Iron Europe: 1914-1916 Mod Page Launched At Moddb.com

Here's the page we just launched on the moddb.com website; it shows some of the modding work we have completed:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/iron-europe-1914-1916

Progress on the mod has been going slowly but steadily.

I guess I'm learning that modding a video game is a little bit harder than I thought.

Essentially, you have to make a lot of models of everything you want in the game, in order to give it that certain authenticity of how things looked during the time period which is being focused on.

We have an excellent modeller who goes by the nickname of N!ghtmare.



Now, if we could just find even one more modeller, and of course even better would be two, I think our modding team would be in excellent shape.



I could also use an additional Researcher and Writer, so if you ever wanted to write a few pages about a WWI battle, based on the maps we are including, and have it electronically beamed into people's homes 24/7, which an audience of mostly males, ages 13-45 will read before they enter into the game, please contact me.

In addition, we could also use someone who would like to research uniforms, weapons, army structures, and research the maps by finding historical and modern photos on the internet of the geographioal locations featured in the maps.



We will also eventually (although I would say we are probably a year to a year and a half away) research the French Army and have a series of maps based on the battles they fought in WWI.

I think we are going to avoid Verdun because another modding group is making a mod based on the Verdun battles.

Instead, we can focus on Ypres, the Somme, Champagne, and Alsace-Lorraine.

So, we could use someone who has a good reading knowledge of the French language.

We will also need French Voice Actors to say some commands, phrases, and insults, and we will include those recordings inside the game.


We are not a business, so learning about the First World War and helping make the game is a rich experience in itself and is its own reward.

Which Tank Map For Iron Europe?

Thinking about this a little more, the Mark I tank saw limited action on the Western Front.

They were used at Flers (4 tanks), Thiepval (2 tanks but historically one tank broke down), Mouquet Farm (2 tanks but there the two tanks broke down), I think also at Morval (I'm not really an expert on all the Somme battles).


Then, I think they were replaced by the Mark IV tank in 1917, and the Mark IV was used in the Cambrai offensive. I think there were some also used at Passchendaele but with less success due to the mud.

So we could end up making just one tank, both, or I guess none.



Here was an old PM I sent to CrazyThumbs about Cambrai; over a year ago, someone said they were going to model a tank for us, but unfortunately the person never made the tank:

[QUOTE]I flipped through my WWI book by H.P. Willmott for a good tank battle, and found a real interesting one in the Battle of Cambrai, which occurred between November 20- December 4, 1917; Cambrai was a French town, a major rail center, about 50 miles south of Lille, "where the Germans defenses on the Western Front were at their strongest."

The tank used however was a Mark IV, and Willmott says "[t]he tank that fought at Cambrai in 1917 was not very different from the Mark I of 1916, but it did have a better radiator, a silencer, and tracks with better grip. It dispensed with the rear wheels."

Here the British decided to assault the German defenses, which they believed to be undermanned and not expecting an attack, with 381 tanks and a number of infantry units along a 6 mile sector of the German frontlines.

The tanks smashed through the barbed wire (that will have to be fixed, because in vanilla RO tanks can't drive through barbed wire), and the Germans were overwhelmed.

In a single day, the British advanced 5 miles, taking 7,500 prisoners.

"There was jubilation back in Britain, where church bells rang for the first time since 1914 and the newspapers proclaimed the greatest British victory of the war."

There is a special feature with these tanks however.

In order to advance through the trenches and not get stuck, these tanks were equipped with fascines. These large wooden bundles were dropped into an enemy trench, enabling the tank to get across.

It appears from the photo I'm looking at that the tank has a lever mechanism on top of which the bundle of wood at least 5 feet tall sits, which pushes down and drops the bundle.

However, the very next day, a German division, relieved of duty from the Eastern Front due to the Russian Bolshevik Revolution, arrived. Fighting occurred in a village called Fontaine for the next few days, but the British tanks didn't work too well in the narrow village streets, and many were destroyed.

With the British having less than 90 tanks left, the Germans launched a counterattack. The British had to retreat.

The upshot was that the battle was essentially a draw. The British still retained around 7 or so miles of their initial advance from the first and second days, but had lost fresh ground to the south.

Each side had about 45,000 casualties a piece.

I admit the wood dumper lever mechanism sounds a little complicated, but instead of doing the initial assault (which undoubtedly would make a great map), you could have a map centering on the fighting around Fontaine. Hopefully, they dumped the wood bundles by that time (which I imagined they did; afterall, I doubt you can fight in the streets of a village with a 5 foot stack of wood on your tank).

There's a book (which I don't have) which would describe the battle more: Cambrai: The First Tank Battle (publisher Cerberus Ltd.) by Terry C. Treadwell.

If the tank modeler doesn't want to design a Mark IV and insists on a Mark I, tanks were introduced into combat at the Battle of the Somme in July?, 1916, and an engagement from that battle would be the Mark I map.

But I thought I would float the Battle of Cambrai first to you and the modeler since it sounds like it was the big tank battle of WWI. If it isn't feasible to map it now, perhaps then in a future release.

[/QUOTE]


Both Thiepval and Fontaine sound somewhat similar (tanks in a village).


Although both battles were important, Thiepval was probably, strategically speaking, the more important battle, since Thiepval and the Schwaben Redoubt (which would not appear in the proposed Thiepval map) were the lynchpin of the German defensive line on the Somme.


We could just do Thiepval, or wait until the Second Release, Iron Europe: 1917-1918, and make a Mark IV instead, or we could do both scenarios.

The difficult part though is not so much making the tank, since N!ghtmare wants to and can do that, but it is animating the tank.

And we need an Animator to do that.

United States Societal Disgrace On Veterans Day, 90 Years After The Armistice

Well, I was home on Veterans Day here in the United States, and I can tell you that all the Cable and the Big Three TV Networks care about is the amount of revenue they receive from running commercials and attracting as many eyeballs as they can to their particular channel.

90th Anniversary of Armistice Day; 50,000 American soldiers who gave their lives during the First World War.



Does the Establishment in our society pause and take some time to remember them? The men who served our country and sacrificed their lives for their freedom to own commerical TV networks and stations, run mindless television programs, and receive millions of dollars for one minute television commercials.

The Answer: no.

There was nothing of any substance on television here in the United States about Veterans Day.


None of the major TV network affiliates (ABC, NBC, CBS) ran any special programming to remember the men and women who served and who are now serving this country.


There was nothing about World War One; nothing about the Armistice.

MSNBC ran about 6-7 minutes of Vice President Dick Cheney's speech at Arligton National Cemetery Veterans Day Ceremony, and then cut him off to run commericials and never returned to the Ceremony.

None of the other Cable News Networks (CNN, Fox News) showed any of the Arlington Ceremony.

I forget exactly what the other Cable News networks were talking about while the Arlington Ceremony was taking place; one station, either Fox or CNN (I think it was CNN) was talking about Michelle Obama and her impact on womens' fashion here in the United States.

CNN, about noon, did talk briefly about some WWII veterans' stories during the day (I saw about a 4 minutes segment).


None of the local major TV network affliates (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox) showed the Arlington Ceremony.


We do not have a two minutes silence that's observed in the United States.


The History Channel did run some military history programming; one show was about the Iraq war; almost all of it was about WWII.

They did run one of their "Dogfight" programs, which for about half an hour (including commerical breaks) did talk about American WWI Flying Ace Eddie Rickenbacker.

Then the second half of the show was about a WWII dogfight.


Only the Cable System Public Affairs channel, C-SPAN, showed the Arlington National Veterans Day Ceremony live.


For about 10 minutes, however, their microphone lost the sound, so they changed to some filler "talking heads" programming, but they were able to get the sound back on before the Vice President made his speech.


I watched NBC Nightly News at 6:30PM, and besides briefly mentioning that it was Veterans Day and showing Cheney lay the wreath at Arlington and Bush giving a speech at the USS Intrepid in New York City, NBC had no news segment about the First World War or the 90th Anniversary of Armistice Day.


If anyone knows if NPR Radio in the U.S. ran any special Veterans Day programming or about the Armistice and the First World War, I would appreciate your comments.



All in all, these Cable and TV networks disgust me.

It is all about making money.


That all said, there were quite a number of Hollywood movies about World War II on the Cable movie channels.

Public Broadcasting System (our public, non-commercial) also re-aired Ken Burns' 13 hour documentary about World War II called "The War".

But PBS ran nothing about the Armistice or any programs about the First World War.


Shame.

Tank Question For The Mod Leader

Just some more computer mod business stuff on the subject of Tanks:


I guess the other thing we have to remember is that, at least in 1916 (I think later on, 1917-1918, the French (who had the Renault tank) in just a few battles in 1917-1918 had several hundred tanks, but at the Somme, they were just being introduced.

So the amount of tanks was very limited.


When the tanks were introduced on September 15th, 1916 the British had 50 tanks.

About 1/3 broke down, so that left about 32 tanks.

These tanks were used to capture the town of Flers on September 16.


Of course, the Germans had no tanks at this time.

There apparently was only one tank used at Thiepval.

I think that historian I quoted who said there were 13 tanks used to capture Thiepval may have been mistaken (some historians and authors make mistakes, mispell place names, get some facts sometimes wrong, etc.).

I have a few books on the Somme, so I'll have to consult those.


I'm just trying to think which scenario would be better?


The first appearance of the tanks would allow the player to relive a historical moment.

Plus, it may help balance our Somme maps out.


I wouldn't give the British a lot of tanks on the map, I don't know, maybe like 3 tanks (with 3 men Game version crews).

I'm not sure how Gommecourt and Mouquet Farm will turn out as far as gameplay is concerned.

The Germans will be defending in those maps, with strong defenses in Gommecourt.

Mouquet Farm should be a little more level playing field, but the Germans will still be dug in the trenches, dug-outs, and shell holes.


If we gave the British 3 tanks, and say they could respawn twice, that would be 6 tanks altogether.

In real life, the Germans basically just abandoned the area and ran for their lives.

But they'll have no anti-tank weapons, maybe unless we have rifle grenades.

Thiepval might be then a more balanced if there is only one tank.


So, which scenario do you think is better? September 15 or September 26th at Thiepval??

Info zu Flandern, Pelikaan Ferm (Madonna) - Locations / Orte

Info zu Flandern, Pelikaan Ferm (Madonna) - Locations / Orte

Langemarck, 1914

The Imperial German Army made numerous attempts to break the British salient line surrounding Ypres in the fall of 1914.

Thousands of British and German soldiers were killed or wounded, although the Germans suffered substiantially higher casualties, with little gain to show for the enormous lost of men, about 20% of the killed being upper middle and middle class university and high school students.

This was Von Falkenhayn's newly reconstituted German 4th Army, replenished with the volunteers, the Freiwillige, who had rushed to join after the Great War started and were given eight weeks of military training and then sent to both the Western and Eastern Fronts.

Most were German university and high school students, who had obtained military passes to defer their studies until the war's end; but some were unemployed, older men; riff-raff like the Bavarian Army volunteer Adolf Hitler.

One of the most well-known German assaults was near Langemarck, on October 21st and 23rd, 1914.

The British SMLE rifles cut down the onrushing mass of German soldiers like scythes cutting wheat.



This battle is one of the more controversial in First World War history, because it was to later become politicized and enshrined as part of the mythology of German National Socialist ideology.

The legend created, based partially on the facts, but amplified by doctored up lies from the very beginning by the German Military and, later, Third Reich politicos, was an attempt to turn a costly defeat into a spiritual victory of sorts.


An article about the battle appears below.

I try not to get too political on this Blog, however, I have noticed that some of the university historians who write about Langemarck tend, in short, to draw a lot of conclusions about this battle that there is just, no matter how you slice it, no way they really can make final determinations and absolute conclusions about.



At best, they can speculate and offer their opinions as to what happened during the battles.

There are a number of sources, some mentioned below, that make references to Imperial German soldiers singing as they advanced into battle, including war diary and letter entries by both German and also British soldiers.



They may have sung the Deutschland song; perhaps it was a different song?



We really don't know; we were not there.




The Imperial German soldiers were fighting for a Prussian expansionist state.

But the Imperial German soldiers were not Nazis.


However, one can say that their deaths were exploited by the Imperial German military establishment and the German Empire's media of the day, who attempted to turn a military thrashing and the wasted lives of these thousands of young men, the intellectual and social elite of their youth, into a spiritual victory by labelling their deaths with the emotive phrase "Die Kindermord bei Ypern."



Again, not to get too political, but my own government in the USA, did something a little similar when the NFL Football Player, Pat Tilman, was killed in Afghanistan a few years back.

First, the military said Tilman was killed in action; I think Tilman was killed in 2004, and the 2004 Election was pending.

Well, we didn't have to wait 31 years to find the truth out; but it was not until a year or two after the 2004 Election that the real facts were disclosed.



Pat Tilman wasn't killed in action; he was killed by friendly fire and may have even been a victim of negligent homicide. This was known by U.S. military officials within hours after he had been killed.

It is said that Tilman shouted his name several times to the American military personnel that were shooting at him.



Something sort of similar to this happened in the USA in 1980s with Vietnam, with all the Rambo type movies and TV shows, but I don't have time to get into that.



Copyright 2008 by Gamburd, USA

Langemarck, Part I, 1914

WWI: Massacre of the Innocents
One of the enduring legends of the Great War, the singing attacks of German students at the First Ypres, is a curious mixture of fact and self-serving fiction--a cover-up that became a cornerstone of Nazi mythology.

By Robert Cowley

At Ypres in 1914, Germany botched its last chance to win the upper hand on the Western Front--and its last chance, perhaps, to win the Great War. From the middle of October to the middle of November, practically without letup, parts of two German armies, the Fourth and the Sixth, battered the British and French divisions clinging to a narrowing salient. Their immediate objective was Ypres, once the center of the medieval cloth trade in northern Europe; but beyond lay the last real strategic prizes of the fall, the Channel ports of Dunkirk, Calais, and Boulogne, where the British buildup was centered.

Villages, even crossroad features, with hitherto forgettable names like Bixschoote, Zonnebeke, Kortekeer Caberet, and Langemarck, gained sudden notoriety. Time and again the Germans threatened to break through, only to lose momentum or to run up against a determined improvised defense at the last moment. The "last": The repetition applies in every sense but one. Though nobody imagined it at the time, this would not be the "last" Ypres but the "First."


The losses, hideous for all concerned, were worst for the Germans. They had nothing to show for them. There would be no more turning of flanks, no more opportunity to maneuver, no occupation of the Channel ports. The war in the West had hardened into a trench stalemate. How could Germany's military and political leaders rationalize the disaster at home? How could they put the best heroic gloss--a favorable spin, as we might say--on the shambles of their hopes? Out of this public relations dilemma, apparently, grew one of the enduring legends of the Great War: the massacre of the singing innocents at Ypres.

Few caught the essence of the story better, if with less regard for the truth, than Adolf Hitler, then a private in the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment. In Mein Kampf, he describes his baptism by fire--or, as he put it, the "iron salute" he received near Gheluvelt on October 29:

With feverish eyes each one of us was drawn forward faster and faster over turnip fields and hedges till suddenly the fight began, the fight of man against man. But from the distance the sounds of a song met our ears, coming nearer and nearer, passing from company to company, and then, while Death busily plunged his hand into our rows, the song reached also us, and now we passed it on: "Deutschland, Deutschland Über alles, über alles in der Welt!"

By the time Hitler wrote those lines in 1924, while incarcerated for his part in the failed Munich putsch, the invention of myth and not the establishment of fact was uppermost in his mind. In this instance, Hitler was busy pushing what would become one of the most persistent semi-fictions of the interwar period and a cornerstone of the Nazi experience, a vision of manly young patriots sacrificing their lives for the greater good of the Fatherland. This was the story of Der Kindermord bei Ypern--the so-called massacre of the innocents at Ypres. The "innocents" were the student volunteers in the German reserve corps, who were slaughtered in droves but who went to their deaths singing. In German Bibles, the word kindermord was also applied to the children Herod killed after the visit of the Magi, and it had, in both cases, the connotation of "holy innocents."

The story even has its own special locus, the village of Langemarck on the north face of the Salient, and date, November 10, 1914--in both location and day some distance from Hitler. According to the next day's official army bulletin, which appeared on the front pages of many German newspapers, "West of Langemarck youthful regiments stormed the first lines of the enemy trenches and took them, singing 'Deutschland, Deutschland über alles.'" They took approximately 2,000 prisoners, the dispatch concluded, French regulars all. The carefully crafted story, notably repeated in accounts published during the Third Reich, is basically this: The student volunteers, called the children's corps "by mocking veterans," advance silently in the fog, "a wide sea of white air," as one memoirist puts it. There is no preliminary artillery barrage that might tip off the enemy. The volunteers are discovered anyway, and fire from a source they cannot see chops down their close-packed rows. They continue to throw themselves "into this hell with childlike trust." But nothing avails. They lie in the open, unable to advance or retreat. "In this hour, they have become men."

Then the miracle happens. A voice rises in song, then another and another takes up "the holy words." The young soldiers rise up as one and storm forward; they sing as they run. Some are helmetless, their heads wrapped in bloody bandages. With their "burning eyes" they are like "unreal figures from an old saga." In some versions, the volunteers sweep over the enemy trenches; in others, the song dies as they die, and silent grey heaps litter the damp fields in front of Langemarck.

There are all manner of things wrong with the story, beginning with that official dispatch. The singing volunteers took no Allied trenches at Langemarck on November 10. The one incident that comes close to matching the words of the dispatch took place a day earlier. It is recorded in the daily diary of the 206th Reserve Infantry Regiment, published as part of the history of the regiment in 1931. Regimental histories can be the meat and potatoes of military history, but seventeen years had passed since the event, time enough for the author, one Werner Maywald, to stupid into, and insert, some of the more improbable details of the story--including the singing of the most patriotic German song, a tune that is not easy to carry under normal circumstances. (Imagine American troops under fire trying to mouth the words of "The Star Spangled Banner.")

At six in the morning on the 9th, the diary reports, soldiers with unloaded rifles and fixed bayonets leave their lines "almost noiselessly." But French troops detect their advance and begin to fire. At that moment the singing starts. It "reaches heaven like a cry for help: first one man, then a small group, then more and more, until the entire advance sings, "'Deutschland, Deutschland über alles!' Even the wounded sing. The words are on the last breaths of the dying." The attack sweeps over the French lines, taking fourteen officers and 1,154 men prisoner, mostly older soldiers from territorial regiments--the equivalent of our National Guard--but not regulars, whose capture by green German troops would have added luster to the exploit.

Unfortunately for the myth, the November 9th incident did not occur at Langemarck but three miles away at a village called Bixschoote. Beck-skota: that rough, turnip-eating name does not lend itself to myth in the same way that the vaguely Teutonic vibrations of Langemarck do. As one former student volunteer put it in 1933, the first year of Hitler's reign, "the name sounds like a heroic legend." That the actual village had, both in 1914 and in its postwar resurrection, a drably brickbound and distinctly unheroic look seemed beside the point.

But the single dispatch is only the beginning of the confusion that the myth-makers wrought. When we look at contemporary accounts and regimental histories, we come up against an inconvenient fact. There seem to have been not just one Langemarck but several, both in this sector and in others miles away. They occurred on various dates, as early as October 21 and as late as November 16. During that three-week period, singing attacks were reported everywhere from the Yser to the Langemarck sector to Neuve Chapelle, twenty-five miles to the south.

In his diary entry of October 27, for example, a junior staff officer named Rudolf Binding (who was several miles away from Langemarck, at the German-occupied village of Passchendaele) laments that against experienced defenders "these young fellows we have, only just trained, are too helpless, particularly when the officers have been killed." Binding, later to become a prominent man of letters, goes on to note that a battalion of light infantry, or Jäger, "almost all Marburg students . . . have suffered terribly from enemy shell-fire." And then: "In the next division, just such young souls, the intellectual flower of Germany, went singing into an attack on Langemarck, just as vain and just as costly." Binding gives no date, but since the Germans temporarily suspended their attacks in the Langemarck sector on October 24, the episode he refers to must have taken place earlier. But then, for all their curious similarity, accounts don't always agree on chronology. This includes Hitler's--if, indeed, he actually did hear singing. He was even farther from Langemarck than Binding.

Allied eyewitness reports only add to the confusion. The closest to Langemarck that a singing attack comes is in the village of Koekuit--no more than a narrowing of the road, actually, about a mile to the north. A battalion of the Gloucester Regiment reported it on the 21st, and the attack did force the British to retreat toward Langemarck. There are military historians who point to that episode. On the same day, at Zonnebeke, five miles away, one of the "old contemptibles" (as the British regulars called themselves) remembered how German volunteers spilled down the ridge from Passchendaele "singing and waving their rifles in the air." It was, you might say, 1917 in reverse. "As fast as we shot them down, others took their place. Even when their own artillery barrage caught them by mistake, they kept on advancing. They were incredibly, ridiculously brave."

The next day, October 22, at a place called Kortekeer Caberet (named after a crossroads estaminet), about a mile west of Langemarck, Einjährige--volunteers--of the 46th Reserve Division attacked other units of the perilously overstretched Gloucestershires. According to the regimental war narratives, it was "a particularly fine feat of arms. . . . These lads . . . advanced with the utmost determination, singing patriotic songs, and though suffering appalling casualties, actually succeeded in driving back their seasoned opponents." (The British would in turn drive the Einjährige back to their starting point.)

At least one British description--of an action in the same area on October 23--seems to stupid into the script for the legend, though it also raises questions. This time the attacking volunteers wear not the regulation spiked Pickelhauben but what appear to be student caps. (Did the British confuse them with Feldmützen, or field caps? It is not unlikely.) The defenders hear the distant sound of voices raised in song; the volunteers surge forward, arm-in-arm. (If that is true, how did they hold their rifles?) In the event, batteries firing over open sights, as well as the famously disciplined rifles of the British regulars, blow them away.

Word of the singing attacks got back to London. Sir Henry Wilson, the British deputy chief of staff, crowed in the October 24 entry of his diary about yet another killing extravaganza some miles from Langemarck: "The I Corps really took tea with the Germans. . . . These Germans attacked five times in close formations singing 'Die Wacht am Rhein' and the place became a shambles. They must have had 6,000 or 7,000 casualties"--surely a vast overestimation.

Perhaps the final recorded instances of the singing attacks in Ypres occurred on two days very late in the battle, November 14 and 16. Both were against the French (the badly mauled British were by then being pulled out of the Salient), and both happened near Bixschoote; they are noted in the journal of the commander of the French 26th Infantry Regiment, Lt. Col. Henri Colin. November 14 began with hailstorms and German assaults; the fighting continued, practically without letup, until dark. Reports began to filter back to Colin in his command post of close, desperate struggles over farm buildings, bits of tattered woodland, and shallow impromptu trenches that were already filling with water. A noncom ran up, out of breath, and blurted out that his company had been almost annihilated. He told Colin that his company commander had been killed, but not before dispatching a German officer with his revolver. Later, Colin's surviving company commanders would describe an even wilder sight in this "day of terrible distress." With fanatic élan, masses of fresh young German troops had thrown themselves at the thin French line, "singing and shouting insults at us. They were finally driven off, leaving a great number of corpses on the ground."

But how are we to take the odd, ghastly episode that Colin records two days later? There may be more to it than met the eye. The first snow had just fallen, and the weather, as much as the rapidly diminishing ardor of the combatants, was about to shut down serious fighting for the next few months.

Langemarck Part II, 1914

16 November--Day of Belgian fog . . .

The Germans renewed their epic attacks in which, to make up for their inexperience, the young recruits advanced shoulder to shoulder in a column four men abreast, and singing "Deutschland über alles." It was crazy . . . the human cost meant nothing to them.

Could men have been sent into battle that way? It is a bit improbable. The four-abreast column suggests another scenario. As the tactical historian Bruce I. Gudmundsson points out, this was the marching order German troops adopted when passing through towns or going up to the front. Had the volunteers, singing to keep up their spirits, become lost in the impenetrable murk and blundered into the waiting guns of the French--who must have heard their invisible coming from a long way off? If so, it would be hard to find a better example of the "fog" of war.

The singing attacks happened. Though in a signal twist of the story, recent German historians deny that they did, there is plenty of evidence for them. But their reality is far less exalted and ennobling than the legend would have it.

Begin with the matter of place. Apparently, none of the singing attacks came closer than a mile from Langemarck--and in Western Front terms that might as well have been five or fifty. The Germans did not take the village until the following April, when the French abandoned it during the opening hours of the first poison gas attack. But, in fact, Langemarck did become a convenient generic description for the battles that raged along the whole northern sector of the Salient that fall, the area where most of the reserve divisions, to which the volunteers belonged, were thrown in. On that score--but on that score alone--it would be wrong to fault the legend too harshly.

Why would men sing going into an attack? Except as the stuff of Nazi-era p.r., mystical miracles played no part. Among poorly trained soldiers--as most of the volunteers were--singing must have helped to sustain morale and cohesion in the face of unexpected and disconcertingly heavy casualties, including the loss of most of their officers. Singing performed the function of the defunct battlefield drum, allowing units to keep in touch amid the confusion of noise, autumn fogs, unexpected ditches and hedgerows, contradictory orders, and unseen enemies. Singing familiar soldier songs may also have lessened the danger of friendly fire. Still, that the volunteers sang all that much seems unlikely. It is just that when they did, everyone noticed.

But the myth does not square with the most important fact of all. The majority of men in the reserve regiments were not even students. Recent research indicates that only 18 percent were, and that included teachers, hardly the youths of later legend. "The number of actual volunteers serving in the [reserve] regiments was considerable," George L. Mosse writes, "but most of those who fell in battle were older conscripts or men who had been in the reserves, fathers of families, men settled in their trade or profession." The volunteers, on the other hand, were mostly young men who had mobbed the recruiting depots in August: they had either been exempted from military service while they finished their studies or had escaped being called up because the peacetime army could only handle about half of those legally obligated to spend two years on active duty.

The volunteers went into action two months later not just under- but improperly trained. Their instructors had been mainly older NCOs who taught the close-order tactics favored at the turn of the century, in which men charged in waves, shoulder-to-shoulder, or in squares that would have done justice to a Napoleonic battlefield. Regular officers, especially lieutenants, were in short supply, and the few the reservists did have often led them into battle without maps. It was hardly surprising that they occasionally blundered into enemy lines. As a rule, the better the reserve regiments were trained--which is to say, the smaller the proportion of raw volunteers--the less likely they were to move forward in vulnerable tight-packed skirmish lines, or to rely on song under stress.

One thing is incontrovertible about those attacks. A massacre had taken place, a massacre of innocents in the military sense, and one that deprived Germany of the human potential that a nation wastes at its peril. The violent depletion of the six reserve divisions that fought from Gheluvelt to the Yser was particularly cruel. They lost an average of 6,800 men per division, or about half the infantrymen in each. In the month of fighting around Ypres, some 6,000 were killed in the reserve regiments alone. Their premature commitment to battle was, according to the military historian Dennis E. Showalter, "one of the great mistakes of the World War."

A disturbing command pattern was taking shape: The willingness of Western Front general staffs to continue an offensive long after the prospect of a reasonable return on the investment of lives and materiel had ceased. At Ypres, Germany had suffered its fourth major defeat since September, and one that, coming on the heels of the Marne and the battles for Nancy and the Yser, not only ratified stalemate but ended Germany's chances for a quick victory in the west.

Ypres was the only one of the four that assumed mythic proportions. With casualties somewhere above 100,000, of whom as many as 30,000 were dead, perhaps it had to. The famous army bulletin of November 11--prophetic date--about the youthful regiments at Langemarck must be seen, Mosse writes, "against the background of the rapidly declining enthusiasm of the troops themselves. The myth was necessary, and though it could not influence the soldiers in the trenches, it had an impact on the home front and especially . . . after the war was lost."

The bulletin no doubt originated as an attempted cover-up, but it succeeded beyond the wildest expectations of its designers. Der Kindermord bei Ypern would become the Kosovo of the Third Reich, and like the great and terminal defeat of the Serbs by the Turks in 1389, this debacle would be transformed into a holy memory, a moral victory. Would it be churlish to suggest, moreover, that the myth served another purpose? Langemarck was the sector where, the following April, the Germans first released poison gas on the Western Front--and finally took the village. (By this time singing attacks were already a curiosity of the past.) But as far as the home front was concerned, the guilt of a possible war crime would be forever overshadowed, and nullified, by the transfiguring image of a sacrifice raised in song.

In the years that followed, notes the German historian Bernd Hüppauf, the November 11 press release would be glorified in "novels, poetry, dramas and stage performances, (pseudo-)philosophical reflections, public celebrations and monuments, in institutions such as the army, schools and universities, youth organizations and, finally, an NS [National Socialist] program of advanced studies." On the first anniversary of the bulletin, a time when the affliction of stasis had long since begun to spread to the home front, newspapers all over Germany published editorial reflections on the "Day of Langemarck," with the inevitable conclusion that November 10 be made a national day of remembrance. After the war, student and veteran organizations would regularly repeat the suggestions, although the Weimar Republic never acted on it. Not even literature was immune. The hero of Thomas Mann's 1924 MThe Magic Mountain stumbles across a gunswept Flanders turnip field, his voice raised in a song of love and loneliness--a far more likely choice than "Deutschland über alles."

The Nazis in particular seized on the story and exploited it. Langemarck, writes Hüppauf, served as a lure "for the educated youth longing for metaphysical shelter and meaning in history." Once Hitler and the Nazis came to power, Langemarck was chosen as the day on which the party inducted students, and after 1938, every member of the Hitler Youth paid a compulsory fee, known as the Langemarck-Pfennig. As a party publicist put it, "National Socialism and Langemarck are one and the same."

There is a place that comes close to being a monument to the student myth--in fact it was specifically created with that in mind. It is the huge but eerily compact German military cemetery just north of Langemarck---in military mortuary parlance, a concentration cemetery. The phrase, in light of subsequent history, is not without irony. What remains of almost 45,000 men lies beneath its placid lawns, including those who were killed at the First Ypres.

The designers of the Langemarck cemetery (which was consecrated in a July 1932 ceremony already heavy with Nazi oratory) tried hard to make the place seem user-friendly, a bit of Germany transplanted. Oaks rise to a modest height, muffling the lawns in shadow. Germans consider the oak, with its symbolic strength, to be their tree. "Nature itself," writes Mosse, "was to serve as a living memorial: The German wood was a fitting setting for the cult of the fallen." Nature's rejuvenating powers would reshape the memory of the war, removing the curse of defeat in the process.

But unnatural things intrude: The reason for this place can't be denied. You feel it in the presence of a pair of blockhouses squatting side by side in the newer, northern section of the cemetery, which is more related to the later years of the war than to that first autumn. Their concrete was probably mixed with high-grade sand imported from the Rhine--another bit of Germany transplanted--but the heavy weight of permanence has caused them to sink so deep into the alien Belgian clay that today only the top foot or so of their entrances shows above ground.

You feel that reason, too, in a discreet low-walled rectangle, its inner surface covered with hemlock shrubs. You pace it out to be roughly seventy by forty feet, a surprisingly small receptacle for the bones of 24,834 men, including no doubt some of the singers in the mists, a calcareous jumble of premature terminations dumped there in the 1930s. Nine men per square foot: eternity at rush hour.

You pause for a moment inside the bunkerlike redstone gatehouse. Behind fretwork screens of iron lilybursts is a chapel memorializing the students slain here in 1914 and known to be buried in the Langemarck cemetery. The official register notes that there are 6,313 names on the oakwood panels of that somber room. The question is, how many of those were actually students? Given the percentage of the reserve regiments that Mosse cites--eighteen, with teachers--there is no way they could all be. Based on that, just over 1,000 would be more like it: bad enough for the future merito-cracy of Germany, a fatal undertow, you might say, in the national gene pool. But if you extend that 6,000-plus figure to include most of the reservists killed at the First Ypres, you probably have a pretty fair estimate of their toll.

The Nazis may be gone, but the myth they promoted lives after them.

This article was written by Robert Cowley and originally published in MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History in Spring 1998.

Landsturm und Landwehr Explained

Someone from the Great War Forum explained these two Imperial German Military branches rather well:

The organization of the various reserve categories of the German Army is somewhat complicated. Perhaps the simplest way to explain it is to give the career of a typical citizen-soldier during the long peace enjoyed by the German Empire between its foundation (1871) and the outbreak of World War I (1914). For the sake of the story, let us call him 'Hans'.

At age 17, Hans is enrolled in the Landsturm. For most practical purposes, this is the equivalent of registering for conscription. However, in case of dire emergency (invasion and such), he could be called out with the rest of the Landsturm.

At age 20, Hans presents himself for examination. If he is selected for active service, he serves with the colours for two or three years.

Upon finishing his term of active service, Hans passes into the Reserve. He will stay there for a period of time determined by the following formula: seven years minus the number of years served with the colours.

At the end of his time in the Reserve, Hans (who is now 27) passes into first levy (1. Ban) of the Landwehr. He serves in that capacity for five years.

After five years in the first levy of the Landwehr, Hans (at the age of 32) passes into the second levy (2. Ban) of the Landwehr, where he will serve until he reaches the age of 39.

At the age of 45, Hans returns to the Landsturm.

In the early days of the Empire, the distinction between the various classes of reserve service were reasonably important. There was, for example, a good chance that members of the Reserve and the 1. Ban of the Landwehr would be called out for several weeks worth of refresher training every few years. As time went by, however, these refresher exercises became less and less common, and the passing from one category to another was largely a matter of paperwork.

And what about training?

The second levy (2. Ban) of the Landwehr had no training commitment whatsoever. The training commitment of first levy (1. Ban) varied from one period of time to another, as well as from one arm to the other.

In the years immediately after 1871, most peacetime units in the German Army mobilised two wartime units - an active unit (composed of soldiers with the colours and reservists) and a Landwehr unit (composed of men from the Landwehr). After the introduction of two year service, however, the number of reservists produced by each peacetime unit increased considerably. This led to a situation where there were far more reservists than were needed to fill out the ranks of active units and far more Landwehr men than were needed to fill out the ranks of Landwehr units.

The writers of mobilisation plans responded to this 'embarassment of riches' by making provision for a third category of wartime units. Units of this category, which were known as Reserve units, were composed of older reservists and younger Landwehr men. As their members had, on average, served with the colours more recently than the members of old-fashioned Landwehr units, these Reserve units needed less in the way of refresher training. At the same time, they took over many of the more demanding tasks that had previously set aside for Landwehr units. This, in turn, reduced the requirement for refresher training forLandwehr men.

The periods of refresher training, which could last as long as eight weeks, were also increasingly unpopular with both the men who were called and their civilian employers. In 1871, a very large percentage of the German population was engaged in agriculture. Thus, a period of training that took place in the 'off season' offered both additional income and a welcome change of pace. In the years that followed, however, the progress of industrialisation and urbanisation converted this periods of training into an increasingly onerous burden for many reservists and Landwehr men. There was thus considerable political pressure to reduce both their frequency and duration.

Terrain Models

We can use these miniature buildings as models for the buildings of the French village of Loos.

I think the Gheluvelt map will just have the Chateau and other related building (stables, etc.).

Someone may someday make a Gheluvelt II map, depicting the Worsters clearing the Belgian village of German and Bavarian soldiers.

http://www.tmterrain.com/

http://www.jrminiatures.net/

http://www.warweb.com/index.php

Early WWI Imperial German Uniforms

The big knapsack that the early German soldiers wore and then sort of began discarding during First Ypres, I think:




I am not certain, but it looks like the Officer and soldier wearing the Pickelhaubes are wearing the second version of the original 1914 M1910 uniform that was also issued in September (?) 1914.

Or, it could just be a special design for the Prussian Guards battalions(?).

Early WWI British Grenades

http://z15.invisionfree.com/Iron_Europe/index.php?showtopic=75



Cricket Ball Grenade No. 15, used extensively at Loos (1915):

http://members.fortunecity.com/milit/ukgrenades.htm


Mark I Grenade (1914):

These are replicas; I think the streamer would have been tucked under the metal widget at the middle of the nade:

http://www.khakidevil.co.uk/Grenades.html

Mouquet Farm: Aboriginal Soldiers

Need to include some of these facts in Mouquet Farm Intro:

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/national/brave-family-spurned-by-land-they-served/2007/05/27/1180205078964.html

The Lovetts are Gunditjmara people from Victoria's western districts. Known as "the Fighting Gunditjmara", they fought white settlers in what is known as the Eumaralla War and, having lost that one, fought overseas on the side of those who took their land.

Dozens of people from the Lovett, McDonald, Rose and Saunders families from Lake Condah Mission, near Hamilton, went to war. Reg Saunders, the first Aborigine to become an officer, fought with the 6th Division in the Middle East, New Guinea and then Korea. Others fought in Vietnam. Ricky Morris, grandson of Frederick Lovett, who served in both world wars, went with peacekeeping troops to East Timor.

Most of the Lovetts are descendants of Hannah Lovett, who died in 1946, aged 91. Five of her 12 children - Alfred, Leonard, Edward, Frederick and Herbert - served overseas in World War I.

Alfred, the eldest, fought with the 26th and 12th battalions on the Somme in 1916, including the battles at Pozieres and Mouquet Farm. Frederick served with the 4th Light Horse in Palestine. Leonard was with the infantry of the 39th Battalion, part of the 3rd Division, which fought around Passchendaele in 1917 and in the crucial struggle around Amiens in 1918. Edward served with the 4th, then the 13th Light Horse, which patrolled on the Western Front. Herbert was with the 5th Division, his machine-gun company fighting in the successful attack on the Hindenburg Line in 1918.

Hannah's youngest son, Samuel, was too young to go to that war but joined Edward, Frederick and Herbert in World War II. The three older men were too old to fight abroad but served in garrison and catering units.

Two female Lovetts - Alice and Pearl - are among the 20. Alice joined the WAAF in 1941; her son, Mervyn McDonald, was wounded in Vietnam. One of Granny Lovett's grandsons, Murray, was with the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan, while three others served in Korea.

After World War II, Herbert Lovett put his case for a block of soldier-settlement land around the former Lake Condah mission, once the homeland of the Gunditjmara people. His application was refused; returned white soldiers were granted the land.

Johnny Lovett, Herbert's son, said the injustice still hurt, although he was pleased that the Aboriginal contribution was honoured yesterday. There was some consolation from the Federal Court in March, when it gave the Gunditjmara non-exclusive native title rights over 140,000 hectares of Crown land and waters.

According to Gunditjmara lore, there had been small consolation after World War II, too. Refused a drink in a pub, the Lovetts had taken control of the hotel, drunk what they wanted, shot bottles off a shelf, and retired in peace.

Source: The Sun-Herald



Working on my final Mouquet Farm Intro paragraph:

In the summer of 1916, Mouquet Farm would reap a harvest not of wheat, but of thousands of human corpses. The total casualties incurred in attempting to take the farm from 7 August to 12 September cannot have been much short of 20,000 men, and the fallen included Britons, Canadians, Tasmanians, but the bulk of the men lost were from Australia.

Also, at least one man who fought at Mouquet Farm, Private Alfred Lovett, was from the Gunditjmara Aborigines (known as the 'Fighting Gunditjmara') from Lake Condah Mission in the Victoria state's western districts, near Hamilton; it is possible, though not known, that some other Aboriginal men fought at Mouquet Farm; dozens of men from the McDonald, Rose, Saunders, as well as the Lovett families from the Mission joined the A.I.F. and fought on the Western Front during the First World War.

The Australian Imperial Force's casualties (including Tasmanians and possibly some men of Aboriginal ancestry)numbered 15,400 out of the 20,000 men killed or wounded.

WWI Photo Archives

http://www.webshots.com/explains/news/ww1.html

U.S. Army Information

We will not have the U.S. Army until after we have added the French, and perhaps completed at least one more edition of the Mod (either Austro-Hungary versus Italy, since a few of our Team members are from that region of the world, or WWI in Africa; there's a slim chance the U.S. may be included in the French Mod, representing the two historical Democratic Republics, but it is a very slim chance).

Illinois regiment

http://www.il.ngb.army.mil/Museum/Past/ww1/PastWWI.htm

http://www.soldierssongs.com/students.html

Imperial German Army Information

http://users.hunterlink.net.au/~maampo/militaer/milindex.html

http://johnsmilitaryhistory.com/stormtrooper.html

Imperial German Sniper Gewehr 98 with Scope

Just more work from the Iron Europe Forum:



OK, I found some photos of a WWI Telescopic site.

I don't think it is an X4 site

The standard Gewehr 98 had to be modified.

They had to cut a piece out and turn the bolt down.

This is what I've found so far (in French language, but the English Wikipedia in the "Gewehr 98" entry explains the Sniper version of the Gewehr 98, and looks like it translated the French description word for word; just go to Wikipedia):

http://tirmilitairefabrice.ifrance.com/site%20mauser1/Mauser.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gewehr_98

Description of Gheluvelt Chateau, October 1914

Recollection of Chaplain Major Edmund Kennedy:

From the neighbourhood of Zandvoorde my unit was hurriedly moved to
Gheluvelt, which was then threatened by a German force approaching from
the direction of Bercelaire.

Here the whole population was in a state of indescribable anxiety and
fear, which it was impossible to remove, for the shells were more
convincing than any arguments we could bring to bear.

Our Head-quarters were established at a Xaverian Brotherhood; the
superior of which--a dear old gentleman--did his utmost to ensure our
comfort. It was weary work hanging about all day awaiting results.
Towards evening I thought it wise to get a sleep, and so turned in about
five o'clock. During these days of constant anxiety, owing to the
proximity of the enemy, we seldom or never removed our clothes,--I had
not had mine off for over a week at that time--thus we were ready for
any emergency, at any time.

From the village of Gheluvelt we moved on a mile nearer to Ypres, where
we billeted in the Chateau de Gheluvelt, from which the owner (Monsieur
Peerebone) and his family had evidently departed in great haste. Finely
situated in a well wooded park, the house was most splendidly equipped
in every respect. The pictures, statuary and furniture were in keeping
with the outward appearance of the place. It was interesting to notice
the different manner of dealing with other people's property in vogue
with the British, in contrast with the German method; so rigid was our
O.C. that not even a vegetable was allowed to be taken from the
well-stocked walled garden, close by the mansion; a sentry being placed
to prevent any hungry 'Tommy' gratifying his desire in that quarter.

Towards evening a general engagement took place, and there was very
heavy shelling. Several shells struck the house, but none of us were
injured. On the following morning I was called to an advanced outpost of
the Scots Guards, to bury Sergeant Wilson, of Lord Esme Gordon's
Company. On reaching the line I found the Battalion about to advance
into action in extended order, and the man had been hurriedly buried. On
my way back I joined Captain Hamilton Wedderburn, Adjutant, who had been
ordered to the rear suffering from appendicitis. I had met this
officer's father, Colonel Hamilton, who resided in my neighbourhood at
home.

During the night several wounded men came in, and the large salon
presented a weird appearance as the doctors attended the suffering men.
No cooking was allowed, and all windows were carefully curtained, in
order not to draw the fire of the enemy, who were in very unpleasant
proximity to the house. I well remember next morning, because the
Germans had got the range to a nicety, and the otherwise enjoyable place
was rendered unbearable by the crash of shells. So unhealthy grew the
position, that the transport was moved a mile away; but we who composed
the tent section remained to deal with any men who were brought in. It
is astonishing how quickly one grows accustomed to 'fire,' and a very
short experience enabled us to go about our work, under risky
circumstances, in the most ordinary manner.

The nights at this time were very dark, and at several points we could
see burning farm homesteads and villages, which to the thoughtful mind
denoted the awful destruction and suffering envolved by the ghastly
outrage upon humanity, being perpetrated by the enemy.

We left the chateau very suddenly, owing to heavy shelling. Some of our
men were hit, and two of our 'mess' had horses killed under them, but
otherwise we managed to get clear from a decidedly dangerous position.
That night it was pitch dark, and we halted on the roadside, some two or
three miles west of Gheluvelt. It was pouring with rain as we ate our
meal of cold rations; we could not even enjoy a comforting smoke, as the
lighting of a match would have been certain to draw the fire of our
vigilant foe. Mr. Jaffray and I both agreed that a night's lodging in a
damp ditch was hardly consonant with our wishes, and therefore we set
out for the hamlet of Halte, where the railway crosses the road, in
hopes that we might find cover of some sort.

Leading our horses very cautiously along the road, for sentinels were
posted in every direction, and at such 'nervy' times men frequently fire
before they challenge, we made our way to a small estaminet which we
found crammed with French soldiers. I pleaded hard for even a chair, but
the proprietor assured me of the impossibility of offering even this
very slender hospitality. I was fortunate to meet MacKenzie, the
Transport officer of the Scots Guards, who introduced me to a French
officer, who in turn interested the landlady's daughter in our forlorn
condition. This kind angel of mercy informed me that her married sister
lived at a farm near by, and she thought that there was a bedroom that
Mr. Jaffray and I might make use of. Accordingly, holding my reins in
one hand and my fair guide's hand in the other, I was led through pitch
darkness for some distance, and presently found myself in a huge Belgian
farm kitchen, crammed with French soldiers and smelling horribly of
garlic. Yes! the farmer could let us have his bedroom for the night, at
a small remuneration, as he and his wife had decided to stay up;
accordingly, we were shown into an exceedingly small room, some eight
feet square, in which was a bed the covering of which made one shudder
to look at; but any port in a storm; and we accordingly doubled up the
best way we could on a bed some two feet too short for us. As we vainly
tried to fall asleep, my batman suddenly turned up,--how he found our
quarters will always be a mystery to me--with the news that the column
had moved off to some place which he could not pronounce. I showed him
my map and asked him if he recognized any name in the locality, but
finding that he was as much at sea as to the destination of the unit as
I was, I determined that it was useless to attempt to explore that part
of Belgium in the darkness of a soaking night; so stowing my servant
away in the corner of the kitchen, we did our best to get a few hours'
sleep. In the first grey of the dawn we arose and ate a little black
bread and very salt bacon, washed down with some execrable coffee, then
leading our horses out of the cowhouse in which we had installed them
the night before, and from which we had had to turn out a couple of very
evil-smelling beasts, we sallied forth to the apparently hopeless task
of discovering the direction in which the column had moved. One's
deductive faculty had to be drawn upon largely. Presently we found
ourselves at Zillebeke, where we were held up by the Northumberland
Hussars, who came by in splendid order on their way to entering action.
Standing by my side was a Staff officer who had dismounted from his car,
awaiting the passage of the cavalry. I explained to him our difficulty,
and he said that he rather thought our unit was with the 10th Hussars
at Zandvoorde, some four miles away, and very kindly offered me a lift.
My horse had contracted a terrible cold and was hardly fit to ride, so
placing him in charge of my batman, I arranged to drive on in the car,
leaving Mr. Jaffray and my servant to follow. The friendly officer
turned out to be Lord Nairne, who was, unfortunately, killed a few days
afterwards.

On reaching the village of Zandvoorde, I encountered a terrible sight.
The enemy was approaching from two sides, and shelling hard. The place
was a slaughter-house; never have I seen so ghastly a sight. The
doctors, with their coats off and shirt sleeves rolled up, looked more
like butchers than medical men, and for an hour or two I found my hands
full in the saddest of all work, dealing with dying men.

As I was eating a hasty breakfast--for in campaigning one learns the
value of sleeping and eating whenever a chance presents itself--the
O.C. came to me saying that some one must get through to Ypres, to stop
the transport that was about to come out, and also to warn the major of
the serious condition of affairs at Zandvoorde. Would I go? Such an
opportunity of doing 'a real bit' only comes now and again, therefore it
was not difficult to decide.

I had a foretaste of what I was presently to pass through, as, sitting
on the doorstep of a cottage, I was changing into riding boots, out of
the heavy Swiss climbing boots that I had been wearing, and which
threatened to be awkward in the stirrups, if by any chance I was thrown,
a not unlikely event under fire, when a shrapnel burst some twenty feet
from me, with an explosion which almost lifted me from the ground. The
door before which I sat, and the front of the cottage, were liberally
studded with bullets and pieces of the casing, but in a most
providential manner I was untouched. Very quickly I completed my change
of boots, and got my kit-bag once more stowed away in a transport wagon.
Strictest orders had been given that no kits were to be removed from the
wagon, and I hope that the O.C., if ever he discovers my delinquency,
will take into consideration the urgency of my desire to fulfil
instructions in the carrying of his orders into Ypres.

For three miles, right over 'Hill 60,' I had the ride of my life. Shells
were bursting in every direction, but my good horse struggled on gamely.
By this time he had come to know the import of the shrieking whistle
which betokens the approach of a shell, but he displayed no more concern
than a momentary quiver as it burst. As for me I could only place myself
in God's hands, and well remember how, as each shell approached, I
repeated that comforting word from Isaiah xxvi. 3, 'Thou wilt keep him
in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in
thee.' Over and over again I repeated 'because he trusteth in thee.' And
then bang! bang! and once more the danger was past.

The road was crowded with terrified people, literally fleeing for their
lives, and as I got out of the range of fire, I tried to comfort them in
the best way I could.

Reaching Ypres I delivered my message, and then sank down and fell into
a deep sleep for four hours. I suppose it was a kind of reaction from
the nervous strain.

I found Ypres crammed with wounded men, and worked hard there for the
next day or two. Many were the distressing cases that came under my
attention.

It was on October 23 that I received my first batch of letters from
home, and the first opportunity I stole away into a quiet corner and
enjoyed myself to my heart's content.

Useful WWI Information

I really just use this blog site as a workspace for the Iron Europe Red Orchestra PC Modification game.

Here are some interesting websites I found about the Great War:

1) The Great War Society:

http://www.worldwar1.com/tripwire/smtw.htm

http://www.worldwar1.com/tgws/

2)Books on the French Army:

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://jeanluc.dron.free.fr/th/Bibliographie2.htm&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=7&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3D160e%2BRegiment%2Bd%2527infanterie,%2BFrance%26start%3D10%26hl%3Den%26rls%3DGGLF,GGLF:2006-39,GGLF:en%26sa%3DN

Personal account of First Ypres:

http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/9/3/3/19339/19339.htm

Iron Europe Forum And Website

Here is the link to our Iron Europe: 1914-1918 Forum and Website:



http://z15.invisionfree.com/Iron_Europe/index.php



We welcome people to register; that shows us that people are interested in this computer modification of Tripwire International's first person shooter: "Red Orchestra: OstFront 1941-1945".

And if you perchance would like to help out on making this modification, we welcome everyone. We just communicate at the Forum and using emails from time to time.

We need researchers and writers (which is what I do, and no computer skills are required).

We also need people who are willing to learn computer modeling, map making, coding, and who are knowledgeable about sound.

We will be using Unreal Technology 3.0 in the "beta" edition of the Mod (short for computer modification), but are using Unreal Tech(UT)2.5 right now to make everything and the character player models.

You don't need any experience in these skills, so our Mod is a good place for beginners; of course, people with prior modding skills using other game engines, or who are experienced in UT are always welcome.

If you are interested, please either live a message here, with contact information, or you can Privat Message me at the Iron Europe Forum after you register.


Gamburd

Mouquet Farm: Second Draft

I still need to change some things, make corrections, fact check, and stuff like that, but hopefully I can get this done soon.



Mouquet Farm: Australian Introduction


The time is 0445 hrs., 26 August, 1916


"My bottle's dry as a dead dingo's donger!"

The Australian 2nd Division is in the frontlines near Mouquet Farm, about five miles north of the River Somme and about one and a half miles east of the Somme's tributary, the River Ancre, in Picardy, France.

The advance from the summit of Pozieres Ridge to Mouquet Farm has lasted for almost three weeks now and has been painfully slow.

The landscape looks like something from the planet Mars: a sea of blown up reddish chesnut colored earth pierced by thousands of red shell craters.

The only signs of human civilization are an overturned abandoned wagon on the horizon, and several piles of white rubble with some beams of wood protruding from them: Mouquet Farm.

When the 2nd Division came over the slope to the frontlines facing Mouquet Farm during the early evening of August 22, just eighty-two hours ago, an intense barrage from the German lines of shrapnel and high-explosive shells immediately descended on the whole area from Mouquet Farm to Pozieres, lasting from 6:00PM until midnight, and Lieutenant W.A. Coward of the 24th Battalion was killed.

The Germans have an advantageous position; Mouquet Farm and their trench lines are on the top of a gentle rising slope, and thus they can see any movement along Poziers Ridge and the Australian frontlines by day.

The German artillery shells fall for hours at a time like a deadly cosmic storm, killing, maiming, and burying the men in your battalion.

Because of the heavy German barrages, communications is severely impaired and telephone lines cannot be maintained.

Instead, foot messengers are used to send messages; it takes them several hours from the frontlines to reach Brigade Headquarters which is a little less than 1,000 yards away from Pozieres Cemetery.

You have heard stories from the men being relieved that our own artillery has killed scores of our own men through friendly fire, and continued to shell our frontlines, even after messengers were sent, because things are not being coordinated properly.

Yesterday, ninety-six men in a single company of the 21st Battalion were killed or wounded during a German barrage.

Just about half the supplies of grenades, small arms ammunition, flares, and water are able to get through to the front. The two days of line rations that you brought with you ran out over a day ago.


On August 16, Field Marshal Douglas Haig, Commander of the BEF, informed General Gough, the Commander of the Reserve Army, that heavy armoured "caterpillar" cars which, for secrecy, had been referred to as "water tanks," would shortly reach France, and that a new major offensive with fresh reinforcements will probably take place in the middle of September.

It is hoped that this planned September offensive with the tanks might at last break through the German front and enable the British to "roll it up".

But before the September offensive can be effectively launched, the Thiepval-Pozieres Ridge must be seized.

General Gough originally defined the purpose of capturing Mouquet Farm as "cutting off Thiepval and getting observation over Coucelette and Grandcourt."

Gough has amplified the order: the object of Anzac operations is to cut off the heavily defended German position at the village of Thiepval and the nearby Schwaben Redoubt from the Germans' resupply depot at Courcelette to the east, and to capture of Thiepval itself by converging attacks by the Anzacs from the north-east and by the newly arrived British II Corps to the south-west.

The date for this assault on Thiepval is set for 28th of August, and will coincide with the British 4th Army's assault on Ginchy and Guillemont to the east.

Objectives:

In preparation for the planned September offensive on Thiepval, Mouquet Farm must be taken; the Anzac line west of Mouquet Farm must be straightened to the Courcellette Road; and the substantial German trench line called the Fabeck Graben just east of the farm must be taken and secured.



In order to reduce the horrendous level of casualties that were sustained on the opening day at the Somme and at Pozieres over a month ago, new tactics have been issued to General Headquarters by Field Marshal Haig.

In order to avoid detection from the German artillery and to lower casualties, lighter forces are to be employed in assaulting enemy positions.

Objectives will be carefully selected, and instead of attacking in overwhelming numbers, sufficient levels of troops will be used to capture and hold them; yet not using forces that are too weak.

Also a "creeping" artillery barrage will be utilized.

The creeping barrage will move ahead of the advancing infantry at a set rate of 50 yards a minute, so that the infantry will be protected by a curtain of fire and will be able to attack the enemy positions as soon as the barrage moves on to the next enemy line.



Zero hour is at 0445 hours.

At 0415 hours, Captain Sale gives the order to climb out of the front-line trench and lay down in proper order in shell craters 25 feet ahead of the trench.

As you lie in the shell crater, waiting for the artillery to open up, you think about the letter you found in the shirt pocket of one your friends who was killed by the German artillery.

It said "Dear Mother, sisters, brothers, and Auntie Lill.

As we are about to go into work that must be done, I want to ask you, if anything should happen to me, not to worry. You must think of all the mothers that lost ones as dear to them. One thing you can say-- that you lost one doing his little bit for a good cause.

I know you shall feel it if anything does happen to me, but I am willing and prepared to give my life for the cause."

Your friend's blood was on the letter.


In the summer of 1916, Mouquet Farm would reap a harvest not of wheat, but of thousands of human corpses. The total casualties incurred in attempting to take the farm from 7 August to 12 September cannot have been much short of 20,000 men, and the fallen included Britons, Canadians, Tasmanians, but the bulk of the men lost were from Australia (including a few men of mixed Aborginal ancestry).

The Australian Imperial Force's casualties (including Tasmanians and the men of mixed Aboriginal background) numbered 15,400 out of the 20,000 men killed or wounded.




Australian Imperial Force, 2nd Division, 6th Bde. (Victoria): 21st, 23rd, and 24th Battalions.

The day after Britain declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914, the Prime Minister of Australia, Joseph Cook, declared war on Germany too, stating "When the Empire is at war, so also is Australia."

Australian federal elections were held on September 5, 1914, and the succeeding Australian Labour government of Prime Minister Andrew Fisher continued to support the war; Fisher, during the 1914 election campaign, pledged that Australia would "stand beside the mother country to help and defend her to the last man and the last shilling."

An initial expeditionary force of 20,000 men (two-thirds Australian and one-third New Zealanders) was offered the same day Australia declared war to serve at any destination desired by the British Home Government; on August 6th, 1914, London cabled its acceptance of the force and asked for it to be sent as soon as possible.

Thus the Australian Imperial Force, a new military army, better known to the world by its acronym as a corps with the New Zealand forces, ANZACs, was born.

Recruitment offices opened on August 10, 1914, and men from all over Australia and from all walks of life rushed to them to sign up. By the end of 1914, 52,561 volunteers had been accepted.



The 21st, 23rd, and 24th Battalions of the Australian Imperial Force ("A.I.F.") were raised as part of the 6th Brigade at Broadmeadows Camp in the state of Victoria between February and May, 1915.

These recruits were from all over Victoria. The average age of these men was 29, and their later enlistment would seem to indicate a more considered decision to enlist that set them apart from those men who enlisted during the great enthusiasm of late 1914.

These three Battalions sailed from the city of Melbourne between March and early May, and arrived in Egypt in June 1915; there they trained during the months of July and August.

In late August, the 21st, 23rd, and 24th Battalions were sent to Gallipoli, landing at Anzac Cove on September 7, 1915.

While stationed at Gallipoli for 16 weeks, both the 23rd and 24th Battalions manned at various times one of the most trying parts of the ANZAC frontline: Lone Pine.

The fighting at Lone Pine was so dangerous and exhausting that battalions were relieved every day.

The 21st Battalion had a relatively quiet time at Gallipoli.

After evacuation from Gallipoli in December, 1915, the three Battalions arrived in the Armetieres sector of northern France in March, 1916.

In mid-July 1916, with the British offensive on the Somme dragging on, I ANZAC Corps was sent to join the British Reserve Army of Lieutenant-General Hubert (de la Poer) Gough who used the ANZAC forces to drive a wedge between the heavily fortified and defended German position at the small village of Thiepval and the German supply and reinforcement base at the town of Courcelette nearby a few miles to the east. Thus cut off and encircled by the I ANZAC Corps, the fortified positions of Thiepval and the Schwaben Redoubt would surely fall into Allied hands.

The Australian 1st Division attacked Pozieres on July 23, 1916. Due to heavy casualties, Australian 1st Division was relieved by the 2nd Division on July 27.

The 2nd Division attacked on July 29 and again on August 4th, capturing the German OG 2 trench line and part of the crest of Pozieres Ridge.

The Germans retaliated with a heavy, sustained artillery bombardment of the Ridge.

After 12 days on the frontline, the 2nd Division was relieved by the Australian 4th Division on the 6th of August, 1916.

The 2nd Division had sustained a total of 6,846 casualties at Pozieres.

After a brief 15 day rest, during which the Division was built up to two-thirds strength, the 2nd Division again relieved the 1st Division to continue the drive northwest to encircle Thiepval, at the Australian frontline just about 300 yards south of Mouquet Farm.


Copyright 2008, USA

Mouquet Farm, 26 August, 1916

My rough draft introduction for the Mouquet Farm Map:

Australian Introduction:



The time is 04:45 hours, 26 August, 1916


"My tinnie is as dry as a dead dingo's donger!"

The Australian 2nd Division is in the frontlines near Mouquet Farm, about five miles north of the River Somme and about one and a half miles east of the Somme's tributary, the River Ancre, in Picardy, France.

The advance from the summit of Pozieres Ridge to Mouquet Farm has lasted for almost three weeks now and has been painfully slow.

The landscape looks like something from the planet Mars: a sea of blown up reddish chesnut colored earth pierced by thousands of red shell craters.

The only signs of human civilization are an overturned abandoned wagon on the horizon, and several piles of white rubble with some beams of wood protruding from them: Mouquet Farm.

When the 2nd Division came over the slope to the frontlines facing Mouquet Farm just eighty-two hours ago during the early evening of August 22, an intense barrage from the German lines of shrapnel and high-explosive shells immediately descended on the whole area from Mouquet Farm to Pozieres, lasting from 6:00PM until midnight, and Lieutenant W.A. Coward of the 24th Battalion was killed.

The Germans have an advantageous position; Mouquet Farm and their trench lines are on the top of a gentle rising slope, and thus they can see any movement along Poziers Ridge by day.

The German artillery shells fall for hours at a time like a deadly cosmic storm, killing, maiming, and burying the men in your battalion.

Because of the heavy German barrages, communications is severely impaired and telephone lines cannot be maintained.

Instead, foot messangers are used to send messages; it takes them several hours to reach Brigade Headquarters which is a little less than 1,000 yards away near Pozieres Cemetery.

You have heard stories men being relieved that our own artillery has killed scores of our own men through friendly fire, and continued to shell our frontlines, even after messangers were sent, because things are not being coordinated properly.

Yesterday, ninety-six men in a single company of the 21st Battalion were killed or wounded during a German barrage.

Because of the heavy German barrages, communications is severely impaired and telephone lines cannot be maintained.

Just about half the supplies of grenades, small arms ammunition, flares, and water are able to get through to the front. The two days of line rations that you brought with you ran out over a day ago.

In order to reduce the horrendous level of casualties that were sustained on the opening day at the Somme and at Pozieres over a month ago, new tactics have been issued to General Headquarters by Field Marshal Douglas Haig, Commander of the BEF.

In order to avoid detection from the German artillery and to lower casualties, lighter forces are to be employed in assaulting enemy positions.

Objectives will be carefully selected, and instead of attacking in overwhelming numbers, sufficient levels of troops will be used to capture and hold them; yet not using forces that are too weak.

Also a "creeping" artillery barrage will be utilized.

The creeping barrage will move ahead of the advancing infantry at a set rate of 50 yards a minute, so that the infantry will be protected by a curtain of fire and will attack the enemy positions as soon as the barrage moves on to the next enemy line.


On August 16, Haig informed General Gough, the Commander of the Reserve Army, that heavy armoured "caterpillar" cars which, for secrecy, had been referred to as "water tanks," would shortly reach France, and that a new major offensive with fresh reinforcements will probably take place in the middle of September.

It is hoped that this planned September offensive with the tanks might at last break through the German front and enable the British to "roll it up".

But before the September offensive can be effectively launched, the Thiepval-Pozieres Ridge must be seized.

General Gough originally defined the purpose of capturing Mouquet Farm as "cutting off Thiepval and getting observation over Coucelette and Grandcourt."

Gough has amplified the order: the object of Anzac operations is to cut off the heavily defended German position at the village of Thiepval and the nearby Schwaben Redoubt from the Germans' resupply depot at Courcelette to the east, and to capture of Thiepval itself by converging attacks by the Anzacs from the north-east and by the newly arrived British II Corps to the south-west.

The date for this assault on Theipval is set for 28th of August, and will coincide with the British 4th Army's assault on Ginchy and Guillemont to the east.

In preparation for the offensive on Thiepval, tha Anzac line west of Mouquet Farm must be straightened to the Courcellette Road and the substantial German trench line called the Fabeck Graben to the east must be taken and secured.

Zero hour is at 0445 hours.

At 0415 hours, Captain Sale gives the order to climb out of the front-line trench and lay down in proper order in shell craters 25 feet ahead of the trench.

As you lie in the shell crater, waiting for the artillery to open up, you think about the letter you found in the shirt pocket of one your friends who was killed by the German artillery.

It said "Dear Mother, sisters, brothers, and Auntie Lill.

As we are about to go into work that must be done, I want to ask you, if anything should happen to me, not to worry. You must think of all the mothers that lost ones as dear to them. One thing you can say-- that you lost one doing his little bit for a good cause.

I know you shall feel it if anything does happen to me, but I am willing and prepared to give my life for the cause."


In the summer of 1916, Mouquet Farm would reap a harvest not of wheat, but of thousands of corpses. The total casualties incurred in attempting to take the farm from 7 August to 12 September cannot have been much short of 20,000 men, including Britons, Canadians, Tasmanians, and men of Aborginal ancestry, but the bulk of the men lost were from Australia.

The Australian Imperial Force's casualties(including Tasmanians and Aboriginal peoples) numbered 15,400 out of the 20,000 men killed or wounded.


Copyright 2008, USA

Bazentin Ridge

This map if for the Red Orchestra Gaming Community, if someone wishes to make it:


Bazentin Ridge

-Description- Another subsidiary attack in the Battle of the Somme. The battle was fought between the 14th and 17th of July. Launched in the early morning on the 14th the British used a quick bombardment to successfully drive the German defenders into cover. The British succeeded in capturing the first trenches in only a few hours

-Map Type- British Offensive

-Date- July 14-17th 1916

-Units- ?

-Unit Classes

British
Riflemen (unlimited)
Rifle Grenadier (3)
Lewis Gunner (1)
Lewis Support (3)
Bomber (4)
NCO (1)
Forward Observer (1)

German
Riflemen (unlimited)
MG (2)
MG Support (6)
Officer (1)


The general landscape of the battle


A very nice map found on Wiki. This should be the basis for the map, just narrower.

Delville Wood

This is the plan for one of maps in the game:


Delville Wood:

-Description
The 154 acre wood was the scene for a viscous close quarter battle on the Somme. The South Africans took this wood, but soon had to fight off German counter attacks. On the evening of the 17th a German bombardment began. A few South Africans survived and eventually were pushed back.

-Map Type
German Offensive, South Africans have to hold objectives

Date
17th July

-Units
British- South African Brigade of the 9th Scottish Division
German- ?

Unit Classes
British
-Riflemen
-Grenadier x5
-Lewis gunner x1
-Support gunner x2
-Officer x1
German
-Schutze
-Grenadier x6
-Leutnant x1

Typical trench found in the area, nothing elaborate


The "wood"


Trench map of the wood


Edit: sketch up finished. Again just a loose outline of what it should look like.



Last edited by CrazyThumbs on Fri Jul 06, 2007 11:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Iron Europe II

I'm really just posting this here top keep a record of the messages we sent; I don't have a Microsoft Office program yet:

CrazyThumbs, to speak frankly, and I'm sorry to sound unpleasant, but really I don't know what you did with this. blink.gif

We had everything up here; now, I can't remember it all, but we had quotes from Linoleum describing the Barbed Wire at the Somme; I had information about the German's use of Barbed Wire during WWI, some additional trench maps, a website with a Somme photo archive, also a link to photos of the Somme which I had collected, and there was that Pierre's Western Front web site that showed photos of Gommecourt and some of the German Bunkers that were there.

(sigh) Bozemoy . . .


I went through the entire thread, and deleted all the posts that, at least I felt, we didn't need. The main post was revised while discussion was going on in this thread and updated accordingly. I made a completely new and accurate sketch of the map, trench lines are all taken from maps, barbed wire, (showing how deep it should be underneath the picture), and stuff like that.

Almost all the useful information we have for the map is included in that first post, and other info that got deleted but isn't in the first post, is posted somewhere else on this site. Your links about barbed wire and German trenches are in the historical section, and I'd imagine any extra Somme photos are in there to.


QUOTE
I mean, we could spend very little time researching the maps, and just make something and call it Loos or Zeebruge Raid, but that isn't the RO realism tradition, and, I don't think, is going to make a great or interesting map.

That seems to me more Battlefield 1918 style (I like their Mod a lot; but their Langemarck is going to nothing like ours).



? I copied the trench maps as exact as possible, I took in to account the slope of the battlefield, the no mans land distance is not an estimation.
The information you posted, was general maps, then we discussed barbed wire (which I updated into the sketch/thread), German trenches with links (which we have in the historical section), we never came to a conclusion about pillboxes and bunkers, and some other assorted pictures.
We didn't cover unit histories, or work on the general history for Gommecourt.
What's in the first post is all the info we really have, that hasn't been posted in other places.





QUOTE
And also, to level just some gentle criticism, your Introduction (so far) doesn't explain to our hypothetically player who doesn't know anything about WWI (and there will be many in the U.S. and other parts of the world) why this attack was launched and what was its significance for the First World War. Try and make it sound exciting and sad.

You don't have to write the full Intros like I'm doing for the maps I've researched, although I encourage people who are writing Intros to do so; most people in the U.S. and elsewhere don't know about these battles, and, yes, that includes even a major pivitol event like the Somme.

Maybe you should look at DH's Intro for Pegasus Bridge (Beneoville, whatever).

I think that was the best one DH wrote and use that as a model (they didn't write Intros for all their maps). I also like the Leningrad Intro for vanilla RO.

If you just want a bare bones Introduction with little information, you could do that, but I don't see how that excites people about playing this map or about WWI or makes them interested in playing this map and the Mod.

I mean, this is probably the most significant battle and event of WWI; maybe not strategically speaking (who knows, I'm not military expert), but at least, for the British, from a cultural and remembrance perspective; people from all across the British world were there.



"*Temporary, will be revised later (probably by me)" -taken from the first post. I know the intro right now sucks, and you told me I should work on it, which I agreed, and I'm still going to. It's just not critical to get the intro down right now.

Iron Europe

I am working on a First World War PC video game modification for the game "Red Orchestra" by Tripwire International (Roswell, Georgia, USA).


I'm just going to post a few things as backup here; I recently had a disagreement with the guy in charge of the Mod who deleted some research I had done of Gommecourt:

He goes by the moniker of "CrazyThumbs":

CrazyThumbs, to speak frankly, and I'm sorry to sound unpleasant, but really I don't know what you did with this.


We had everything up here; now, I can't remember it all, but we had quotes from Linoleum describing the Barbed Wire at the Somme; I had information about the German's use of Barbed Wire during WWI, some additional trench maps, a website with a Somme photo archive, also a link to photos of the Somme which I had collected, and there was that Pierre's Western Front web site that showed photos of Gommecourt and some of the German Bunkers that were there.


(sigh) Bozemoy . . .




I also had an Osprey description of the German defenses and a link.


We had it all researched, and now most of it is gone.


All that information was relevant for this particular Map.


Even if some of the information was somewhat duplicate of other posts in the Thread, it is always good to get differing accounts and views from historical writers.


I agree, it may have not been pasted in the most logical order, but that isn't really that big of a deal anyway, and at least we had the information.


I mean, we could spend very little time researching the maps, and just make something and call it Loos or Zeebruge Raid, but that isn't the RO realism tradition, and, I don't think, is going to make a great or interesting map.

That seems to me more Battlefield 1918 style (I like their Mod a lot; but their Langemarck is going to nothing like ours).





Also, before you "clean up" something, I think it would be common courtesy and polite to ask other forum members about their post before they are deleted.


The only exceptions should be if someone posts something that is racially or ethnically offensive or obscene or spam.



I think anything that increases our understanding about WWI, even in a minute way, should be welcomed and allowed and kept.


If you want to delete something someone posted, you should ask.



Unilaterally discarding posts on your own with no consultation really baffles me.



OK, I tried to help you with some of the research for this map; I spent some leisure time at least three hours, maybe six hours) gathering and posting stuff up here, time I could have spent doing something else, and now this stuff is all gone.


Well, I did it once; I'm sorry, I won't be doing it twice on this map.



And I wish the best of luck to whoever is going to map this because in my opinion you hardly have any information here now.




And also, to level just some gentle criticism, your Introduction (so far) doesn't explain to our hypothetically player who doesn't know anything about WWI (and there will be many in the U.S. and other parts of the world) why this attack was launched and what was its significance for the First World War. Try and make it sound exciting and sad.



You don't have to write the full Intros like I'm doing for the maps I've researched, although I encourage people who are writing Intros to do so; most people in the U.S. and elsewhere don't know about these battles, and, yes, that includes even a major pivitol event like the Somme.



Maybe you should look at DH's Intro for Pegasus Bridge (Beneoville, whatever).

I think that was the best one DH wrote and use that as a model (they didn't write Intros for all their maps). I also like the Leningrad Intro for vanilla RO.


If you just want a bare bones Introduction with little information, you could do that, but I don't see how that excites people about playing this map or about WWI or makes them interested in playing this map and the Mod.



I mean, this is probably the most significant battle and event of WWI; maybe not strategically speaking (who knows, I'm not military expert), but at least, for the British, from a cultural and remembrance perspective; people from all across the British world were there.



And that one trench map you have looks like it is written in some Asian language.



Look, I am not trying to bash you; this is just business talk and what, as a researcher with a B.A. degree, I think is in the best interest and good for your map idea.

I don't mean to sound brusque.





The main goal, generally speaking, in researching a map is to give the Map Maker a strong sense of what the setting of the battle was like.


That is why, in the maps, I researched, I have all the photos, and try to include some personal stories from the battle: personal tribute webpages, eyewitness accounts, recollections, etc.



The main goal, generally speaking, in writing an Intro, is to explain to the potential RO Player and also the Map Maker why the battle was fought, its significance, and something about the Units that fought.



(Hint: I think you should mention Douglas Haig and that the offensive was designed to draw off the German forces that were attacking Verdun and break the stalemate on the Western Front; also for the Units, mention Kitchener's New Army; you can look up the Osprey book on the Somme in Google books and it explains all about it).



If you need any pointers in or want any help writing the Intro, I am still more than happy to give you some advice. Just PM me about it.