German Soldiers Chained To Machine Gun

[Gibbo]

The Germans used all sorts of captured weapons, including a lot of artillery of different sorts, and two-thirds of German tanks were captured Brit Mark IVs; they planned to be running about 200 in 1919. These units used the terminology "Booty Tank Detachment xx" (roughly). A Bavarian transport unit had the job of rebuilding the captured Mark IVs, and had a large park filled with many captured tanks, and they had set up a large assembly line for their rebuilding in a very large shed. This was probably made easier as the Mark IVs were originally equipped with Daimler engines.

Bob Lembke

This is a bit confusing & off topic but Daimler engines weren't made by the Daimler of Germany. Gottfried Daimler licensed his original design to various foreign companies & the British licensee called itself Daimler Motor Company and its products Daimlers. This organisation was not a subsidiary of Gottfried's Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft but was a completely separate organisation. To avoid confusion, the German company started calling its products by the brand name Mercedes & last made a car called Daimler in 1908. The British Daimler is now part of Ford &, to this day, vehicles called Daimler are made by it & not by Chrysler Daimler, the successor to Gottfried's original company.

I doubt, though, if working on British Daimler engines would have proved much of a technical problem for German engineers used to Mercedes ones in 1918.

Wikipedia on Daimler

Reverting to topic, a misunderstanding of the carrying chains looks like the most logical explanation to me.

[Borden Battery]

Do a SEARCH of the term "chains" and you will find several earlier discusions on this subject.

Borden Battery

[truthergw]

I read somewhere of Germans using captured Lewis guns. Is this a myth too ?

I've seen photographs of German soldiers with lewis guns. So I think it's true. I was a signaller in TA and sometimes worked with support company. 3" mortars and Vickers MMGs. This was postWW2 so I don't know how much the MGs had evolved from the WW1 gun. One man carried the gun, one the tripod, I think another two carried ammo & bits between them. Bloody heavy all of it, so was my radio. I could have used my spare battery to crush a tank. We used to haul each other out of holes and over walls.

[gporta]

I read somewhere of Germans using captured Lewis guns.(...)

I have a question about that (as the absolute ignorant I am in the subject)... When the Germans used weapons captured from the enemy (Lewis guns in this case) did they have to steal the ammunition or MG bullets were pretty standard on both sides of the barbed wire? first option would render the guns useless once the British bullets were spent (or force you to walk across No-mans-land and ask the neighbour for a few spare ones), second would mean that a captured Lewis gun would be quite an asset for German soldiers.

Gloria

[Ralph J. Whitehead]

When Lewis Guns were taken they usually had abundant supplies of British ammunition and drums, taken in the same manner as the guns. Patrols would often return with ammunition, grenades, etc. when entering British trenches.

Many other captured guns were changed to fire the standard German ammunition as there were few, if any, that could be used without alterations. I believe they all had to be changed other than the Lewis and possibly the French Hotchkiss if abundant ammunition supplies were taken.

Ralph

[lassuy]

German ammunition manufacturers made large quantities of British .303, also millions of rounds of Russian 7.62x54R for all the captured Mosin-Nagants. Other rifles were rechambered for standard 7.92 ammunition, an example being the Belgian 1889 Mauser. Finding these with German acceptance stamps chambered in 7.92 isn't all that uncommon. The Austro-Hungarians did the same with the Mosins, the Italian Carcanos, and the Roumanian 1893's. The Central Powers were the masters of making do with what they captured.

[Robert Dunlop]

There was a discussion on this topic several months ago. I made some observations about this, particularly with respect to the MG08/15:

 

Robert

[gporta]

Thank you all for the above info... I wonder up to which point getting material from the enemy was a standard stockage practice for the German army in the Great War (considering material shortages due to the blockade, etc...) In fact, I wonder also if this practice was followed by allied soldiers as well... I've seen photos of soldiers with "souvenired" enemy items (pistols, binoculars), but I wonder if other items (German hand grenades, etc) would be "recycled" as well.

Maybe this would be an interesting question to start another thread?

Gloria

[Desmond7]

I've read many instances of German grenades being used against their previous owners. Most of these have been in the 'use anything' scenario as opposed to standard weaponary.

Des

[bob lembke]

Most of my reading is of German sources on the operations of the German Army. A number of times I have come across accounts of German assualt troops being formally trained in the use of captured enemy equipment, such as hand grenades, some of which had ignition systems quite different than any German grenade, different fuze times, etc. I think that there was "cross-training" of machine gunners, also.

Anyone hear of similar training for Allied troops?

Bob Lembke

[Robert Dunlop]

Bob, I don't recall any formal training in this regard, not of the type that I too have seen described with respect to the German assault troops. There are several accounts of British and Dominion soldiers picking up and using German machine guns. Also, I have read of personnel from trench mortar batteries being specifically assigned to find and use abandoned German field guns. This happened during the Canadian attack on Vimy Ridge for example. I don't know if this practice was supported by formal training in the specific use of German field guns.

Robert

[BeppoSapone]

Thank you all for the above info... I wonder up to which point getting material from the enemy was a standard stockage practice for the German army in the Great War (considering material shortages due to the blockade, etc...) In fact, I wonder also if this practice was followed by allied soldiers as well... I've seen photos of soldiers with "souvenired" enemy items (pistols, binoculars), but I wonder if other items (German hand grenades, etc) would be "recycled" as well.

Maybe this would be an interesting question to start another thread?

Gloria

Germans were known for taking the boots from the dead, and from POWs. Also, anything to eat, drink or smoke.

I have even heard it said that this latter habit cost them the war. In the 1918 offensive their advancing troops were drinking Tommy's beer and eating his food rather than getting to the channel ports asap.

Probably overstated, but with a hint of truth?

[bob lembke]

Germans were known for taking the boots from the dead, and from POWs. Also, anything to eat, drink or smoke.

I have even heard it said that this latter habit cost them the war. In the 1918 offensive their advancing troops were drinking Tommy's beer and eating his food rather than getting to the channel ports asap.

Probably overstated, but with a hint of truth?

My father was a storm trooper, and his correspondence has much more info about his dealing in captured enemy food than about the war itself. He told me that they even conducted private raids to drive the enemy out of their trenches with their Flammenwerfer and then loot their valuable stuff. He kept both sides of his family back in Germany better fed by sending them high-value stuff (in particular two-pound tins of coffee, which was an unbelievable luxury in 1917). He wrote a letter from hospital, having sent his father a tin, he urged him to sell it for more basic food, like his mother (they were seperated) was doing, adding that he had five more "about 900 grammes", clearly 2 lbs., tins under his hospital bed, along with his vegatable-drying oven; being ambulatory, he went into the woods near the hospital and picked wild mushrooms, which he dried back in the ward. My grand-father, a Hauptmann on active duty and a staff officer, was having trouble getting fed and described how he would drop into Other Ranks messes and join them for their food. He was on roving staff business and did not belong to a unit mess.

Even in 1916 the food was very bad. Being in a Guards storm unit, sponsored by the Crown Prince, where allegedly the food was better, he complained that in the week that the letter was written they had only had four dinners in the week, and they were two spoon-fuls of a very bad ersatz jam to eat with their bread ration, which itself was shrinking, and was turning slowly to sawdust. He was bitter that they could not find potatoes for their Christmas dinner. Three days later he lay for three days, wounded and alone, in a captured French dugout on Dead Man's Hill, at Verdun.

One cannot underestimate the effect that this had on the entire war. The Allies continued the food blockade for about eight months after the Armistice, until the Germans signed the Treaty of Versailles (off we go to WW II!), and I have seen estimates that in that eight-month period an additional 800,000 German civilians, in larg part children, starved to death.

Bob Lembke

[Hoplophile]

The regimental history of the 3rd Jaeger (Sturm) Battalion, a Jaeger unit that was converted into an assault battalion in 1916, records the high esteem that the Lewis gun enjoyed with members of that unit. Indeed, it calls the weapon the 'sehr beliebte Lewis Gewehr' - the 'most beloved Lewis gun.'

Once, while looking for something else in the US National Archives, I ran across a German manual that dealt with captured weapons that had been modified to use German ammunition. It included a detailed description of how Lewis guns were rechambered for standard German rifle cartridges.

[bob lembke]

Hi, Gloria;

I would state that wearing a Brodie helmet on a raid would make it much more likely to be shot by your own guys, and would afford less protection than the Stahlhelm. I would guess it is simply Beute, or "booty". In my father's storm unit, which usually faced the French, a sum was deposited into the unit welfare fund for every Chauchat that the men brought in, as the unit wanted to carry four times as many LMGs than the army authorized. I would think that that would have been especially likely for the excellent Lewis Gun, used by several special light machine gun units.

Note that the soldier has a P 08 and that it is worn on a lanyard. My father told me that in his unit they did not even carry a holster on raids; the P 08 that almost every trooper carried was on a lanyard and tucked into the blouse at an open button. The holster was made to protect the P 08 but was hopeless in a "quick draw" situation.

The trooper pictured has just been awarded an Eisernes Kreuz, perhaps even an EK I. (It would only be worn at the buttonhole briefly, I believe.) Thomas Faust, the dealer of this PC, would have reported if there was unit information on the reverse side. An excellent dealer and a real gentleman. I have done translations for him from Czech and Slovene written in Suetterlin, on Austro-Hungarian cards.

Bob Lembke

[gporta]

Bob, I suspected the Brodie to be the equivalent of the Pickelhaube helmets many a British soldier sports in old photographs, but thanks for clearing it further, and for all the other explanations.

I didn't mention the leather jerkin he is wearing (surely acquired in the same fashion that the Lewis gun) which is more likely to have been used than the souvenired helmet... I'm not so sure about the boots: they look to me like the wading boots Tommies used in watery/muddy places, unless similar items were issued by the German army, too.

Gloria

[Edward J.]

Hi, new member here. My first post.

I subscribe to a Web site called www.newspaperarchive.com, which for a monthly fee allows you to browse old American newspapers in PDF format. It's a terrific source for Great War information. I haven't seen the chained German machine gunners story, but I'll be sure to look.

Here's an interesting article I found yesterday: "German Morale is Rapidly Weakening Says British Officer," The Olean Evening Herald (November 19, 1917), page 2, column 3.

The byline is the Associated Press, reporting on a letter written by an officer of a Liverpool regiment fighting in an unidentified locale on the western front. After a group of German infantrymen surrendered, something amazing happened:

"When the German command found out what had happened, they sent forward a great body of reserves with orders to recapture our prisoners. Heavy gunfire rained on us, of which the prisoners got a good share. They begged us hard to save them, and we did all we could. But at one stage we were nearly caught, when the enemy suddenly turned on a party of liquid fire experts. Fortunately, we were alert and charged at once, capturing the whole liquid fire outfit. There ensued a terrible row between the earlier prisoners and the men we had taken with the liquid fire outfit. The first prisoners wanted to kill the liquid fire men. We had our hands full getting them all back."

I've heard of the Allies killing German flame-thrower operators when they surrendered, but this is the first time I've heard of German infantrymen wanting to kill them, too. They don't seem to have been very popular with anybody!

Edward J.

[bob lembke]

Hi, Edward!

Welcome to the Forum!

It is fun to poke through old papers. However, almost anything written during the war, from any side, must be regarded with considerable skepticism.

But, in my opinion (IMHO), the people subjected to the greatest onslaught of propaganda and cooked material was, by far, the American people. These was both a very active British effort run both in the UK and also in Canada and the US, and the US government and enthusiasts also had a very active program. Taking such an anonymous statement at anything like face value would be a serious error, in my opinion.

Additionally, the two top British and American officers responsible for flame warfare (Foulkes and Fries), having royally screwed up their own flame warfare efforts, starting during the war years, engaged in a vigorous campaign of disinformation on all flame warfare, and in particular on the successful German effort, for almost 20 years. I still see articles being written at this time which have been poisoned with the false stuff deliberately planted by these guys, in a variety of ways.

I hope that I have not come on too strong and set an unpleasant tone; I love it when anyone points out any mention of WW I flame throwers (FW), and I file them away carefully for my research. But that whole passage, at least as the FW aspect goes, sounds really off. Flame units were controlled by the OHL (Highest Army Command), i.e., Hindenburg and Ludendorff's shop, and received requests for the lending of FW troops and after deliberation allocated them down to the level of, for example, the army corps, for specific operations that the flame unit commander of the unit sent out was supposed to review and even veto their participation if he decided that the plan of attack did not properly utilize this unusual weapon. In theory at least, a sergeant could decline to participate in an attack drawn up and ordered by a lieutenant general; he had a written order from Hindenburg and Ludendorff backing up this right. A written report on each attack was written up and submitted to the OHL.

So if the Germans lost a bunch of prisoners I don't see how a "party of liquid fire experts" would just appear to take the prisoners back, given the above system to allocate this scarce resource, and carefully review any plan of attack. The flame detachments did not lurk in the trenches; they were in barracks and when released for an attack were trucked in on their own trucks.

Also, I would think that launching a flame attack on the enemy would be an odd way to try to release POWs. Finally, I have detailed information on about 300 flame attacks by the Germans, and I have never heard of the enemy infantry charging into a FW attack. Would you?

Despite my scepticism, your account will be inserted into my files. Keep those anecdotes flowing, guys!

Thanks,

Bob Lembke

[Edward J.]

I put "Germans chained machine guns" into the search engine at www.newspaperarchive.com and got 127 hits. The articles also include stories of German machine gunners chained to trees.

Here's a slightly different take on the theme: "Says Germans Chained Women to Machine Guns," The Syracuse Herald (March 9, 1919), page 26, column 1.

It's no phantasy of a sick imagination that women were chained to machine guns by the Germans, Sergt. Harry Kelley of the 35th Machine Gun Battalion, attached to the 3rd Division, declares, for he has seen them himself....

"Women chained to guns? Yes, often," he declared. "We knew they were women, too, before we took the guns. One could always tell by the way the gunners held their cigarets whether they were men or women."

Unfortunately, Sgt. Kelley doesn't actually describe assaulting machine-gun nests full of cigarette-smoking female soldiers. Did he take them prisoner? What unit did they belong to? Did they fight to the death? I'd like to know! In reality, I'm sure they were just beardless schoolboys inexpertly holding their smokes. We've all seen late-war photos of horrifyingly young kids in uniform.

And for Bob the flame-thrower enthusiast, here's something from "Pressing the Foe," The Daily Gleaner (July 8, 1916), page 1, column 1.

A dispatch from Petrograd describes the July 6 action in Galicia, on the Koropice and Souhodolsk Rivers, tributaries of the Dniester.

In the course of an attack on the village of Vergiki the Germans received our troops with liquid fire.

Owing to their conduct we put all the Germans to the bayonet when we captured the village.

Amazing that the Russians would admit in an official dispatch that they killed all their prisoners. Attitudes of the press and general public were obviously quite different back then.

Edward J.

[bob lembke]

Hi, Edward;

As to "women chained to machine guns"; I can assure you that the Germans never had women combat troops in WW I. I can also state that it is 99.99% sure that the Germans never chained anyone to machine guns. I have seen many reports of same in US sources written in the period; they all are rubbish. And you can also find reports by true American combat troops that such reports are nonsense.

I have the complete death rolls of the principal German flame units, including all units operating after early 1915. No German flame troops died in the East in that time period. Additionally, I have detailed information on many or most of all flame attacks in the war. It is 95% or more certain that there were no German flame troops on the Eastern Front at that time. All of these troops were stationed on the Western Front, and only two or three times a year they sent men to the east to conduct a few attacks. This does not seem to have been going on at that time period. If you know the situation on the west front (both Verdun and the Somme going on at that time) it was not a likely time to send these troops to the east.

So I think that the Russian report was a complete fabrication.

Again, thanks for the reports.

Bob Lembke

[bob lembke]

Hi, Edward;

Another point. I have read several thousand pages of US primary sources on the fighting on the Western Front, and I can not recall a single mention of a soldier mentioning an American reporter wandering about at the Front. I have also poked through thousands of pages of US orders, reports, etc. (the US Army 3-CD set of WW I documents is an amazing source and value), and about 1000-2000 pages of official US unit histories, and I cannot remember a single mention of a US reporter at the front. Wilson set up a large propaganda organization. I would think that the reporter from Syracuse was sitting in a bar in Solvey and was writing something based on a press release.

Are you up in the Finger Lakes region? I spent 10 years at Ithaca.

Bob Lembke

[gporta]

Quoting Bob:

"I would think that the reporter from Syracuse was sitting in a bar in Solvey and was writing something based on a press release."

As they say... "nothing new under the sun". I'm getting dismayed at the growing habit of many a "journalist" to just cut and paste something they have got from another place (printed or online) without properly checking the facts

Gloria

[bob lembke]

Gloria;

Yes. But I think that in WW I the journalist did not have a chance to get to the front, I bet, and if he did he would not be able to print what he wanted. I think that the front journalist of the era was an insider gentleman with connections like Colonel Reppington (Brit) and Lowell Thomas (Yank). They knew what to print and not to print.

During WW I there were a lot of laws passed in the US to suppress the supposed danger of German-Americans. They were very sweeping. On the basis of one, for example, the Federal Attorney (a prosecutor) in an Ohio city indited something like 167 ministers and bishops of a single German-based church for treason on the basis that the church traditionally used German in their religous services.

It is interesting that some US Congressmen are now calling for the prosecution of the New York Times on charges of espionage and treason for printing the recent story of how the US government is snooping on financial transactions, demanding prosecution based on of these wonderful laws passed in 1917. As Leo Durocher said: "Deja vu all over again!"

Bob Lembke

[Edward J.]

Gloria said:

As they say... "nothing new under the sun". I'm getting dismayed at the growing habit of many a "journalist" to just cut and paste something they have got from another place (printed or online) without properly checking the facts.

It's a long-standing habit among journalists to misreport the news, especially when it comes to war. My favorite quote about journalists and the military comes from General William Tecumseh Sherman, fighting on the Union side during the American Civil War:

"I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast."

I'm sure many a current British and American fighting man or woman can empathize.

Bob: I'm in Portland, Oregon. The newspaper Web site gives me access to most American papers. Here's a good excerpt from another one: "Germans Squirt Flame into British Trenches to Burn Out Soldiers," The Syracuse Herald (September 7, 1915), page 5, column 2, by Herbert Corey

Kaiser forbade flame projector. Unless a story I heard in Berlin in February is untrue, the Kaiser was at the outset bitterly opposed to the use of the flame projector. As it came to me, a "half-baked" professor in a German university invented the thing. The general staff experimented with it and finally decided to accept it. Nothing was said officially to the Kaiser about it, but some one told. He called the chief of staff.

"I will not permit the use of such devices in my army," said the Kaiser. "They are devilish, monstrous--inhuman."

"But Sire--"began the chief of staff.

"Enough," said the Kaiser.

One is compelled to wonder now if the Kaiser were in the end defied by the staff or whether he assented to its use, and what particular epithets he now applies to a weapon of war that chars men's flesh from their bones.

Accurate or not, it makes for great reading!

Edward J.

[bob lembke]

Hi, Edward;

Your post said, in part:

" Bob: I'm in Portland, Oregon. The newspaper Web site gives me access to most American papers. Here's a good excerpt from another one: "Germans Squirt Flame into British Trenches to Burn Out Soldiers," The Syracuse Herald (September 7, 1915), page 5, column 2, by Herbert Corey

QUOTE

Kaiser forbade flame projector. Unless a story I heard in Berlin in February is untrue, the Kaiser was at the outset bitterly opposed to the use of the flame projector. As it came to me, a "half-baked" professor in a German university invented the thing. The general staff experimented with it and finally decided to accept it. Nothing was said officially to the Kaiser about it, but some one told. He called the chief of staff.

"I will not permit the use of such devices in my army," said the Kaiser. "They are devilish, monstrous--inhuman."

"But Sire--"began the chief of staff.

"Enough," said the Kaiser.

One is compelled to wonder now if the Kaiser were in the end defied by the staff or whether he assented to its use, and what particular epithets he now applies to a weapon of war that chars men's flesh from their bones.

Accurate or not, it makes for great reading! "

Edward;

I cannot say whether or not the newsman was actually told the story he printed (there is reason to doubt it), but every aspect of the story is not true, I am sure.

As it came to me, a "half-baked" professor in a German university invented the thing.

The technical work on the modern German flame thrower (FW) was started by a Berlin chemical engineer, Ing. Richard Fiedler, no later than 1901. I have copies of some of his patents from about 1905. He, possibly a reserve officer of the Pioniere, was working on the problem of nozzle design for the high-pressure spraying of heavy fluids, like paint. He did most of the early technical development. About 1905 he began providing FW for evaluation by technical committees of the Prussian Army.

A second officer, Hauptmann d. Landwehr Dr. Bernard Reddemann, also began work on the FW, some technical work, more on the tactical side, supposedly in 1907. Reddemann was a published scientist, although his doctorate was in law!

They only learned of the other's work when the war started. Reddemann was asked to set up an experimental unit, initially of 48 men, all firemen. (Reddemann was the fire protection director of Leipzig.)

As to the Kaiser's attitude; the General Staff was at first sceptical, and, according to my father (a member of the unit) and careful reading between the lines of a number of sources the Kaiser and his heir, Kronprinz Wilhelm, were not only enthusiastic supporters of the new weapon but actually funded the setting up of the experimental unit out of their own personal funds.

As far as journalist Corey being told all this in February 1915; at this time the first FW attack had not been launched, and the 48 man unit was being equipped and trained to carry out the first attacks. Very few people knew of the weapon, and they would not be blabbing to a journalist from America, which already was becoming a big supporter and prop of the Allies.

So, again, a totally incorrect story. Because of the timing of his supposedly being told about FW, Corey almost certainly was not told any such thing, and was lying through his teeth, as opposed to have been told a tall tale at a social event, or something. But very interesting. I would be grateful if you post any other such stories you come across; I will collect them and sweep them in my files.

Bob Lembke