Curious St Quentin 1918 postcards : bearskins? kilts?

[Moonraker]

Just a light-hearted post about a couple of curious German postcards offered on eBay:

1918 THE DEFEAT OF THE ALLIES & FRENCH ATD ST QUENTIN (BEARSKINNED SOLDIERS !!)

1918 THE DEFEAT (!!) OF THE ENGLISH (!!) HIGHLANDERS AT ST. QUENTIN - GERMAN PC

The first card is postmarked October 1914 ...

As for the second, "English Highlanders"! wearing kilts in 1918 ... (That having been smirked at, there were Canadian Highland units that wore kilts early in the war.)

As I understand it, the August 1914 battle of St Quentin was fought between French and German forces. That of 1918 did involve British troops.

(There was also a battle at St Quentin in 1871 involving Prussian and French soldiers.)

I suspect crude German propaganda using popular conceptions of British military uniforms - and an uninformed eBay seller (not that I'm much more knowledgeable about such battles).

Edited 16 July , 2021 by Moonraker

[AOK4]

Indeed Moonraker, both are German propaganda postcards from 1914. There's nothing curious at all about them. Most of these were made in germany by artists who had no clue what was actually going on, who was involved and where exactly.

Some of the British paintings etc depicting German soldiers aren't any better. The "Defeat of the Prussian Guard, Ypres, 11 November 1914" by William Barnes Wollen clearly shows a very outdated German pickelhaube near the officer in the foreground.

Some of these war artist just depicted battle scenes as they imagined them, using pre-war uniforms etc (as details about actual uniforms were not available). War artists that actually were close to the front line and witnessed events from nearby give a better picture of what happened. But anyway, in most cases, there's only dead from the other side on these propaganda cards...

Censorship was quite strict on both sides.