German IR 169 Posted 13 December , 2017 Share Posted 13 December , 2017 Should it be of interest to members, I created a google-earth map trenchline overlay of the Serre Stronghold on the website for the recently published second edition of my by book, Imperial Germany's Iron Regiment of the First World War; War Memories of Service with Infantry Regiment 169, 1914-1918. IR 169 held fast at Serre from May - December 1916, and I have three chapters dedicated in the book to the Serre Defense. Battlefield visitors should be able to access the map page of the website, and use it to see where the German trench lines were. I used several period maps for overlay, so hopefully it is pretty close to where the positions were. Welcome comments on any edits, etc. It can be accessed at www.ironregiment169.com Click on the map link. All the Best! John Rieth Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CROONAERT Posted 14 December , 2017 Share Posted 14 December , 2017 (edited) 1 hour ago, German IR 169 said: ... IR 169 held fast at Serre from May - December 1916 ... ...I used several period maps for overlay, so hopefully it is pretty close to where the positions were. Welcome comments on any edits, etc.... John... Is this the map that you mean? Dave Edited 14 December , 2017 by CROONAERT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CROONAERT Posted 14 December , 2017 Share Posted 14 December , 2017 (edited) 16 minutes ago, CROONAERT said: ...Is this the map that you mean?... ... if so, then I'm afraid that you're way out for the trench lines of May-Dec 1916. (Sorry! ) ...The red line (I assume this is supposed to be the British front line?) is actually more-or-less where the German front line was between October 1914 and June 1915 - this was, of course, pushed some distance eastwards in June 1915. Below, is an overlaid image from a talk that I've presented in the past that illustrates the French and German front lines prior to the bataille de Toutvent of June 1915 to illustrate my point... Dave Edited 14 December , 2017 by CROONAERT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CROONAERT Posted 14 December , 2017 Share Posted 14 December , 2017 ... and this image illustrates the lines after mid-June 1915 (therefore pretty much the lines as they were up to and during the Battle of the Somme)... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CROONAERT Posted 14 December , 2017 Share Posted 14 December , 2017 Ah! I now see! ... your red line actually is supposed to illustrate the pre -June 1915 line as the 169 IR actually was there for a short period while that was the front line! (I can be a little slow on the uptake sometimes!) The blue lines still confuse me though! Dave. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CROONAERT Posted 14 December , 2017 Share Posted 14 December , 2017 (edited) Just done a quick overlay of German trenches at Serre as they were near the end of the 1916 battle (see below). It seems to me that the layout on your google map is more or less correct, but, somewhere along the line, the spacing between the lines is out which has resulted in pushing the (1915-16) front line too far to the north west....the angle is also out in the northern section (the 1915 action pretty much eradicated the salient that your map still seems to depict ... or is it that I am still proving myself to be confused by the blue lines? ) Dave... (The blue line on my map below is the British front line by the way) Edited 14 December , 2017 by CROONAERT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
German IR 169 Posted 14 December , 2017 Share Posted 14 December , 2017 Thank you friends, I very much appreciate the input and will review some more edits. As this project is written from German perspective, I made their lines blue and opposing forces, be they UK, French or US, in red. (As a retired US Army officer, I did find this a bit odd to transpose this way, I'm used to friendly forces being represented in blue! ) My grandfather, Albert Rieth, was a veteran of IR 169 in the 1914-1915 period (wounded in the Battle of the Frontiers and La Bassee) and immigrated to the US in the 1920's. My interest in IR 169 has gone well beyond his period of service and I find IR 169's five month stand in Serre, especially in the final November Ancre Offensive, to be a remarkable test of endurance. I do look forward to visiting Serre some day, which is all the more reason I would like this Google Earth representation to be correct. All the Best, John Rieth Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CROONAERT Posted 14 December , 2017 Share Posted 14 December , 2017 (edited) 16 hours ago, German IR 169 said: ... As this project is written from German perspective, I made their lines blue and opposing forces, be they UK, French or US, in red. (As a retired US Army officer, I did find this a bit odd to transpose this way, I'm used to friendly forces being represented in blue! ) ... You're quite welcome, John! As an aside, you'll probably be interested to know that, during the Great War, it was only the British and Austrians (and Germans!) who depicted the 'enemy' trenches in red and their 'own' trenches in blue (and even they switched the scheme around on some (not all) maps late on during the war). The French, Germans, Belgians and US all used red for friendly trenches and blue for enemy trenches on the vast majority of their official trench maps. I don't know what the Russians and Italians used as I've never actually ever seen an official Russian or Italian trench map! (Though an unofficial print of a Russian map I 've seen used red for Russian trenches and green for the Germans, so they might have been the same as nearly everybody else!) Dave. Edited 14 December , 2017 by CROONAERT Dimwittedness Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiegeGunner Posted 14 December , 2017 Share Posted 14 December , 2017 All the German trench maps I have from the Fromelles Project show the German positions in blue and the British/Australian positions in red, Dave. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CROONAERT Posted 14 December , 2017 Share Posted 14 December , 2017 (edited) You are , of course, totally correct, Mick... indeed, (nearly) all of my own German trench maps from wherever they are on the Western Front do, indeed, show German trenches in blue and allied in red. I don't know what I was thinking when I posted that last night - can I claim diminished responsibility for posting at such a stupid time in the morning when I'm supposed to be working on a night shift? Perhaps it'd have been less confusing (to me!) to just say that practically everybody (apart from the British for most of the war) depicted German trenches in blue and Allied trenches in red! Cheers for the correction! (original post now slightly edited) Dave Edited 14 December , 2017 by CROONAERT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiegeGunner Posted 15 December , 2017 Share Posted 15 December , 2017 Easy to get things round the wrong way, Dave. As a result of translating so much material from the German perspective, I sometimes get flak for referring to the British as 'the enemy' ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
egbert Posted 15 December , 2017 Share Posted 15 December , 2017 13 hours ago, SiegeGunner said: I sometimes get flak for referring to the British as 'the enemy' ... I always thought they were the enemy? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trajan Posted 15 December , 2017 Share Posted 15 December , 2017 6 minutes ago, egbert said: I always thought they were the enemy? One of my former colleagues at Hannover, probably deceased now, ex-Wehrmacht, always stressed how in WW2, the common enemy for the soldier in the field was the USAAF... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiegeGunner Posted 15 December , 2017 Share Posted 15 December , 2017 5 hours ago, egbert said: I always thought they were the enemy? Season's Greetings, Egbert. Translating material from 'the other side of the wire' is not always welcomed, and on one memorable occasion some years ago, I was accused of being 'a Quisling'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trajan Posted 16 December , 2017 Share Posted 16 December , 2017 16 hours ago, SiegeGunner said: ... on one memorable occasion some years ago, I was accused of being 'a Quisling'. Given my collecting interests I guess I might stand accused of the same... Just bought two nice postcards - showing Ersatz bayonets, naturlich, - oh, and Weisswurst for dinner tonight courtesy of a bavarian colleague! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
egbert Posted 16 December , 2017 Share Posted 16 December , 2017 19 hours ago, SiegeGunner said: ...... I was accused of being 'a Quisling'. 2 hours ago, trajan said: Given my collecting interests I guess I might stand accused of the same...... Well all my best season greetings from Alabama. But ----- you should educate your opponents accusing you being a Quisling, that Norway never was a belligerent party in the GW Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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