July 11, 2025 • 37 mins
For our latest questions submitted by podcast listeners, we examine what my first visit to the battlefields of the Great War with my school meant to me, ask what the Wiltshire Regiment did in the First World War, what sources in English can we look at to understand the German side of WW1 and what did British veterans think of their German foe?
Brigadier E.A. James book - British Regiments 1914-1918.
Main image: Group portrait of officers of the 1st Battalion, Wiltshire Regiment, after their return from fighting at Thiepval, photographed at Bouzincourt, September 1916. (IWM Q1151 - photo by Ernest Brookes)
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:02):
Welcome to some more questions and answers here on
the old front line.
These are questions submitted byyou, the podcast listeners, and
each month we select some of thebest questions that have been
submitted via email and theDiscord server to answer here
and hopefully give us all freshperspectives and new knowledge
(00:26):
of this vast subject of theGreat War.
So let's begin.
When this edition of the podcastgoes out, we'll have actually
had two Q&A episodes in a rowand I've done this just so I can
kind of position the order ofthe next few podcasts so I can
set up a sequence and we'regoing to have a whole month
(00:48):
devoted to the war in the air,the war above the trenches of
the Western Front involving themen of the Royal Flying Corps
and latterly the Royal AirForce.
So the next episode from thiswill be the beginnings of that
mini series and as part of itI'm going to have a special RFC
(01:09):
RAF Q&A so if you've got aquestion relating to the war in
the air send it in and I'll pickthe best four questions and I'll
answer those in a specialedition of the Q&A's for that
air war month that we're goingto have as a kind of trial
really for something new on thepodcast so let's get down to
(01:32):
this week's questions questionnumber one comes from John
Anderson of the Grove Academy inBroughton Ferry John asks as a
teacher I'm always intriguedwhen you speak of your own
experiences of visiting thebattlefields with your school
for the first time in the early1980s August will be my 15th
(01:53):
battlefields trip with youngpeople from the east coast of
Scotland So what actually was itabout that first trip to the old
front line with your school thatgot you hooked?
Well, a brilliant question,John.
And in some respects, it wasn'tthat trip that got me hooked as
such because the Great War wasalready there in my life.
(02:14):
Having a father who'd been inthe Second World War and two
grandfathers who'd been in thefirst and my grandmother who
spent a lot of time with me andme with her during my formative
years.
She'd been a young girl inColchester during the Great War.
She could remember the woundedcoming back to the stations in
Colchester.
covered in some mud she couldremember all of her cousins
(02:38):
marching off to war and herbrother too my uncle dan and
only uncle dan coming back allthe others were killed so she
had this whole host of storiesthat inspired me as a youngster
and in those days there werereally good local libraries i
mean there are still some nowthankfully but i relied really
heavily on going to the libraryand they had a very big first
(03:00):
and second but in particular avery good first world war
section and i kind of read everything often multiple times and
growing up as well comics was abig part of my childhood and
then battle comic came alongwith charlie's war we've done an
episode on charlie's war for thepodcast telling the story of
this teenage tommy from the somthrough to the end of the war
(03:20):
indeed beyond that so there wasalready a bit of an interest
there and finally having thischance to go with two of my
teachers roger bastable and lescoats les coats went on to write
several books to help studentsgo to the battlefields, the
guide to Ypres and the guide tothe Somme and having them to
organise a school trip to takestudents across they did that
(03:44):
several times a year I think inthe school minibus and on that
particular trip there was a veryenthusiastic bunch of us who
went and apart from myself therewas my buddy Steve Chambers who
himself went on to write severalbooks about the Great War his
speciality is Gallipoli and he'salso very prominent in the
(04:04):
Gallipoli Association there wasmy old pal Andrew he was there
too and we still travel to thebattlefields together and
several others who I know arestill interested in the Great
War so that was kind of adefining moment not just for me
but a group of people whoperhaps for them with lesser
knowledge or connection to theGreat War at that time we went
(04:25):
across and we saw that landscapeof Flanders and something kind
of changed and I'm sure you'veseen this with your own students
they possibly have an idea ofwhat they might see and I
remember driving down that roadfrom Popperinger to Eap
expecting any minute to see inthe fields this kind of mass of
trenches and shell holes and ofcourse not realising as a
(04:48):
teenager that pretty much all ofthat had gone but the first stop
on that tour was at HopstorCemetery that is the first Great
War Cemetery that I ever saw andone I go back to regularly
because of that kind ofconnection it has with me to
those early years of visitingthe battlefields and on that
(05:09):
trip We went to two trenchmuseums, Sanctuary Wood,
Kroonart Wood, as it was then,Bamval today, but a very
different kind of museum then.
Again, I've spoken about that inprevious episodes of the
podcast.
And going out into the fields,the area where the bluff is at,
it wasn't planted with trees init, it was open farmland.
And I remember us walking acrossthat, and one of the students
(05:31):
picking up something andthrowing it at one of the
teachers, saying, what's that,sir?
And at the corner of my eye, Isaw a German potato stick
grenade fly through the air andland at the teacher's feet and
you can imagine the kind ofconversation that followed but
all of this really comingtogether as a young
impressionable person walking intrenches picking up artifacts
(05:56):
being given a handful ofshrapnel balls as we were when
we went to Crunart Wood this washistory coming alive and it
certainly it sparked somethingin me and I came back from that
I remember my dad picking me upat the school and us walking
back across the fields to myhouse and me literally kind of
(06:17):
waxing lyrical to him and I knewsomething had changed in me on
that trip and it didn't stopthanks to my dad within a couple
of months it was the schoolholidays and I was heading to
the Somme with him in the summerof 1982 and we walked those
battlefields together for thevery first time and it never
stops I went back on more schooltrips and then back on trips of
(06:39):
my own and of course it took meon that life long path and I
think it shows all kinds ofthings really but certainly the
kind of less traditional methodsof learning which a battlefield
tour is can inspire students caninspire young people as it
inspired me as it inspired thosewho travelled with me on that
(07:01):
trip and I've seen that myselfwhen I've done schools
battlefield tours with groups inthe last few decades as I've
worked as a battlefield guideand very often it's interesting
to talk to teachers because theysay that children that have
problems in conventionalclassroom settings somehow come
alive on these kind of trips andthey often were the ones that
(07:25):
asked the best questions had thebest kind of insightful views of
what you were talking about andin particular responded very
very strongly to that idea ofreaching out and touching
history whether that's a bunkerwhether it's a trench whether
it's holding a Lee Enfield rifleor a bayonet or putting a steel
helmet on whatever it is and Ithink that tells us a lot really
(07:47):
about how people react tolearning about history and what
they need to get something fromit it's not just about the dry
dusty pages of history there'snothing wrong with books I'm
sitting in a room completelysurrounded by them now but I
think for young people withminds that are still forming
it's really important to givethem that opportunity to do that
(08:09):
and it's great that you do itwith your students from the east
coast of Scotland and there aremany many schools across the UK
that do this I know that thereare many teachers that listen to
this podcast who do amazing workin inspiring their students to
grasp history and run withhistory and love history and
(08:31):
that is fantastic and I'm alwaysreally pleased to hear about
that and it's been really greatfor me to be asked to go into
the some virtual classrooms withstudents to talk about the First
World War and hear theirquestions, because I'm always
amazed at the kind of questionsthat young people throw at you.
It's really, really interesting.
So I think for me, I mean, Idon't know whether destiny kind
(08:54):
of paths the way of your life.
Who knows?
But for me, already when I wentto EAP for the first time,
having previously gone toPegasus Bridge in Normandy with
my dad to look at the D-Daybeaches, I kind of feel that
that was the direction of travelquite literally of my life for
the rest of my life and it'ssomething that has carried me
through ever since and I feelblessed and privileged really to
(09:19):
have had that opportunity soyoung to be inspired to go in a
particular direction because itis something that has changed
and enriched and given so manylayers of my life really from
researching and reading about itto meeting veterans of both
world wars traveling across somany parts of the world to visit
(09:40):
battlefields understandbattlefields connect to
battlefields I'm so lucky and itjust shows what one school trip
can do and every time I'm out onthe battlefields this week I was
on the SOM and I saw two coachloads of students visiting
battlefield sites one at theDevonshire Cemetery one on their
way to Delville Wood I think Ilook at those coaches and think
(10:03):
who in that group is going to beinspired to go on and take this
further is the future of GreatWar history in one of those
coaches I'm sure it is so thankyou John thanks for giving me
that opportunity once again totalk about what the Great War
means to me and how my pathwayto it began through trips like
(10:24):
that and they are so importantand thank you John as well for
the work that you do to inspireand take young people to the old
front line Question number twocomes from Matt Hale in Devizes.
Matt asks, I live in Devizes,Wiltshire, home to the old Le
Marchant barracks.
I rarely hear of any storiesaround the Wiltshire Regiment
(10:45):
during the First World War.
So my question to you is, whatwas the role of the Wiltshire
Regiment during the Great Warand were they involved with any
of the more famous battles wetalk about nowadays?
Well, the British Army had ahuge number of regiments in the
First World War and all of themfought at many different parts
of the battlefields, whetherthat's the Western Front or
(11:07):
other theatres of war.
And a good starting point tounderstand what these individual
regiments did is a book thatkind of became my Bible as I
began to expand my knowledge ofthe First World War, and that's
Brigadier James's BritishRegiments 1914-18.
It's still in print.
I think Naval and Military Pressdo an edition of it.
(11:29):
And Brigadier James wrote thisbook, compiled information about
all the regiments, and moreimportantly, the battalions that
were part of those regiments.
Because a regiment didn't serveas a regiment on the
battlefield, it served asindividual battalions.
And James lists all these,indicates if they were pre-war
regulars or territorials, thenif they were wartime raised
(11:50):
units when they were formed, andthen which formations they went
off to join, brigades anddivisions and so on.
And although on one level it'smicro-history, it builds a
framework for you to understandhow a regiment developed during
the war and where its battalionswent and therefore which battles
they fought in so if we look athis entry for the Wiltshire
(12:14):
regiment and at the back of thebook there's a table that lists
all the regiments and for eachone it tells you how many battle
honours they got how many VCsand how many dead and for the
Wiltshire regiment there were 60battle honours which was about
average for a Regiment of thatkind of size.
They had one soldier awarded theVictoria Cross and lost over
(12:35):
5,200 men killed in action, diedof wounds, died on the
battlefields or on the homefront during the Great War.
And then when we look at themain entry for the Wiltshire
Regiment in the book, we seethat there, as was common with
all regiments of the BritishArmy, there were two regular
battalions that went overseasand a third reserve battalion.
(12:58):
So the 1st and the 2nd Battalionwere the regular ones they
became part of the BEF theBritish Expeditionary Force that
went across in 1914 one of thosethe first battalion of the
Wiltshire Regiment they were inthe retreat for Mons both of
them were in the first Battle ofYpres which was where the bulk
of the old contemptibles as theybecame known fought so men in
(13:20):
both those battalions were oldcontemptibles and they were two
units that went right throughthe war from beginning to end
and fought in all of those keybattles from the early battles
like Mons and First Deep throughto Arras and the Somme and Loos
and all of the other majoractions that we often discuss.
(13:40):
In the Wiltshire Regiment, whichwas a bit unusual, there was
only one Territorial ForceBattalion, so one battalion of
Saturday Night Soldiers, as theywere called, which indicates
it's a slightly smaller regimentcompared to others.
Most county regiments, RoyalSussex, where I grew up, for
example, they had threeTerritorial Battalions.
The Wilts, they only had one,the 4th Battalion, and they
(14:01):
spent the entire war pretty muchin India and ended up, I think,
on the northwest frontiertowards the end.
So we're not involved in some ofthe more famous related Great
War actions that we think ofwhen we think of 1914-18, but
nevertheless played a reallyimportant role in the far-flung
corners of places where therewas conflict in the Great War.
(14:24):
And then we move on to thewartime raised battalions.
So the 1st the 2nd with theirreserve 3rd battalion of the
Wiltshire Regiment plus theTerritorial 1 the 4th, they were
all units that existed when thewar broke out and then as was
common in county regiments ofthe British Army new army
battalions and wartime raisedbattalions were then formed and
(14:46):
in the Wiltshire Regiment therewere 4 new army battalions, the
5th battalion that fought atGallipoli in 1915 and then went
on to serve in Mesopotamia the6th battalion that was in the 19
Western Division and went acrossto France in 1915 and then
served in all of the majorbattles that followed that the
(15:07):
19th Western Division wereinvolved in.
So in 1915 they were holding theline, 1916 that was the Battle
of the Somme, 1917 they were inthe Battle of Messines and then
the Third Battle of Ypres and in1918 actions from the German
offensive, fighting up in theLys and so many other places
besides.
So they went right through thekind of key stories of the Great
(15:29):
War in terms of a singlebattalion's experience on the
Western Front.
The 7th Battalion was with the26th Division and they went off
to Salonika, one of those lesserknown fronts of the Great War
and then later came to Francethemselves and the 8th Battalion
stayed at home and by the looksof it the 8th was used as a
(15:49):
training battalion to train upsoldiers to send out as
replacements to the others.
So what you've got there then isthree battalions that served
pretty much from beginning toend on the western front the
first and second the two regularbattalions and then from 1915
the 6th battalion of the Wiltsserving in some of these key
battles but also battalionsquite interestingly that go on
(16:13):
to serve in other theatres ofwar key theatres of war like
Gallipoli Mesopotamia Salonicaand India so essentially your
regiment your little countyregiment the Wiltshire regiment
did a lot and covered the kindof whole experience of the First
World War from a soldier'sperspective and sometimes we
(16:33):
know perhaps a little bit lessabout some of these regiments
because not so many books werepublished about them.
I'm not even sure if there is asingle dedicated history of the
Wiltshire Regiment in the GreatWar.
I remember the WiltshireRegiment Museum publishing some
kind of paperback books in the80s and 90s about some of the
(16:54):
battalions I think drawn perhapsfrom the war diaries and the war
diaries will be online on thethe National Archives website,
or perhaps on Ancestry and FindMy Past as well.
So there's quite a few sourceswhere you can kind of look this
up.
And sometimes these smallregiments can slip through the
pages of history.
(17:14):
So it's important to highlightthem.
I mean, I do try to mention alot of different units in the
podcast.
I try to avoid making it a listof units.
You can't mention everyone.
But I do like to feature some ofthe lesser known stories.
And within the history of theWiltshire Regiment, there are
many of them.
And I think it's good.
(17:34):
I've said this before, I think,about the Royal Sussex Regiment.
For me, focusing on a regimentfor which I had a personal
connection to a place, an area,a region, helped me connect with
those men because I knew thetowns and the villages and the
downs where they grew up andlived.
But it also gave me, through theeyes of one regiment, a
perspective on the Great War.
(17:55):
And I think that's what thiskind of research can do.
so I really hope Matt that'skind of inspired you perhaps to
go out and find out a little bitmore about the wheelchair
regiment yourself and perhapsfind your own connections and
maybe on a future trip along theold front line visit some of the
places where they fought and seesome of the graves in the
(18:18):
cemetery because you will seetheir cap badge pretty much
everywhere you go symbolisingthe kind of loss that even a
small county regiment could havein the Great War So thanks for
that, Matt.
I think a great question, alwaysgood to talk about regiments of
the British Army during thatconflict.
So let's move on to questionnumber three.
(18:39):
And this comes from AndrewCaesar Gordon on fan mail.
Now fan mail is another way tosend in a question, which you
can click a little link in theshow notes and you send a kind
of text message via Buzzsproutto the podcast.
It doesn't tell me who you are.
I don't see your number.
So if you want me to answerthese questions and mention your
name, you need to put your nameat the bottom of that little bit
(19:01):
of fan mail.
So Andrew asks, listening toyour fascinating trench chat
with Philip Cross about hisGerman ancestors' frontline
experience, you briefly discusshow little literature from the
German side is available toEnglish language audiences.
We have, of course, the writingsof Eric Maria Remarque, Ernst
Jünger and Rudolf Binding, but Iwonder if you can recommend any
(19:24):
books written by German WorldWar I historians in the mould of
Lynn MacDonald and MartinMiddlebrook that have been
translated into English thatcatalogue the first-hand
experience of German soldiersalongside the bigger picture as
they saw it well this is areally good question Andrew and
there's an easy word answer itpretty much doesn't exist.
(19:46):
The stigma of service in theGerman army in the First World
War that followed that war withGermany's defeat, and then the
later experience of Germany inthe Second World War, the
division of Germany into Eastand West, I think removed a
desire for any equivalent of LinMacDonald and Martin Middlebrook
to track veterans down andinterview them.
(20:09):
I spent a bit of time in Germanyin the late 80s and early 90s on
and off, and one of my kind ofmissions on that was to track
down some first world warveterans i failed completely no
one wanted to know the veteransdidn't want to know and i ended
up speaking to a lot of secondworld war german veterans but
none from the first the onlyveterans that i spoke to from
(20:31):
the first world war germanveterans were ones who were
largely jewish who had fled nazigermany in the 1930s and come to
britain to escape that and oneof those was herbert saltzbach
who wrote a book called With theGerman Guns he was a gunner
officer in the First World Warand then he served in the
British Army in the Second WorldWar as a Jewish volunteer a
(20:54):
fascinating book and I met himseveral times he gave a talk at
the National Army Museum at oneof the early Western Front
meetings an incredible,incredible individual now you
mentioned Remarque and of courseJunger I mean two great names in
the kind of record of the GermanArmy in the First World War and
Rudolf Binding as well But interms of someone going out to
(21:15):
interview a group of veteransand then putting that into
print, there really isn'tanything like that as such.
Now, jumping on to the 1980s,when I joined the Western Front
Association, there was a littleadvert in the magazine there for
a new English language magazine,regular magazine, about the
(21:35):
German army in the Great Warwhich was written and produced
by a chap called RichardBaumgartner and it was called
Der Angriff I have a fairlycomplete set of those and he
published this in the 80s with alot of material he was an
American who was descended fromGermans spoke fluent German
himself he went to Germany andhe more successfully tracked
(21:58):
down a lot of German veterans heinterviewed them he translated
the interviews and he put theminto this material magazine now
it's very difficult to find nowand I suspect probably scarce
and therefore costly but worthlooking out for even for the odd
issue because there's somereally fantastic material in
there by German soldiers aboutGerman soldiers and from the
(22:22):
perspective of German soldiersas well with articles about
particular units and trenchweaponry and some amazing
photographs that were publishedin there as well of the like
that at that time it was reallyunusual to see those things and
for me it kind of inspired me onmy travels within Germany trying
(22:42):
to track some of this kind ofmaterial down and in those days
it wasn't too difficult in junkshops to find albums of
postcards and photographs andindividual postcards tucked away
in often the dampest corner ofsome of these junk shops so he
was a kind of trailblazer inthat and then he went on many
years later in 2010 to write abook called This Carnival of
(23:03):
Hell and it was about the Germanarmy on the Somme.
He self-published it and itdidn't do particularly well and
it is still available out therebut again it's quite costly.
I've seen copies go for quite alot of money and then
occasionally one might pop up oneBay and you'll get it cheaply
but one worth looking out forbecause again with the kind of
(23:24):
material that he was able to puttogether it It is full of
amazing interviews and accountsof German soldiers during that
Somme battle.
And I think his intention wasperhaps to write a whole series
of these books.
But it never happened,unfortunately.
And I don't even know if RichardBaumgartner is still alive.
I'd like to think that hiscollection is preserved out
(23:46):
there somewhere because it was,I know, an amazing archive of
the German experience of theFirst World War.
And he was very, very unusual inthat.
I'd like to believe that therewas someone like me in West
Germany, let's say in the 80s,who did go around and speak to
some of these old boys and didrecord them.
There's the odd interview inplaces like YouTube where
(24:09):
there's kind of really earlyvideo cameras recording old men
with pickle halvers talkingabout their experience, but
that's pretty rare.
I've never come across youngGerman historians who have done
this.
I've known a few Germanhistorians over the years.
My friend Alex is a good exampleof that, but he said that there
was There's this kind of stigmaabout the First World War.
It was sometimes even worsetalking about the Great War than
(24:32):
it was Hitler's war.
So it was kind of pushed intothe background.
And if you think of EastGermany, a country under Soviet
domination for all thosedecades, I suspect the chances
of getting people to discuss theFirst World War was pretty slim.
And knowledge within EastGermany and amongst East Germans
about that war is also prettyslim as well.
(24:52):
I think I've told this storybefore of going to a small
village which has once been partpart of East Germany, just
behind the internal Germanborder, and seeing a fantastic
Great War war memorial in themiddle of the village with a
Stahlhelm still helming on it,and somebody from the village
coming over and saying, youknow, what are you looking at?
So I said, well, we're lookingat this, this Kriegerdenkmal,
(25:15):
this war memorial.
What war memorial?
This one here, to the FirstWorld War.
What do you mean by the FirstWorld War?
He said, there's no such thingas the First World War.
There's only the war againstfascism, 1941-45.
and it was like he was kind oftrotting out a piece of
propaganda.
And this guy, in his 50s, had nosense of what the First World
War was at all, despite the factthat he's standing in front of a
(25:37):
war memorial which listed localmen killed in date order with
the names of the battles andeverything like that included as
well, and possibly one of hisown relatives on there.
I mean, who knows?
So that wasn't going to happenthere.
So really, the equivalent, theGerman equivalent of Lin
Macdonald's Martin Birber bookdoesn't exist as far as I'm
(25:57):
aware, and I would love to beproved wrong.
If anyone listening to this, Iknow we have quite a few Germans
listeners if you've got acomment to make please please
please get in touch or putsomething onto the podcast
website because i'd love to hearwhat you think so that's richard
baumgartner look out for derangriff look out for his book
this carnival of hell but ofcourse on top of that is jack
(26:18):
sheldon jack sheldon wrote awhole series of books called the
german army on the So from Monsto the battles of 1915 to the
Somme to Arras to Passchendaeleand all of those actions on the
Western Front, a whole series ofbooks looking at the Great War
from a German perspective.
(26:39):
Now, he didn't go and interviewpeople.
He used a lot of the materialthat existed and that was
published in the 1920s and 30s.
And a lot of this was unithistories that had been
published by regimental kind ofcommittees and groups of
veterans which are often reallydetailed and Jack Sheldon being
a fluent German speaker couldaccess this material, select
(27:03):
what was particularly good anduse it to construct these books
looking at different aspects ofthe battles of the First World
War through German eyes.
So those are really importantpublications that help us
understand the Great War fromthat German perspective.
Now some of those were publishedquite a few years ago now and
(27:24):
I'd don't think they're all inprint.
They were published by Pen andSword.
You can have a look on theirwebsite and I'm sure you'll find
copies of some of them.
But again, there are quite a fewcopies available on places like
eBay.
eBay is a good source to getbooks quite cheaply sometimes.
And Jack Sheldon really needscongratulating for producing
that remarkable series of booksin the English language that
(27:48):
helped us understand the warfrom the German perspective.
I think using the type ofmaterial that he had wasn't
without its problems becauseparticularly once you got into
the 30s and the arrival of theNational Socialists they
provided funding for thepublication of quite a few of
these unit histories and they'renot critical of themselves so
(28:11):
when we assess this from anhistorical point of view we can
look at some of these storiesand perhaps think there's a bit
of an element ofself-aggrandisement in there and
we've got to be wary of some ofthe accounts but But
nevertheless, I mean, that'strue of pretty much all history.
If you read any of the materialin Middlebrook and Le Macdonald,
(28:31):
you can say the same about someof that, really.
But in my mind, Jack Sheldon'sbooks are really essential if
you want to get even thesmallest of insight into the
German experience.
The best way, of course, is tolearn German.
There's no other way around itbecause the vast majority of
German material that wasproduced was in German.
(28:52):
There are loads of other memoirsthat most people have never
heard of that are only availablein German language.
And that is obviously difficultfor some to access.
Perhaps as we move into a worldin which AI, as well as having
lots of problems for historians,can also provide potential
(29:12):
solutions, perhaps AI will helpus help us acquire German
language material, perhapsFrench language material as
well, and so many otherdifferent language material
that's out there to do with theFirst World War, digitise it,
and then accurately translateit.
So perhaps in the future, therewill be a lot more of this
(29:32):
material available.
I don't think we'll ever see aLee Macdonald or a Martin
Middlebrook of the Germans, andI don't think if you were
aspiring to be as such inGermany today, that many German
published as kind of beinginterested in publishing that
kind of book I think that momentmay well have passed during the
centenary I did see some reallygood German history books
(29:56):
published during that period butnothing like this so Andrew a
great question I can't entirelyanswer it to your satisfaction I
know but hopefully that's givenyou a bit of direction with
Richard Baumgartner Der AngriffCarnival of Hell and of course
Jack Sheldon's incredible seriesof books about the German art
army in the Great War.
(30:17):
So we'll move on to our fourthand final question and it's kind
of tied into the previous one ina way.
This one comes from SteveMcQuaid.
Steve asks of all the veteransyou met did any still hate the
Germans or did they to a man seethem in their later years as
people who were unfortunateenough to understand exactly
(30:37):
what they went through?
Well that's a good question.
So if I think of those veteransof the First World War that I
met and particularly in thatearly period where I'd met a few
and then started going to theWestern Front meetings in London
at the National Army Museumwhere John Giles and the others
who organised that would lay onthe first two rows of the seats
(31:00):
for veteran members I mean inthose days it wasn't remarkable
to get one veteran coming alongWe were getting a couple of
dozen coming along to all ofthese meetings, and that
included people like HerbertSulzbach, who I mentioned, a
German veteran, sitting therewith British veterans of the
Great War.
And there was absolutely notrouble in this at all.
(31:24):
And for me, that was a littlebit strange because my dad was a
veteran of the Second World War.
He'd fought at Anzio and throughthe rest of the Italian
campaign.
And to say that my dad still hada hatred for the Germans is a
bit of an understatement.
And when I came to meet far moreof that generation and travel
with that generation to thebattlefields of the Second World
(31:44):
War, I mean, hatred is a strongword, but these were men who
hadn't forgiven the Germans.
And that was very different tomy experience of interviewing
men who had been in the GreatWar.
Most of those veterans hadrespect for their German foe.
They knew that on the other sideof no man's land, those German
veterans shared the sameconditions the same privations
(32:07):
the same problems as them andthey felt a bit of a kinship to
those men and they respectedthem as fighters they'd seen
them fight cleanly as much aswar can ever truly be clean and
some of them have been capturedby German soldiers and said that
on the battlefield they weretreated very well but then the
(32:27):
further they went back toprisoner of war camps to men
who'd never been near the frontline guarding them the attitudes
were a lot harsher and a lotless sympathetic and I think the
same probably could be said ifyou could interview a German
veteran talking about hisexperiences of being captured by
the British and ending up as aPOW in a camp in Britain but
probably not a good experiencecompared to the men who took him
(32:49):
prisoner on the front line sothere was this kind of feeling
of kinship and when you read thememoirs there's the same thing I
mean they were there to fightand kill the Germans that was
their job I mean that is the jobof a soldier it's not there to
go and debate they are there tofight and kill and destroy the
enemy and end that conflictvictoriously and that's of
(33:11):
course the view on both sidesbut from the British perspective
that was their place and I thinkthey did that with what they
believed to be a degree ofhonour they fought the war, they
prosecuted the war, they foughtthe German army, occasionally
had to kill the German army andthen when the war was over that
was it and while I can't speakfor an entire generation as I
(33:31):
often say and I know that thereare stories of people who did
have hatred to the Germansbecause they'd seen a brother
shot by a sniper in front ofthem or they'd seen something
that they didn't like and theyblamed the Germans for that and
others blamed the Germans forthe introduction of
flamethrowers or poison gas allthat kind of thing generally
though these men respected theirenemy and if i'd have said to
(33:54):
them come with me we're going tojump in a van we're going to go
over to the Somme and i'm goingto take you six veterans and
introduce you to six germanveterans they'd have been up for
it they would have liked thatexperience and they would have
wanted that experience but thencontrasting that with veterans
of the second world war as imentioned earlier Totally
different.
Those men did not want to knowthe Germans.
(34:16):
And there were occasions inwhich I was with British
veterans where we did meetGerman veterans, particularly in
Italy.
they didn't want to know andmost of those that I ever went
to the battlefields with wouldnot even go in German cemeteries
to pay their respects but if I'dhave taken Malcolm Vivian or
Harry Coates or one of thosekind of First World War veterans
that I knew very well over andgone to Langemarck or Menin or
(34:39):
the huge German cemetery at LaTargette they would have gone in
and they would have had theirmoment of reflection but the
Second World War veterans thosethat have been at the sharp end
of war particularly those thathave been in the infantry or in
tanks or as gunners.
They didn't want to know.
They really didn't want to know.
And that was the difference, Ithink, between perhaps the sharp
(35:01):
end of war and the experience ofthat sharp end of war and what
soldiers in the Second World Warsaw of how the Germans
prosecuted their war compared tothat of the First.
I mean, the Germans committedatrocities in the First World
War.
We know that, particularlyagainst civilians.
But I think that kind of in theround, most veterans that
survived that war look back Andthey felt perhaps more of a
(35:24):
kinship with those on the otherside of No Man's Land than the
civilians that they'd leftbehind and returned to, who had
no concept of the kind of warwhich they'd fallen in.
I mean, this, again, Steve, likeso many things, is perhaps a
subject for a podcast in its ownright, but a fascinating kind of
element to our understanding ofthe experience of war and how
(35:45):
soldiers see their enemy.
So thanks for that, Steve.
Thanks for all of the questionsthis week.
You can send them in via thetraditional methods of email or
the Discord server or also viafan mail.
And remember, we've got thatRoyal Flying Corps, Royal Air
Force special Q&A coming up, andyou can send in questions for
(36:06):
that, and I'll pick the bestfour coming up next week.
is the start of the War in theAir month, with an introductory
episode looking at the historyof the Royal Flying Corps and
the RAF on the Western Front inthe Great War, and then we'll
take it from there.
Thanks to all the questions,keep them coming, and I'll see
you again soon for more Q&As onthe Old Front Line.
(36:33):
You've been listening to anepisode of the Old Front Line
with me, military historian PaulReid.
You can follow me on Twitter atSomcore.
You can follow the podcast atOld Frontline Pod.
Check out the website atoldfrontline.co.uk where you'll
find lots of podcast extras andphotographs and links to books
that are mentioned in thepodcast.
(36:54):
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Buy Me A Coffee atbuymeacoffee.com slash
oldfrontline.
Links to all of these are on ourwebsite.
Thanks for listening and we'llsee you again soon.
Welcome to some more questions and answers here on
the old front line.
These are questions submitted byyou, the podcast listeners, and
each month we select some of thebest questions that have been
submitted via email and theDiscord server to answer here
and hopefully give us all freshperspectives and new knowledge
(00:26):
of this vast subject of theGreat War.
So let's begin.
When this edition of the podcastgoes out, we'll have actually
had two Q&A episodes in a rowand I've done this just so I can
kind of position the order ofthe next few podcasts so I can
set up a sequence and we'regoing to have a whole month
(00:48):
devoted to the war in the air,the war above the trenches of
the Western Front involving themen of the Royal Flying Corps
and latterly the Royal AirForce.
So the next episode from thiswill be the beginnings of that
mini series and as part of itI'm going to have a special RFC
(01:09):
RAF Q&A so if you've got aquestion relating to the war in
the air send it in and I'll pickthe best four questions and I'll
answer those in a specialedition of the Q&A's for that
air war month that we're goingto have as a kind of trial
really for something new on thepodcast so let's get down to
(01:32):
this week's questions questionnumber one comes from John
Anderson of the Grove Academy inBroughton Ferry John asks as a
teacher I'm always intriguedwhen you speak of your own
experiences of visiting thebattlefields with your school
for the first time in the early1980s August will be my 15th
(01:53):
battlefields trip with youngpeople from the east coast of
Scotland So what actually was itabout that first trip to the old
front line with your school thatgot you hooked?
Well, a brilliant question,John.
And in some respects, it wasn'tthat trip that got me hooked as
such because the Great War wasalready there in my life.
(02:14):
Having a father who'd been inthe Second World War and two
grandfathers who'd been in thefirst and my grandmother who
spent a lot of time with me andme with her during my formative
years.
She'd been a young girl inColchester during the Great War.
She could remember the woundedcoming back to the stations in
Colchester.
covered in some mud she couldremember all of her cousins
(02:38):
marching off to war and herbrother too my uncle dan and
only uncle dan coming back allthe others were killed so she
had this whole host of storiesthat inspired me as a youngster
and in those days there werereally good local libraries i
mean there are still some nowthankfully but i relied really
heavily on going to the libraryand they had a very big first
(03:00):
and second but in particular avery good first world war
section and i kind of read everything often multiple times and
growing up as well comics was abig part of my childhood and
then battle comic came alongwith charlie's war we've done an
episode on charlie's war for thepodcast telling the story of
this teenage tommy from the somthrough to the end of the war
(03:20):
indeed beyond that so there wasalready a bit of an interest
there and finally having thischance to go with two of my
teachers roger bastable and lescoats les coats went on to write
several books to help studentsgo to the battlefields, the
guide to Ypres and the guide tothe Somme and having them to
organise a school trip to takestudents across they did that
(03:44):
several times a year I think inthe school minibus and on that
particular trip there was a veryenthusiastic bunch of us who
went and apart from myself therewas my buddy Steve Chambers who
himself went on to write severalbooks about the Great War his
speciality is Gallipoli and he'salso very prominent in the
(04:04):
Gallipoli Association there wasmy old pal Andrew he was there
too and we still travel to thebattlefields together and
several others who I know arestill interested in the Great
War so that was kind of adefining moment not just for me
but a group of people whoperhaps for them with lesser
knowledge or connection to theGreat War at that time we went
(04:25):
across and we saw that landscapeof Flanders and something kind
of changed and I'm sure you'veseen this with your own students
they possibly have an idea ofwhat they might see and I
remember driving down that roadfrom Popperinger to Eap
expecting any minute to see inthe fields this kind of mass of
trenches and shell holes and ofcourse not realising as a
(04:48):
teenager that pretty much all ofthat had gone but the first stop
on that tour was at HopstorCemetery that is the first Great
War Cemetery that I ever saw andone I go back to regularly
because of that kind ofconnection it has with me to
those early years of visitingthe battlefields and on that
(05:09):
trip We went to two trenchmuseums, Sanctuary Wood,
Kroonart Wood, as it was then,Bamval today, but a very
different kind of museum then.
Again, I've spoken about that inprevious episodes of the
podcast.
And going out into the fields,the area where the bluff is at,
it wasn't planted with trees init, it was open farmland.
And I remember us walking acrossthat, and one of the students
(05:31):
picking up something andthrowing it at one of the
teachers, saying, what's that,sir?
And at the corner of my eye, Isaw a German potato stick
grenade fly through the air andland at the teacher's feet and
you can imagine the kind ofconversation that followed but
all of this really comingtogether as a young
impressionable person walking intrenches picking up artifacts
(05:56):
being given a handful ofshrapnel balls as we were when
we went to Crunart Wood this washistory coming alive and it
certainly it sparked somethingin me and I came back from that
I remember my dad picking me upat the school and us walking
back across the fields to myhouse and me literally kind of
(06:17):
waxing lyrical to him and I knewsomething had changed in me on
that trip and it didn't stopthanks to my dad within a couple
of months it was the schoolholidays and I was heading to
the Somme with him in the summerof 1982 and we walked those
battlefields together for thevery first time and it never
stops I went back on more schooltrips and then back on trips of
(06:39):
my own and of course it took meon that life long path and I
think it shows all kinds ofthings really but certainly the
kind of less traditional methodsof learning which a battlefield
tour is can inspire students caninspire young people as it
inspired me as it inspired thosewho travelled with me on that
(07:01):
trip and I've seen that myselfwhen I've done schools
battlefield tours with groups inthe last few decades as I've
worked as a battlefield guideand very often it's interesting
to talk to teachers because theysay that children that have
problems in conventionalclassroom settings somehow come
alive on these kind of trips andthey often were the ones that
(07:25):
asked the best questions had thebest kind of insightful views of
what you were talking about andin particular responded very
very strongly to that idea ofreaching out and touching
history whether that's a bunkerwhether it's a trench whether
it's holding a Lee Enfield rifleor a bayonet or putting a steel
helmet on whatever it is and Ithink that tells us a lot really
(07:47):
about how people react tolearning about history and what
they need to get something fromit it's not just about the dry
dusty pages of history there'snothing wrong with books I'm
sitting in a room completelysurrounded by them now but I
think for young people withminds that are still forming
it's really important to givethem that opportunity to do that
(08:09):
and it's great that you do itwith your students from the east
coast of Scotland and there aremany many schools across the UK
that do this I know that thereare many teachers that listen to
this podcast who do amazing workin inspiring their students to
grasp history and run withhistory and love history and
(08:31):
that is fantastic and I'm alwaysreally pleased to hear about
that and it's been really greatfor me to be asked to go into
the some virtual classrooms withstudents to talk about the First
World War and hear theirquestions, because I'm always
amazed at the kind of questionsthat young people throw at you.
It's really, really interesting.
So I think for me, I mean, Idon't know whether destiny kind
(08:54):
of paths the way of your life.
Who knows?
But for me, already when I wentto EAP for the first time,
having previously gone toPegasus Bridge in Normandy with
my dad to look at the D-Daybeaches, I kind of feel that
that was the direction of travelquite literally of my life for
the rest of my life and it'ssomething that has carried me
through ever since and I feelblessed and privileged really to
(09:19):
have had that opportunity soyoung to be inspired to go in a
particular direction because itis something that has changed
and enriched and given so manylayers of my life really from
researching and reading about itto meeting veterans of both
world wars traveling across somany parts of the world to visit
(09:40):
battlefields understandbattlefields connect to
battlefields I'm so lucky and itjust shows what one school trip
can do and every time I'm out onthe battlefields this week I was
on the SOM and I saw two coachloads of students visiting
battlefield sites one at theDevonshire Cemetery one on their
way to Delville Wood I think Ilook at those coaches and think
(10:03):
who in that group is going to beinspired to go on and take this
further is the future of GreatWar history in one of those
coaches I'm sure it is so thankyou John thanks for giving me
that opportunity once again totalk about what the Great War
means to me and how my pathwayto it began through trips like
(10:24):
that and they are so importantand thank you John as well for
the work that you do to inspireand take young people to the old
front line Question number twocomes from Matt Hale in Devizes.
Matt asks, I live in Devizes,Wiltshire, home to the old Le
Marchant barracks.
I rarely hear of any storiesaround the Wiltshire Regiment
(10:45):
during the First World War.
So my question to you is, whatwas the role of the Wiltshire
Regiment during the Great Warand were they involved with any
of the more famous battles wetalk about nowadays?
Well, the British Army had ahuge number of regiments in the
First World War and all of themfought at many different parts
of the battlefields, whetherthat's the Western Front or
(11:07):
other theatres of war.
And a good starting point tounderstand what these individual
regiments did is a book thatkind of became my Bible as I
began to expand my knowledge ofthe First World War, and that's
Brigadier James's BritishRegiments 1914-18.
It's still in print.
I think Naval and Military Pressdo an edition of it.
(11:29):
And Brigadier James wrote thisbook, compiled information about
all the regiments, and moreimportantly, the battalions that
were part of those regiments.
Because a regiment didn't serveas a regiment on the
battlefield, it served asindividual battalions.
And James lists all these,indicates if they were pre-war
regulars or territorials, thenif they were wartime raised
(11:50):
units when they were formed, andthen which formations they went
off to join, brigades anddivisions and so on.
And although on one level it'smicro-history, it builds a
framework for you to understandhow a regiment developed during
the war and where its battalionswent and therefore which battles
they fought in so if we look athis entry for the Wiltshire
(12:14):
regiment and at the back of thebook there's a table that lists
all the regiments and for eachone it tells you how many battle
honours they got how many VCsand how many dead and for the
Wiltshire regiment there were 60battle honours which was about
average for a Regiment of thatkind of size.
They had one soldier awarded theVictoria Cross and lost over
(12:35):
5,200 men killed in action, diedof wounds, died on the
battlefields or on the homefront during the Great War.
And then when we look at themain entry for the Wiltshire
Regiment in the book, we seethat there, as was common with
all regiments of the BritishArmy, there were two regular
battalions that went overseasand a third reserve battalion.
(12:58):
So the 1st and the 2nd Battalionwere the regular ones they
became part of the BEF theBritish Expeditionary Force that
went across in 1914 one of thosethe first battalion of the
Wiltshire Regiment they were inthe retreat for Mons both of
them were in the first Battle ofYpres which was where the bulk
of the old contemptibles as theybecame known fought so men in
(13:20):
both those battalions were oldcontemptibles and they were two
units that went right throughthe war from beginning to end
and fought in all of those keybattles from the early battles
like Mons and First Deep throughto Arras and the Somme and Loos
and all of the other majoractions that we often discuss.
(13:40):
In the Wiltshire Regiment, whichwas a bit unusual, there was
only one Territorial ForceBattalion, so one battalion of
Saturday Night Soldiers, as theywere called, which indicates
it's a slightly smaller regimentcompared to others.
Most county regiments, RoyalSussex, where I grew up, for
example, they had threeTerritorial Battalions.
The Wilts, they only had one,the 4th Battalion, and they
(14:01):
spent the entire war pretty muchin India and ended up, I think,
on the northwest frontiertowards the end.
So we're not involved in some ofthe more famous related Great
War actions that we think ofwhen we think of 1914-18, but
nevertheless played a reallyimportant role in the far-flung
corners of places where therewas conflict in the Great War.
(14:24):
And then we move on to thewartime raised battalions.
So the 1st the 2nd with theirreserve 3rd battalion of the
Wiltshire Regiment plus theTerritorial 1 the 4th, they were
all units that existed when thewar broke out and then as was
common in county regiments ofthe British Army new army
battalions and wartime raisedbattalions were then formed and
(14:46):
in the Wiltshire Regiment therewere 4 new army battalions, the
5th battalion that fought atGallipoli in 1915 and then went
on to serve in Mesopotamia the6th battalion that was in the 19
Western Division and went acrossto France in 1915 and then
served in all of the majorbattles that followed that the
(15:07):
19th Western Division wereinvolved in.
So in 1915 they were holding theline, 1916 that was the Battle
of the Somme, 1917 they were inthe Battle of Messines and then
the Third Battle of Ypres and in1918 actions from the German
offensive, fighting up in theLys and so many other places
besides.
So they went right through thekind of key stories of the Great
(15:29):
War in terms of a singlebattalion's experience on the
Western Front.
The 7th Battalion was with the26th Division and they went off
to Salonika, one of those lesserknown fronts of the Great War
and then later came to Francethemselves and the 8th Battalion
stayed at home and by the looksof it the 8th was used as a
(15:49):
training battalion to train upsoldiers to send out as
replacements to the others.
So what you've got there then isthree battalions that served
pretty much from beginning toend on the western front the
first and second the two regularbattalions and then from 1915
the 6th battalion of the Wiltsserving in some of these key
battles but also battalionsquite interestingly that go on
(16:13):
to serve in other theatres ofwar key theatres of war like
Gallipoli Mesopotamia Salonicaand India so essentially your
regiment your little countyregiment the Wiltshire regiment
did a lot and covered the kindof whole experience of the First
World War from a soldier'sperspective and sometimes we
(16:33):
know perhaps a little bit lessabout some of these regiments
because not so many books werepublished about them.
I'm not even sure if there is asingle dedicated history of the
Wiltshire Regiment in the GreatWar.
I remember the WiltshireRegiment Museum publishing some
kind of paperback books in the80s and 90s about some of the
(16:54):
battalions I think drawn perhapsfrom the war diaries and the war
diaries will be online on thethe National Archives website,
or perhaps on Ancestry and FindMy Past as well.
So there's quite a few sourceswhere you can kind of look this
up.
And sometimes these smallregiments can slip through the
pages of history.
(17:14):
So it's important to highlightthem.
I mean, I do try to mention alot of different units in the
podcast.
I try to avoid making it a listof units.
You can't mention everyone.
But I do like to feature some ofthe lesser known stories.
And within the history of theWiltshire Regiment, there are
many of them.
And I think it's good.
(17:34):
I've said this before, I think,about the Royal Sussex Regiment.
For me, focusing on a regimentfor which I had a personal
connection to a place, an area,a region, helped me connect with
those men because I knew thetowns and the villages and the
downs where they grew up andlived.
But it also gave me, through theeyes of one regiment, a
perspective on the Great War.
(17:55):
And I think that's what thiskind of research can do.
so I really hope Matt that'skind of inspired you perhaps to
go out and find out a little bitmore about the wheelchair
regiment yourself and perhapsfind your own connections and
maybe on a future trip along theold front line visit some of the
places where they fought and seesome of the graves in the
(18:18):
cemetery because you will seetheir cap badge pretty much
everywhere you go symbolisingthe kind of loss that even a
small county regiment could havein the Great War So thanks for
that, Matt.
I think a great question, alwaysgood to talk about regiments of
the British Army during thatconflict.
So let's move on to questionnumber three.
(18:39):
And this comes from AndrewCaesar Gordon on fan mail.
Now fan mail is another way tosend in a question, which you
can click a little link in theshow notes and you send a kind
of text message via Buzzsproutto the podcast.
It doesn't tell me who you are.
I don't see your number.
So if you want me to answerthese questions and mention your
name, you need to put your nameat the bottom of that little bit
(19:01):
of fan mail.
So Andrew asks, listening toyour fascinating trench chat
with Philip Cross about hisGerman ancestors' frontline
experience, you briefly discusshow little literature from the
German side is available toEnglish language audiences.
We have, of course, the writingsof Eric Maria Remarque, Ernst
Jünger and Rudolf Binding, but Iwonder if you can recommend any
(19:24):
books written by German WorldWar I historians in the mould of
Lynn MacDonald and MartinMiddlebrook that have been
translated into English thatcatalogue the first-hand
experience of German soldiersalongside the bigger picture as
they saw it well this is areally good question Andrew and
there's an easy word answer itpretty much doesn't exist.
(19:46):
The stigma of service in theGerman army in the First World
War that followed that war withGermany's defeat, and then the
later experience of Germany inthe Second World War, the
division of Germany into Eastand West, I think removed a
desire for any equivalent of LinMacDonald and Martin Middlebrook
to track veterans down andinterview them.
(20:09):
I spent a bit of time in Germanyin the late 80s and early 90s on
and off, and one of my kind ofmissions on that was to track
down some first world warveterans i failed completely no
one wanted to know the veteransdidn't want to know and i ended
up speaking to a lot of secondworld war german veterans but
none from the first the onlyveterans that i spoke to from
(20:31):
the first world war germanveterans were ones who were
largely jewish who had fled nazigermany in the 1930s and come to
britain to escape that and oneof those was herbert saltzbach
who wrote a book called With theGerman Guns he was a gunner
officer in the First World Warand then he served in the
British Army in the Second WorldWar as a Jewish volunteer a
(20:54):
fascinating book and I met himseveral times he gave a talk at
the National Army Museum at oneof the early Western Front
meetings an incredible,incredible individual now you
mentioned Remarque and of courseJunger I mean two great names in
the kind of record of the GermanArmy in the First World War and
Rudolf Binding as well But interms of someone going out to
(21:15):
interview a group of veteransand then putting that into
print, there really isn'tanything like that as such.
Now, jumping on to the 1980s,when I joined the Western Front
Association, there was a littleadvert in the magazine there for
a new English language magazine,regular magazine, about the
(21:35):
German army in the Great Warwhich was written and produced
by a chap called RichardBaumgartner and it was called
Der Angriff I have a fairlycomplete set of those and he
published this in the 80s with alot of material he was an
American who was descended fromGermans spoke fluent German
himself he went to Germany andhe more successfully tracked
(21:58):
down a lot of German veterans heinterviewed them he translated
the interviews and he put theminto this material magazine now
it's very difficult to find nowand I suspect probably scarce
and therefore costly but worthlooking out for even for the odd
issue because there's somereally fantastic material in
there by German soldiers aboutGerman soldiers and from the
(22:22):
perspective of German soldiersas well with articles about
particular units and trenchweaponry and some amazing
photographs that were publishedin there as well of the like
that at that time it was reallyunusual to see those things and
for me it kind of inspired me onmy travels within Germany trying
(22:42):
to track some of this kind ofmaterial down and in those days
it wasn't too difficult in junkshops to find albums of
postcards and photographs andindividual postcards tucked away
in often the dampest corner ofsome of these junk shops so he
was a kind of trailblazer inthat and then he went on many
years later in 2010 to write abook called This Carnival of
(23:03):
Hell and it was about the Germanarmy on the Somme.
He self-published it and itdidn't do particularly well and
it is still available out therebut again it's quite costly.
I've seen copies go for quite alot of money and then
occasionally one might pop up oneBay and you'll get it cheaply
but one worth looking out forbecause again with the kind of
(23:24):
material that he was able to puttogether it It is full of
amazing interviews and accountsof German soldiers during that
Somme battle.
And I think his intention wasperhaps to write a whole series
of these books.
But it never happened,unfortunately.
And I don't even know if RichardBaumgartner is still alive.
I'd like to think that hiscollection is preserved out
(23:46):
there somewhere because it was,I know, an amazing archive of
the German experience of theFirst World War.
And he was very, very unusual inthat.
I'd like to believe that therewas someone like me in West
Germany, let's say in the 80s,who did go around and speak to
some of these old boys and didrecord them.
There's the odd interview inplaces like YouTube where
(24:09):
there's kind of really earlyvideo cameras recording old men
with pickle halvers talkingabout their experience, but
that's pretty rare.
I've never come across youngGerman historians who have done
this.
I've known a few Germanhistorians over the years.
My friend Alex is a good exampleof that, but he said that there
was There's this kind of stigmaabout the First World War.
It was sometimes even worsetalking about the Great War than
(24:32):
it was Hitler's war.
So it was kind of pushed intothe background.
And if you think of EastGermany, a country under Soviet
domination for all thosedecades, I suspect the chances
of getting people to discuss theFirst World War was pretty slim.
And knowledge within EastGermany and amongst East Germans
about that war is also prettyslim as well.
(24:52):
I think I've told this storybefore of going to a small
village which has once been partpart of East Germany, just
behind the internal Germanborder, and seeing a fantastic
Great War war memorial in themiddle of the village with a
Stahlhelm still helming on it,and somebody from the village
coming over and saying, youknow, what are you looking at?
So I said, well, we're lookingat this, this Kriegerdenkmal,
(25:15):
this war memorial.
What war memorial?
This one here, to the FirstWorld War.
What do you mean by the FirstWorld War?
He said, there's no such thingas the First World War.
There's only the war againstfascism, 1941-45.
and it was like he was kind oftrotting out a piece of
propaganda.
And this guy, in his 50s, had nosense of what the First World
War was at all, despite the factthat he's standing in front of a
(25:37):
war memorial which listed localmen killed in date order with
the names of the battles andeverything like that included as
well, and possibly one of hisown relatives on there.
I mean, who knows?
So that wasn't going to happenthere.
So really, the equivalent, theGerman equivalent of Lin
Macdonald's Martin Birber bookdoesn't exist as far as I'm
(25:57):
aware, and I would love to beproved wrong.
If anyone listening to this, Iknow we have quite a few Germans
listeners if you've got acomment to make please please
please get in touch or putsomething onto the podcast
website because i'd love to hearwhat you think so that's richard
baumgartner look out for derangriff look out for his book
this carnival of hell but ofcourse on top of that is jack
(26:18):
sheldon jack sheldon wrote awhole series of books called the
german army on the So from Monsto the battles of 1915 to the
Somme to Arras to Passchendaeleand all of those actions on the
Western Front, a whole series ofbooks looking at the Great War
from a German perspective.
(26:39):
Now, he didn't go and interviewpeople.
He used a lot of the materialthat existed and that was
published in the 1920s and 30s.
And a lot of this was unithistories that had been
published by regimental kind ofcommittees and groups of
veterans which are often reallydetailed and Jack Sheldon being
a fluent German speaker couldaccess this material, select
(27:03):
what was particularly good anduse it to construct these books
looking at different aspects ofthe battles of the First World
War through German eyes.
So those are really importantpublications that help us
understand the Great War fromthat German perspective.
Now some of those were publishedquite a few years ago now and
(27:24):
I'd don't think they're all inprint.
They were published by Pen andSword.
You can have a look on theirwebsite and I'm sure you'll find
copies of some of them.
But again, there are quite a fewcopies available on places like
eBay.
eBay is a good source to getbooks quite cheaply sometimes.
And Jack Sheldon really needscongratulating for producing
that remarkable series of booksin the English language that
(27:48):
helped us understand the warfrom the German perspective.
I think using the type ofmaterial that he had wasn't
without its problems becauseparticularly once you got into
the 30s and the arrival of theNational Socialists they
provided funding for thepublication of quite a few of
these unit histories and they'renot critical of themselves so
(28:11):
when we assess this from anhistorical point of view we can
look at some of these storiesand perhaps think there's a bit
of an element ofself-aggrandisement in there and
we've got to be wary of some ofthe accounts but But
nevertheless, I mean, that'strue of pretty much all history.
If you read any of the materialin Middlebrook and Le Macdonald,
(28:31):
you can say the same about someof that, really.
But in my mind, Jack Sheldon'sbooks are really essential if
you want to get even thesmallest of insight into the
German experience.
The best way, of course, is tolearn German.
There's no other way around itbecause the vast majority of
German material that wasproduced was in German.
(28:52):
There are loads of other memoirsthat most people have never
heard of that are only availablein German language.
And that is obviously difficultfor some to access.
Perhaps as we move into a worldin which AI, as well as having
lots of problems for historians,can also provide potential
(29:12):
solutions, perhaps AI will helpus help us acquire German
language material, perhapsFrench language material as
well, and so many otherdifferent language material
that's out there to do with theFirst World War, digitise it,
and then accurately translateit.
So perhaps in the future, therewill be a lot more of this
(29:32):
material available.
I don't think we'll ever see aLee Macdonald or a Martin
Middlebrook of the Germans, andI don't think if you were
aspiring to be as such inGermany today, that many German
published as kind of beinginterested in publishing that
kind of book I think that momentmay well have passed during the
centenary I did see some reallygood German history books
(29:56):
published during that period butnothing like this so Andrew a
great question I can't entirelyanswer it to your satisfaction I
know but hopefully that's givenyou a bit of direction with
Richard Baumgartner Der AngriffCarnival of Hell and of course
Jack Sheldon's incredible seriesof books about the German art
army in the Great War.
(30:17):
So we'll move on to our fourthand final question and it's kind
of tied into the previous one ina way.
This one comes from SteveMcQuaid.
Steve asks of all the veteransyou met did any still hate the
Germans or did they to a man seethem in their later years as
people who were unfortunateenough to understand exactly
(30:37):
what they went through?
Well that's a good question.
So if I think of those veteransof the First World War that I
met and particularly in thatearly period where I'd met a few
and then started going to theWestern Front meetings in London
at the National Army Museumwhere John Giles and the others
who organised that would lay onthe first two rows of the seats
(31:00):
for veteran members I mean inthose days it wasn't remarkable
to get one veteran coming alongWe were getting a couple of
dozen coming along to all ofthese meetings, and that
included people like HerbertSulzbach, who I mentioned, a
German veteran, sitting therewith British veterans of the
Great War.
And there was absolutely notrouble in this at all.
(31:24):
And for me, that was a littlebit strange because my dad was a
veteran of the Second World War.
He'd fought at Anzio and throughthe rest of the Italian
campaign.
And to say that my dad still hada hatred for the Germans is a
bit of an understatement.
And when I came to meet far moreof that generation and travel
with that generation to thebattlefields of the Second World
(31:44):
War, I mean, hatred is a strongword, but these were men who
hadn't forgiven the Germans.
And that was very different tomy experience of interviewing
men who had been in the GreatWar.
Most of those veterans hadrespect for their German foe.
They knew that on the other sideof no man's land, those German
veterans shared the sameconditions the same privations
(32:07):
the same problems as them andthey felt a bit of a kinship to
those men and they respectedthem as fighters they'd seen
them fight cleanly as much aswar can ever truly be clean and
some of them have been capturedby German soldiers and said that
on the battlefield they weretreated very well but then the
(32:27):
further they went back toprisoner of war camps to men
who'd never been near the frontline guarding them the attitudes
were a lot harsher and a lotless sympathetic and I think the
same probably could be said ifyou could interview a German
veteran talking about hisexperiences of being captured by
the British and ending up as aPOW in a camp in Britain but
probably not a good experiencecompared to the men who took him
(32:49):
prisoner on the front line sothere was this kind of feeling
of kinship and when you read thememoirs there's the same thing I
mean they were there to fightand kill the Germans that was
their job I mean that is the jobof a soldier it's not there to
go and debate they are there tofight and kill and destroy the
enemy and end that conflictvictoriously and that's of
(33:11):
course the view on both sidesbut from the British perspective
that was their place and I thinkthey did that with what they
believed to be a degree ofhonour they fought the war, they
prosecuted the war, they foughtthe German army, occasionally
had to kill the German army andthen when the war was over that
was it and while I can't speakfor an entire generation as I
(33:31):
often say and I know that thereare stories of people who did
have hatred to the Germansbecause they'd seen a brother
shot by a sniper in front ofthem or they'd seen something
that they didn't like and theyblamed the Germans for that and
others blamed the Germans forthe introduction of
flamethrowers or poison gas allthat kind of thing generally
though these men respected theirenemy and if i'd have said to
(33:54):
them come with me we're going tojump in a van we're going to go
over to the Somme and i'm goingto take you six veterans and
introduce you to six germanveterans they'd have been up for
it they would have liked thatexperience and they would have
wanted that experience but thencontrasting that with veterans
of the second world war as imentioned earlier Totally
different.
Those men did not want to knowthe Germans.
(34:16):
And there were occasions inwhich I was with British
veterans where we did meetGerman veterans, particularly in
Italy.
they didn't want to know andmost of those that I ever went
to the battlefields with wouldnot even go in German cemeteries
to pay their respects but if I'dhave taken Malcolm Vivian or
Harry Coates or one of thosekind of First World War veterans
that I knew very well over andgone to Langemarck or Menin or
(34:39):
the huge German cemetery at LaTargette they would have gone in
and they would have had theirmoment of reflection but the
Second World War veterans thosethat have been at the sharp end
of war particularly those thathave been in the infantry or in
tanks or as gunners.
They didn't want to know.
They really didn't want to know.
And that was the difference, Ithink, between perhaps the sharp
(35:01):
end of war and the experience ofthat sharp end of war and what
soldiers in the Second World Warsaw of how the Germans
prosecuted their war compared tothat of the First.
I mean, the Germans committedatrocities in the First World
War.
We know that, particularlyagainst civilians.
But I think that kind of in theround, most veterans that
survived that war look back Andthey felt perhaps more of a
(35:24):
kinship with those on the otherside of No Man's Land than the
civilians that they'd leftbehind and returned to, who had
no concept of the kind of warwhich they'd fallen in.
I mean, this, again, Steve, likeso many things, is perhaps a
subject for a podcast in its ownright, but a fascinating kind of
element to our understanding ofthe experience of war and how
(35:45):
soldiers see their enemy.
So thanks for that, Steve.
Thanks for all of the questionsthis week.
You can send them in via thetraditional methods of email or
the Discord server or also viafan mail.
And remember, we've got thatRoyal Flying Corps, Royal Air
Force special Q&A coming up, andyou can send in questions for
(36:06):
that, and I'll pick the bestfour coming up next week.
is the start of the War in theAir month, with an introductory
episode looking at the historyof the Royal Flying Corps and
the RAF on the Western Front inthe Great War, and then we'll
take it from there.
Thanks to all the questions,keep them coming, and I'll see
you again soon for more Q&As onthe Old Front Line.
(36:33):
You've been listening to anepisode of the Old Front Line
with me, military historian PaulReid.
You can follow me on Twitter atSomcore.
You can follow the podcast atOld Frontline Pod.
Check out the website atoldfrontline.co.uk where you'll
find lots of podcast extras andphotographs and links to books
that are mentioned in thepodcast.
(36:54):
And if you feel like supportingus, you can go to our Patreon
page, patreon.com slasholdfrontline or support us on
Buy Me A Coffee atbuymeacoffee.com slash
oldfrontline.
Links to all of these are on ourwebsite.
Thanks for listening and we'llsee you again soon.
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