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Remembered Today:

Saxon Artilleryman


cwbuff

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I want to colorize the photo below. It is of a Saxon Artilleryman Unteroffizier. It was taken late in the Great War or shortly thereafter. I'm not sure what the colors should be. I assume the material is Feldgrau. I'm hoping that someone can direct me to a color picture or two. Thanks.

post-71339-0-04928600-1456777160_thumb.j

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All due respect, but on what basis have you identified him as such?

Trajan

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He is my wife's grandfather. He served in Feldartillerie Regiment Nr. 64. I would like a colorized picture for the family history that I am working on. I'd like to get the colors correct.

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Peaked cap - feldgrau with black band, red piping in this configuration, white / green / white Saxon cockade

Jacket - feldgrau (actual shade may vary as this is a late-war Feldbluse of shoddy quality), dark green collar with subdued NCO braid, red shoulderstraps with yellow bomb and '64'

Riding breeches - feldgrau with red stripe on the outer seam

Puttees - anyone's guess; probably a paler grey or other drab shade

Original Feldbluse in colour: http://www.kaisersbunker.com/feldgrau/tunics/fgt05.htm

Shoulderstraps for the Feldbluse; field artillery example is second from left in the top row: http://www.kaisersbunker.com/gtp/gtp16.htm

Note that the Saxon Bluse was essentially identical to the Prussian version, with no remaining state distinctions beyond the shoulderstraps.

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Thanks for the information. What color is the NCO braid?

PS: I have your book Fighting the Kaiser's War: The Saxons in Flanders 1914-1918

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I'm glad to hear that you have the book, and hope that you enjoyed it. Unfortunately my co-author does not have regular and uninterrupted access to his library at the moment due to family worries, but nevertheless please note that we do have a lot of source material from the Saxon units which interest you and would be glad to answer any queries you may have. We have actually visited the barracks of FAR 64 in Pirna together! Do you have any other photos or written material from your wife's family during WW1?

The subdued version of the NCO braid (Unteroffiziersborte) looks like this in close-up. NB: this is repro material.

post-24563-0-79826300-1457306917_thumb.j

Thanks for the information. What color is the NCO braid?

PS: I have your book Fighting the Kaiser's War: The Saxons in Flanders 1914-1918

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We have some pictures, artifacts, some notes and stories that have been passed down. The artilleryman pictured was the family historian. The father of the artilleryman pictured was in GRR 100 and was KIA at Pilckem in July 1917. He was initially buried in Westroozebeke. Later his remains were reinterred at Langemark. We were the first family to visit his grave back in 2002. We returned in 2014 on a Western front trip. I have translated both regimental histories (FAR64 and GRR100) into English since the family has been in the US since the 1950s. I have been working on supplementing each chapter with information to make touring the areas where they fought (and died) more meaningful. These are intended only for family use. We have visited some of the spots. My wife's grandfather told us that the last time he saw his father alive was when they passed each other on the road as one unit was moving into position and the other was moving out. I'm hope that someday my research will lead me to this location.

I must say that reading and translating these first hand accounts gives one a very different view of the Great War. It is fascinating to read circa 1920 accounts of using aircraft in 1914 to direct artillery fire on targets. I also found it interesting how different the writing perspective is between the FAR64 history edited by a General and the GRR 100 history edited by a Leutnant of a Machine Gun Company.

We have some information of a direct decedent who served in the XII Corps in the Franco-Prussian War at Sedan. There is a long family history in Saxony rooted in the Zittau, Reichenau and Markersdorf area.

The brother of the artilleryman pictured died of disease "while the mother the still morning the loss of her husband" KIA in Flanders. Since he was of military age, we think he may have been a victim of the influenza pandemic, but we have found no military records of him.

PS: Based on some of his markings in his FAR64 regimental history, we believe that he probably won his Iron Cross in the Spring 1918 offensive in Flanders as an NCO in the 8th Battery.

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If you search "German Bluse Images" you should find a thread with several real examples shown including my late war shoddy infantry one which is also to a Saxon Regt. The Bluse apart from shoulder straps was the same. May help?

TT

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If you search "German Bluse Images" you should find a thread with several real examples shown including my late war shoddy infantry one which is also to a Saxon Regt. The Bluse apart from shoulder straps was the same. May help?

TT

Thanks - I will have to study that posting a bit!

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Thanks for sharing, this is most interesting and adds more of the human detail which has always been at the core of our work (this is where Jürgen excels - I'm better on the hard 'nuts and bolts' of research). As it happens one of the German readers who has contacted us since the book appeared had a relative who died fighting with IR 392 in the same fighting.

Re. the meeting on the road between (elements of?) GRR 100 and FAR 64, this must have taken place while FAR 64 was operating independently - lacking my own copy of the regimental history I'm not sure where they were before that. Presumably they were attached as corps / army artillery to Gruppe Ypern? My notes tell me that the regiment rejoined 32.ID in place of FAR 28 on 28th July, as FAR 28’s stock of horses had been badly depleted. In the first days of August FAR 64 was then deployed piecemeal with the forward divisions of Gruppe Wytschaete (I. / FAR 64 with 12.ID, II. / FAR 64 with 207.ID, III. / FAR 64 with 18.RD).

The difference in perspective between the two regimental histories is not just a matter of rank, but also of membership / non-membership of the pre-war active officers' corps and of arm of service. Artillery officers were/are the intellectuals of the army. ;)

If the deceased brother does not appear in any of the published Saxon Verlustlisten (which do include immobile training formations within Germany; published regimental histories however vary widely in including or excluding the losses of their home-based Ersatztruppenteile in their death lists) then it is possible that he was not in the army at all for whatever reason.

I don't have much in the way of late-war photos of FAR 64 in the field, but here is an interesting exception. This is believed to be part of the regimental baggage (Grosse Bagage) circa March 1917:

post-24563-0-20920900-1457883371_thumb.j

We have some pictures, artifacts, some notes and stories that have been passed down. The artilleryman pictured was the family historian. The father of the artilleryman pictured was in GRR 100 and was KIA at Pilckem in July 1917. He was initially buried in Westroozebeke. Later his remains were reinterred at Langemark. We were the first family to visit his grave back in 2002. We returned in 2014 on a Western front trip. I have translated both regimental histories (FAR64 and GRR100) into English since the family has been in the US since the 1950s. I have been working on supplementing each chapter with information to make touring the areas where they fought (and died) more meaningful. These are intended only for family use. We have visited some of the spots. My wife's grandfather told us that the last time he saw his father alive was when they passed each other on the road as one unit was moving into position and the other was moving out. I'm hope that someday my research will lead me to this location.

I must say that reading and translating these first hand accounts gives one a very different view of the Great War. It is fascinating to read circa 1920 accounts of using aircraft in 1914 to direct artillery fire on targets. I also found it interesting how different the writing perspective is between the FAR64 history edited by a General and the GRR 100 history edited by a Leutnant of a Machine Gun Company.

We have some information of a direct decedent who served in the XII Corps in the Franco-Prussian War at Sedan. There is a long family history in Saxony rooted in the Zittau, Reichenau and Markersdorf area.

The brother of the artilleryman pictured died of disease "while the mother the still morning the loss of her husband" KIA in Flanders. Since he was of military age, we think he may have been a victim of the influenza pandemic, but we have found no military records of him.

PS: Based on some of his markings in his FAR64 regimental history, we believe that he probably won his Iron Cross in the Spring 1918 offensive in Flanders as an NCO in the 8th Battery.

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Thanks for sharing, this is most interesting and adds more of the human detail which has always been at the core of our work (this is where Jürgen excels - I'm better on the hard 'nuts and bolts' of research). As it happens one of the German readers who has contacted us since the book appeared had a relative who died fighting with IR 392 in the same fighting.

Re. the meeting on the road between (elements of?) GRR 100 and FAR 64, this must have taken place while FAR 64 was operating independently - lacking my own copy of the regimental history I'm not sure where they were before that. Presumably they were attached as corps / army artillery to Gruppe Ypern? My notes tell me that the regiment rejoined 32.ID in place of FAR 28 on 28th July, as FAR 28’s stock of horses had been badly depleted. In the first days of August FAR 64 was then deployed piecemeal with the forward divisions of Gruppe Wytschaete (I. / FAR 64 with 12.ID, II. / FAR 64 with 207.ID, III. / FAR 64 with 18.RD).

The difference in perspective between the two regimental histories is not just a matter of rank, but also of membership / non-membership of the pre-war active officers' corps and of arm of service. Artillery officers were/are the intellectuals of the army. ;)

If the deceased brother does not appear in any of the published Saxon Verlustlisten (which do include immobile training formations within Germany; published regimental histories however vary widely in including or excluding the losses of their home-based Ersatztruppenteile in their death lists) then it is possible that he was not in the army at all for whatever reason.

I don't have much in the way of late-war photos of FAR 64 in the field, but here is an interesting exception. This is believed to be part of the regimental baggage (Grosse Bagage) circa March 1917:

attachicon.gifFAR64_Bagage_Mar1917.jpg

I am not aware of the Saxon Verlustlisten. Regarding the meeting on the road, The two sequential chapters from the FAR64 regimental history are:

Deployment in the Double Battle of Aisne-Champagne and on the Aisne: 19 April to 27 June 1917, and

First Action in the Flanders Defensive Battle: 4 August 1917 to 8 January 1918.

The translation describing the activity at the end of the chapter on the Aisne is:

On 18 June the III Abteilung also arrived. They came in on the left adjacent sector of the 243rd Infantry Division, now occupied by the 52nd Reserve Division and in the past 1 ½ years had been occupied by the 32nd Infantry Division. The batteries of the III Abteilung replaced the batteries of Regiment 100. The deployment of the Abteilung in the sector was short and uneventful. For those officers, non-commissioned officers and men who had already been with the Regiment in the first years of the war, it was interesting to be back in the sector which they had occupied for a long time. It was satisfying for them, that here the enemy had almost not come forward at all in his great attacks in the spring of 1917. Our foremost position ran almost in the same line as then. Certainly that was owed to the good development of the position on which the Division and especially also the Regiment had worked in the years 1915 and 1916. The position structures had held despite the very strong attacks of the enemy before the large part of their offensive.
The III Abteilung was pulled out again from the position, together with the other two on 26 and 27 June. On 28 June the Regiment marched off to the training area in Maubert-Fontaine, where they were quartered in the surrounding area on 20 June. The Regiment was subordinated to the O.H.L. and was placed under Artillery Commander 5 (commander of the training area). The stay in this place initially brought much-needed rest and recreation to the men and also the horses, but then it also provided the time for training and the maintenance of the material, the clothing and equipment. This was done according to plan during the four-week stay.
During this time, a major change occurred in the Regiment. The honored commander, who had stood since December 1915 at the head of the Regiment, and had led it in excellent heavy fighting, Oberstleutnant Richter, according to a high level decision on 20 July, became the Artillery Commander of the 23rd Infantry Division. In Major Leonhardi (Gottfried), the Regiment received its third campaign commander. Previously (on 23 April 1917), Battery Commander of the 1st Battery for many years, Hauptman Quaas, was appointed to Abteilung leader at Field Artillery Regiment 115, and in his place, Lieutenant Albricht was loaned for the battery leader position. On 05 July, the Adjutant of the Regiment, Oberleutnant Barth, had taken command of the Battery leadership for the 8th Battery to replace Reserve Oberleutnant Ehrler who was transferred to the Ersatz-Abteilung. The Regimental adjutant had become Leutnant Mason (Friedrich), the younger brother of the previous Regimental Adjutant.
On 28 July, the Regiment received orders to march to the 32nd Infantry Division. Since 17 July the latter had been an , division in Group Reims (VII Reserve Corps) of the 1st Army, Army Group German Crown Prince and was in and around Tagnon on the Rethel – Reims road. Here the Regiment replaced Field Artillery Regiment 28. It was quartered in the so-called Cavalier Camp southwest of Tagnon (Regimental staff and II Abteilung) and in Warmerville (I and III Abteilung). Here the Regiment did not engage in any activity; on 02 August it was transported away with the remaining troops of the 32nd Infantry Division to Flanders.
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The Verlustlisten to which I alluded are the original casualty lists (not just those killed but also wounded, missing and captured) published by the Saxon war ministry during the war. Until 1916 and again after the armistice the casualties were listed by unit - in the early lists even the engagements (with dates) in which each unit suffered losses are quoted, a remarkable intelligence bonanza for the enemy!

Unfortunately for us the lists from mid-1916 until the end of the war are far less helpful as no units are named - there is simply a single huge alphabetical list for the entire Saxon Army. As a means of identifying individuals in such massive lists, their birthday (minus the year of their birth, which would have intelligence value) is included alongside their place of birth. This was enough for me definitively to identify my Great-Grandfather's brother, Offizierstellvertreter Rudolf Bierast (wounded in action in summer 1918). Due to the redaction of unit names, I did not find out until my visit to Saxony last autumn that Rudolf had served with IR 104.

Thanks to the dedication of the good people at des.genealogy.net it is now possible to search a database of all of the published German Verlustlisten (for Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Württemberg and the navy / colonial forces) online here:

http://des.genealogy.net/eingabe-verlustlisten/search

Thankyou very much for the translation from the regimental history, which I have filed away with my other source material on FAR 64. There isn't a huge amount there apart from the transcript of a war volunteer's personal diary (running from July 1914 to April 1917) - this is from Jürgen's collection, but if you are interested I can ask his permission to share it with you.

After further comparison of the deployment histories of both divisions and the above diary, I'm still unable to work out when the meeting could have occurred. Both units were certainly on the same part of the Somme front in 1916, but at different times with no overlap. The unit referred to in the section of the FAR 64 history which you quoted is clearly an artillery unit from the context, presumably FAR 100 (a Prussian unit formed for the new 50.ID in early 1915, and independent by late 1916).

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  • 2 weeks later...

Here is the final restored and colorized photograph. Thanks for the help.

post-71339-0-86194000-1458903523_thumb.j

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Excellent work. Minor observation as late war. I would have thought blackened belt with greyed steel buckle? Wartime changes??

TT

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Excellent work. Minor observation as late war. I would have thought blackened belt with greyed steel buckle? Wartime changes??

TT

I pondered that. If you look closely at the B&W image, it looks like the buckle is two-tone brass. The leather on the belt could be black or brown. Since the buckle looked brass, I went with brown. I would add, that once colorized, minor changes are easy to make.

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It's still excellent. Well done. Have one of each.

TT

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Indeed, I second TT on the great work cwbuff, but also how your and Andy's writings and comments bring it all to life. I have just finished re-reading the Saxon in Flanders book - a tour de force in both senses with me not being a battles man! - but with its photographs an excellent piece of work!

Julian

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Indeed, I second TT on the great work cwbuff, but also how your and Andy's writings and comments bring it all to life. I have just finished re-reading the Saxon in Flanders book - a tour de force in both senses with me not being a battles man! - but with its photographs an excellent piece of work!

Julian

Thanks Julian, that's most kind. Feel free to take up my offer on the other thread and write a review! :)

Needless to add, the colourisation job is outstanding. Bravo!

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