if I wanted to buy it) I will reveal more about this possible valuable source.

I will appeal to the Pals who are students of Gallipoli; most of you are students of the "Allied side of the trenches"; if you have seen anything about German Pioneers at Gallipoli, perhaps a mention of one who was captured, please post details. I have read a bunch of books on the Allied side, but of course not everything. As some of you know, the bulk of the German records on WW I were destroyed in a bombing raid in April 1945.

When I first started reading about Gallipoli, say 30 years ago, generally books by Brits, the material read as if the British and French and ANZACs were fighting men from Mars, or some other aliens. We students of the German side of things have very difficult research problems. Any help appreciated. I think what I finally grind out will be interesting to many students of Gallipoli.

(I have not been active on the Forum for a while. For the last year and a half I have been rebuilding rental apartments, including super new kitchens; I am now finishing my sixth. {If my father fought at Gallipoli and Verdun, I probably should be sitting on a porch, as a nurse in a white uniform spoons soup into my drooling mouth, and I stare vacantly at the golf course, rather than building kitchens. But this is my fate.} )

[Kurt1959]

Hi Bob - good to have you back.

Perhaps I have a new source for you...

I recently received copies of all pages of the "Hauptkrankenbuch des Feldlazaretts Bigalli" (the main book of all records of the field lazaret of Bigalli). This was the Main German lazaret and I guess that all German casualties went through it. However, this book starts in February 1916 but I am trying to get the first book which must have started mid 1915. But I already found some German Engineers in it and will try to put a namelist together. It is a bit difficult because even I cannot read the old German "Süterlin" language well and always have to ask my mother.

On the picture you can see the first page and also Nr. 33 somebody from the Pionier Kdo. As you know - they had severe losses - mainly by diseases.

here the picture

sorry - the book started in July 1916

[bob lembke]

Greetings - "el-Shahin"!

Wonderful - hope you can find Book I. I have always felt that medical records were an interesting research tool, but I never pursued it. (My father managed to get wounded a few times in France - Verdun and Reims, so I might find something that way.)And I believe that the German WW I medical records were stored somewhere else and escaped the destruction. There is an American named Whitehead who is on the Forum and who has done a lot of work with German casualty data.

When I found my family letters I taught myself to read German, but also Suetterlin and Kurrent, so I could read them. I just heard that a cousin of mine just destroyed a 150 year old family archive as he could not read Suetterlin. I was almost physically sick.

When I get that book I mentioned I will be sure to share what it contains with you. We have several memoires from high officers (e.g. Liman von Sanders) but little from front-line officers. You must also know of the book by Doenitz about Turkey, where he discusses the naval MG detachments. I have the book. (He was a young officer on the Breslau.) He himself did not go to the Gallipoli front, but wrote about that duty, and how the naval officers competed to be able to go.

[Kurt1959]

Hi Bob,

I just returned from the archive in Berlin and I must say that I never saw such a thing before. Kilometers of original books of almost all German field hospitals from WWI. Endless rows of shelfs and all of this just maintained by two men. I found a least 200 names of the Pionierkompanie in Gallipoli - must of them suffered from Dysanterie - most of the others had contact with the wrong women...;-)) However - I did not find any Lembke around them. So, he was lucky and never had to visit the doctor. I will send you the complete list once I have compiled all books and names - a lot of work because - as you said - the writing is almost impossible to read for me.

cu