"German Army on the Somme 1914-1916"

[Tom Morgan]

The good news is that Pen and Sword have started sending out copies of our Pal Jack's book today, to sellers who had it on order. As Jack has said, the Germans were 50% of the story and I'm looking forward to reading it.

Congratulations, Jack.

Tom

PS - nice cover illustration, too.

[mahross]

Tom

Looks like an interesting book. I look forward to seeing some reviews on it.

Ross

[BMoorhouse]

Jack,

Congratulations. I hope that it does well.

I look forward to reading it. A long overdue subject.

Brendon.

[Simon Jones]

Mine has arrived!

It looks superb, with a very large number of German accounts allowed to speak for themselves.

Thank you Jack!

And thanks to Tom, the cheque's in the post.

Regards

Simon

[Jack Sheldon]

Many thanks to all of you for your good wishes, which I much appreciate. Despite its publication date of 30th July, I think that it is fairly readily available now. It is a new departure for Pen & Sword and indeed for me, so I am hoping that you will find it both interesting and useful to you for your own research. I am hoping to continue this kind of work, for other battles and sectors of the Western Front, so I shall be particularly interested in the informed comment that the contributors to the Book Review section always have to offer; it will help me to adjust my approach in future.

Jack

[Chris_Baker]

Jack, it looks great. My congratulations. I hope to have a review on the Long, Long Trail by Tuesday this week.

[ianw]

A real service to those of us incapable of reading German. Looks like another must buy.

However, must confess to being irritated by disorderly book pricing (althouth I suppose I should shut up as I found retail price maintenance on books repugnant). Recommended price is £25 whilst Pen & Sword have it on their website at £20. Amazon list it at £17.50.

It would also seem that book publishers seem more willing to sell any spare copies to the remainder shops now ( see "Tommy" at £3 on another thread) rather than paying to pulp them.

[Halder]

I really can't praise this book too highly. As you can probably guess from my tag, I'm a historian of the German Army (2nd/3rd Reich) so this book was awaited with great relish.

Thankfully it delivers and so much more. There are scores of first-person accounts, as well as trawl through official histories, diaries, official archives etc. This is the most complete book on the front-line operations of the Kaiserheer in the first two years of the war.

For those of you not familiar with German sources, the author has had to deal, I'm guessing, with hundreds, nay thousands, of pages of Gothic script which was prevalent in Germany pre c1941-2. It is hideous to deal with, even with a trained eye!

I only have a couple of quibbles. One is the typeface which I found quite hard to read (I'm a bit of an anorak on this front as my day job is as a journalist and sub-editor); the other is the repro quality of the pictures, which is a bit eclectic. (I have a vested interest here as Pen & Sword will hopefully be publishing my book next year).

These are trifling quibbles, however. The plaudits belong to the text and anyone interested in the Western Front/German Army/Somme really must invest in this book.

I trust now that future historians of the Somme will give a much more balanced account of the battle. They have no excuse not to thanks to this outstanding book.

[P.B.]

I can only echo the above comments on this important and outstanding contribution to modern WWI history.

As a collector of Imperial German militaria and photographs, and an amateur student of the German Army in WWI, I can only say that this book is a publication that must be on the shelf not only of anyone with any degree of interest in the Kaiser's Army, but anyone with an interest in the Battle of the Somme or the Western Front in general.

Whilst the oral and written experiences of the british soldier -via MacDonald, Middlebrook, Hart, Holmes, etc- have long since been available in book form, the picture of the war experienced from the other side of the wire has remained fairly elusive. Usually a couple of quotes from Junger, Bloem or Sulzbach is all you get (although MacDonald's "To The Last Man" and Nicholls' "Cheerful Sacrifice" were notable exceptions, among others)

All the while, however, a massive store of near contemporary information, in the form of the many regimental histories published in Germany in the 20s and 30s, was largelly ignored by English-speaking authors*. This fantastic book redresses the balance in spades, making full use of these remarkable accounts. To find any WWI book these days offering something genuinely new is a rarity -to find one offering so much new material on the German perspective is positively unique.

Often, however, studies mainly dependent on such accounts suffer by the supporting text being basically passages to link one account to another. Not so in this case, where the author's history and analysis is concise, authoratative and stands apart from the personal accounts as German perspective on the Battle of the Somme in it's own right.

I found the illustrations to be a good mix of well-known ones capturing the true flavour of the WWI German soldier (as an iconic image of the WWI stormtrooper, has the back cover photo ever been bettered?), and also previously unpublished shots (the Bavarian with the captured British sign drew my attention) I think the variable quality of some of them accounts by them being reproduced from German regimental histories published in the 20s and 30s.

I work with books on a daily basis, and to be honest I'm not easily impressed, but (and I haven't finished it yet, I admit) this is one title I would unreservedly recommend as a scholarly blend of analysis and (to almost all readers) genuinely fresh personal accounts from WWI.

Bearing in mind I've been waiting for a book like this for the last 10 years, you can see that my opinion isn't entirely unbiased, but....this title is a genuine must have.

I also noticed our own Ralph Whitehead getting a mention in the acknowledgements

All the best

Paul.

*Anyone interested in the German regimental histories from WWI should get their hands on the IWM's bibliography. Not only will you be overwhelmed by the sheer volume that was published -some regiments had more than one history in print- you'll also appreciate how much is out there still to be made available to the wider readership on this subject.

[paul guthrie]

I have bought this from US Amazon but it won't come til October, paying in pounds when the $ is crap and for air shipment would have made price ridiculous, thanks to you guys for thorough explanations.

[squirrel]

My copy from Amazon arrived today - superb photos and really looking forward to reading when I have finished with Far From a Donkey which will be soon!

[John W]

My copy arrived saturday, and I have nearly finished it, without a doubt a great book and a usefull window on to the side of the Somme most people never see.

JOhn

[BatterySergeantMajor]

When will 'The German Army in Flanders" arrive?

Erwin

[squirrel]

Just finished reading this - absolutely superb.

[Jonathan Saunders]

Will add this to my "must have" list following the endorsements of Halder and P.B. Well done Jack.

[Jack Sheldon]

First of all, many thanks to all those who have posted kind words concerning the book. I very much appreciate your thoughtfulness. So far the only query which has been thrown up concerns Earth Mortars and Albrecht Mortars. The German army began the war with a considerable lead in mortars over either France or Britain. For the most part they were heavy wheeled mortars of various calibres, such as the 260 mm wheeled version which appears in this post. Once warfare became static, earth mortars, which were primitive early models started appearing along the front line where they were manned by engineers. I believe that they were referred to as earth mortars to differentiate them from the mobile types. The aiming was somewhat haphazard and of the 'left a bit, right a bit' variety. Nevertheless they launched aheavy bomb and you did not want to be on the receiving end of one. Through 1915 and early 1916 the types of the so-called close-quarter battle weapons increased, until by the summer of 1916, there were much improved Albrecht mortars in two calibres: 250mm and a massive 350mm, which were deployed all along the front, sited in pairs and furnished with dedicated crews. Those who viewed yesterday's post about the Quadrilateral/Heidenkopf will have seen this sort of position marked. If anyone is interested, I can post an engineering diagram of one of these positions. There were also two types of grenade launcher: Lanz and Priester, but these had nowhere near the hitting power of the Albrechts. All these weapons were short range - a matter of a few hundred metres, but they had high lethality. A great many British accounts from 1 Jul 16 talk about artillery fire coming down very swiftly in No man's Land. Well so it did, but it was supplemented at critical moments by mortar fire. 4th Pionier Kompanie was responsible for these weapons in the 51 Res Inf Brigade area from the Heidenkopf to the Ancre that day. In the first rush, the mortars and launchers fired an average of the following number of rounds: Albrecht 250mm 4, Albrecht 350 mm 3, Lanz 5, Priester 5. Altogether on 1 Jul, the company fired 100 Albrecht 250mm and 5 Albrecht 350mm. There are accounts in the literature of a single bomb from an Albrecht wiping out an entire section of infantry.

Jack

[Morval Ross]

Hi Pals,

At last a book from the other perspective. I was not aware that this book was even in the pipeline. I have just ordered a copy of Amazon and cant wait to get my hands on it. I have always been interested to hear the stories of the Germans on the Somme and their thoughts on July 1st. But as always ended up buying two books instead of one. great deal on the The Somme by Peter Hart.

Great work Jack and I wish you the best of luck with this publication, it looks like it will be a big seller.

Regards

Ross.

[Jack Sheldon]

I have managed to lay my hands on a mislaid document relating to the perfomance and preparation of Earth Mortar bombs and so complete the posting above relating to mortars, so here goes. It is taken from a paper by the Engineer Commander of 1st Bavarian Army Corps dated 25 Nov 1915.

Ammunition Weight of complete round: 23.5 kg, Explosive charge: 12 kg Propellant: Black powder in silk bags. Range: 40 m to 300 m

Approximate performance = propellant weight in grams - 10 = range in metres

Range Table

Range Propellant Weight Time of Flight

40 m 50 g 4.0 seconds

80 m 90 g 5.5 seconds

130 m 140 g 6.5 seconds

180 m 190 g 7.5 seconds

200 m 210 g 8.0 seconds

250 m 260 g 9.0 seconds

300 m 310 g 10.0 seconds

In an emergency the propellant charge can be increased to 350 g

The fuse is to be cut in accordance with the time of flight (1cm = 1 second) The necessary length is to be calculated from the fuse screw [presumably something which kept it in place during flight] to the end of the fuse in the detonator. One cm of fuse should protrude before the fuse screw and be splayed to permit easy lighting.

Filling the bombs. The bomb is filled with a safety explosive, which is pressed firmly into place with a wooden rammer. The bomb is then weighed together with its accessories and brought up to the correct weight. The wooden cover is secured with wood screws and sealed with a varnish/glue mixture.

Earth mortar bombs are delivered uncharged from the army engineer parks, because there is a lack of experienced engineers to carry out the work. In view of the fact that loading the mines in the main engineer parks would carry with it a great risk to the large stocks of munitions which are stored there [Good Grief! What about the poor mugs who had to fill them?] ... I direct that the Earth Mortar bombs are to be filled in the divisional engineer parks... where stocks for the next half- or complete week are to be prepared.

The filled bombs can then be transported straight into forward depots or onto the positions themselves. Each bomb is to bear in colour the date when it was filled, in order that they may be used in date order (maximum storage period 2-3 months)

On the afternoons when they are filled, each company which uses mortars is to designate 3 experienced sappers for filling duties. They are to be accompanied by a supervising NCO and an officer. It is not permissable for individual engineer companies to fill [bombs] in their own locations, because it would not be possible to ensure complete supervision.

The mind boggles at this. These things would certainly not meet any modern ordnance regulations. Preparing them cannot have been a popular job. The slow time of flight rather exlains why it was that a sharp eye was kept out for them and why shouts of 'mortar left!' or 'mortar right!' would often give trench garrisons the opportunity to run away from the anticipated point of impact, which would not have been a healthy place to be - especially bearing in mind that 5kg of explosive well placed will easily collapse a building.

Jack

[squirrel]

This is superb stuff.

Does it say anywhere what the propellant was? Just under half a pound of it to chuck a bomb weighing 23.5 kg 250 metres is pretty impressive.

[Jack Sheldon]

Squirrel

Yes. See above: 'Black powder', i.e. gunpowder, as used in fireworks!

Jack

[squirrel]

Some firework!

I'll have to be careful if my wife lets me have some in November as well as learning to read things properly.

Flat forehead job again!

[Steven Broomfield]

Just heard my copy's waiting at Waterstone's in Winchester. Can't get in till Saturday....roll on the weekend!

[Morval Ross]

Jack,

I got my Copy of the book last week, Only managed to get about half way through, she who must b obey is not to happy though as she has had to go out by herself a couple of nights, peace and tranquility and a great book to read. Thank you for that alone.

As for the book, My dad, who is a retired journo and editor, had a quick scan over the weekend and thought that the book was brilliantly written. At last a book from the other side. It is a perfect comliment to the bookcase(s) where there is so much information from the allied side.

I think that i speak for all the pals when I say Bravo on a great work. it is obvious a lot of tme and effort was put into this and it shows.

Best of luck and I hope that it is successful for you.

Kindest regards

Ross.

[cockney tone]

I had the wonderful opportunity of listening to Jack Sheldon giving a presentation on this book at Avril's on Wednesday night, now I am back from the Front I am 'patiently' waiting for my copy to arrive so I can get to grips with it.

(well ok, not very patiently at all to tell the truth.)

[paul guthrie]

My copy has finally come, apparently it was much later in the US. My first impression is the print is the worst I have ever seen! By all accounts this a a terrific much needed book and I see no excuse for Pen & Sword having put it out in this condition. I in no way blame the author, rather I thank him .