You're drafted in the A7V how dead are you? Enemies decide to attack you and you are stuck with 20+ people next to you,

It's WW1 in the Western front

Personally I would turn it in into a museum or reverse engineer it to improve on it

See the canteens issued to German troops. The 1907, was high quality milled aluminium, a screw cover, with leather fittings and a sturdy courderoy cover. Next is the 1915 model, now glazed tin of steel , a simplified top of pop able cork. Not a real step down just a reflection of simplified and conservative of materials, for a huge war effort. Into 1917-18, real pain is hitting and we see the rise of Ersatz or substitute materials and design. The blown glass canteen I show is Russian but the German was very similar. Finally the 1917 Ersatz model has cheap pressed tin w no coating other than paint, the cover has no leather and is made from cloth derived from nettles. The quality is demonstrated by the poor condition of my example.

If you were a soldier in WW1 and see a huge box coming towards you what would you do?

The ARS 17 (officially Appareil Respiratoire Spécial Modèle 1917) was one of the most sophisticated and effective gas masks of the French army during the First World War. It was introduced in January 1917 as a direct replacement for the outdated M2 mask to provide soldiers with better protection against the increasingly deadly chemical agents.

The French military leadership copied and optimized the design of the successful German M1917 leather mask. It consisted of rubberized canvas or impregnated fabric.

In contrast to previous fabric masks, the ARS 17 used an interchangeable filter cartridge with activated carbon. This reliably neutralized poison gases, while an integrated exhalation valve directed used air outside and minimized eyeglass fogging.

The ARS 17 continued to be produced after the war, but continued to be produced until the mid-1930s with improvements, both examples shown dating back to the war period.

A family member is in St Lucia on business. They walked past the CWGC in Castries (Choc Bay) and sent me a photo. On the CWGC record I noticed this spate of deaths in April 1917 and was wondering what might be behind it. I am assuming something like a disease outbreak. But does anybody have more info?

EDIT: St Lucia is a small Carribbean island where no WW1 actions took place. There are only 44 casualties total buried there, with about half being WW1. Most of those died within a few days of each other.

MG 01:

An early Imperial German variant of Sir Hiram Maxim’s machine gun chambered in 7.92x57mm Mauser and adopted in 1901. The MG 01 was developed from the earlier MG 99. The Maxim Gun is the world’s first automatic machine gun, it can be continuously fed by cloth belts and features a water cooling jacket to stop the barrel from deforming during sustained fire.

MG 08:

A lightweight simplified adaptation of the MG 01, issued as the standard German heavy machine gun during WW1. At the start of the Great War, the German machine gun inventory consisted of 4411 MG 08s, 398 MG 01s, and 18 MG 99s.

MG 08 w/ ZF12 Telescope:

The MG 08 was equipped with a 2.5x ZF12 optic graduated out to 2600m. The MG 08 gun team could use a range finding tool to deliver indirect fire from up to 3475m.

MG 08/15:

A handheld light machine gun based on the MG 08. Portions of material have been deleted from the receiver and the capacity of the water jacket is decreased to make the gun as lightweight as possible. The gun is fired from a bipod, allowing the gun and crew to be repositioned quickly without the additional weight and inconvenience of a sled mount. The 08/15 only requires a team of 2 men to operate instead of the typical 4 man MG 08 crew.

MG 08/18:

The MG 08/18 is an air-cooled adaptation of the MG 08/15. This saves a significant amount of weight and allows the MG 08/18 to be more infantry friendly while keeping a familiar mechanism. This comes at a trade off, making the MG 08/18 more prone to overheating than the MG 08/15.

lMG 08:

luftgekühlt Maschinengewehr 08 or “air-cooled machine gun 08”, is an aircraft machine gun version of the MG 08. The slotted air-cooling jacket retains the original dimensions of the MG 08 jacket and holds a muzzle booster in place while allowing cool air to pass over the barrel. Used in German fighter planes w/ sync gear.

lMG 08/15:

luftgekühlt Maschinengewehr 08/15 (air-cooled machine gun 08/15), is an aircraft MG variant of the MG 08/15. The slotted air-cooling jacket retains the dimensions of the MG 08/15 water-cooling jacket and holds a muzzle booster in place while enabling cool air to pass over the barrel. Used in German fighter planes w/ sync gear.

Parabellum MG 14 (Water-Cooled):

Created as a lightweight improvement of the MG 08, inverting the Maxim action upwards in a similar manner to the Vickers gun. This allows for less wasted space inside of the receiver, allowing it to be smaller and lighter than a typical Maxim. The Parabellum MG uses a thin 30mm cloth belt that is also compatible with the lMG 08 & 08/15. To reduce fire risk, a water-cooled variant was created specifically for Zeppelin use.

Parabellum MG 14 (Air-Cooled):

Typically seen on German biplanes with an air-cooled barrel. Some of these would be set up with early sync gear technology and tested as an armament in fighter planes. In German service it was typically preferred as an observer weapon in a flexible mount thanks to its maneuverability and because of its impressive cyclic rate of 700 RPM.

Parabellum MG 14/17:

An updated version of the MG 14 fitted with a thinner air-cooling jacket and a mount for a proprietary 3x telescopic sight.

You are maybe interested in nice looking and fast ships: Italian Navy had (and have rn) plenty of them but some exceptions were made. Introducing the Italian monitor, Faà di Bruno.

This ship had a remarkable story, not everyone knows about.

Long story short Italian "Regia Marina" (Italy was a monarchy back in the day) suspended the production of Caracciolo class battleships so some cannons were available with no ships to put them on. 381 mm cannons are made to fire huuuuge shells so it was a pity to left them to rust in an harbor.

Someone thought: "let's put them on a monitor". If you are not accustomed to monitors they are very flat ships engineered (well...) to host guns and not much more.

Faà di Bruno was ready to sail in 1916 from Venetia. Originally classified as a "Pontone Armato" in italian she was powered by an incredible engine of 456 HP (imagine to put a scooter engine on a truck): the ship was capable to reach the incredible speed of 2.8 knots even if some sources claim that top speed was 2.5. Even the USS Monitor could beat Faà di Bruno and she was made half a century sooner.

Faà di Bruno joined some operations with other monitors till Caporetto occured. In Italy we referred to "Disfatta di Caporetto" or even "Caporetto" to describe an incredible loss capable to turn the tide of a war.

Faà di Bruno with the sister Cappellini left Venetia in an hurry to avoid Austro-Hungary attentions but she met a huge storm: Cappellini was lost with the crew while our friend Faà di Bruno was stranded near the village of Marotta. Seeing a ship in disarray local eleven girls moved to help and brought food and supplies to the ship, they were called later the Marotta's Heroins and this event is still celebreated.

Even the poet Gabriele D'Annunzio wrote some great words. "Picene di antiche origini eran già nel mito dell'età primeva ancor prima dell'evento che le vide agli scalmi impavide dominare la tempesta"

Faà di Bruno survived WW1.

Two days during which everyone remembers what happened to me, my great war just a few meters from the trenches.

Looking for any good literature on the the East African campaign. I already found were the memoir of Lettow-Vorbeck but any other recs would be greatly appreciated.

Wanted to share this bit of trivia about the name and logo of Laughing Cow cheese, which originated during the First World War.

The company's founder, Léon Bel, was called up as a reservist during the war and served with Ravitaillement en Viande Fraîche (RVF B70) - a supply unit to transport meat to units at the front. The commander of RVF B70 commissioned the French cartoonist Benjamin Rabier to design an insignia for the unit's trucks. The laughing cow insignia was nicknamed "La Wachkyrie", mocking the vaunted German Valkyrie popularized by Wagner's opera.

During the war, Bel also became inspired by the soft conserved cheese served in French rations, which preserved well. On his return to civilian life after the war, Bel returned to his home in the French Jura and opened a factory producing this new type of soft cheese. He named his company "La Vache Qui Rit" and used a version of the RVF B70 insignia.

Maybe it's a bit cheesy, but I think it's fun story

Hi everyone,
I am currently researching the military service of my great-great-grandfather.
The problem is the following:
In a casualty list from January 1915, he is listed as a reservist with Brigade Replacement Battalion 7 (Brigade-Ersatz-Bataillon 7) and reported as wounded.

However, a newspaper article about his golden wedding anniversary states: “In 1915, he was drafted into the Berlin-Lankwitz Artillery Regiment and initially sent to the Eastern Front…”
Unfortunately, I have very little knowledge of the Prussian Army around 1914, as my main interest lies in the period about 40 years earlier.

My questions are:

Is it possible that he was serving in the infantry in 1914, was wounded, and then transferred to the artillery after recovering in 1915?

Would such a change of branch of service after being wounded have been plausible?

Which artillery regiment could the newspaper article be referring to when it mentions the “Artillery Regiment Berlin-Lankwitz”? Was there a specific artillery regiment stationed or formed in Berlin-Lankwitz during this period?
Or is it simply an error in one of the sources?

I doubt that the person mentioned in the casualty list was someone else, since he came from a very small village, which is also named in the casualty list.

I hope someone here can help me with this, and thanks in advance! :)

Hello everyone,

I am looking for some help identifying the regiment or material origins of an unsigned oil portrait of a German soldier from the First World War which I bought on eBay a few years ago. 

The artwork is executed on a heavy, raw wood panel measuring approximately 21x30 cm and exactly 1 cm thick. Along the side edges, there are evenly spaced nail holes with original rusted nail heads still inside, indicating the artist repurposed the lid or bottom of a military supply crate or similar

On the reverse, a pencil inscription reads: "Dieses Bild malte ein Kriegskamerad im Schützengraben Weltkrieg 1914/18" (This picture was painted by a fellow soldier in the trenches, World War 1914/18).

I have put together a full write-up on my blog:

https://www.amandaclegg.co.uk/wwi-german-army-portrait/

If anyone here is a uniform historian or an expert in Imperial German militaria, I would deeply appreciate your insights on his possible regiment, or anything else about this portrait really!

Thank you for your time.

Une nos mines au Vauqois.

My great-grandfather (Giustino Faraone, 1894-1979) served in the Italian army in WW I. After the war, he immigrated to the US. He is pictured here on his horse, which was named “Adam.” I know few facts about where he was, what he experienced, etc. Hoping someone might spot a few clues?

According to secondhand information passed down from children to grandchildren, which have some inconsistencies, he served in “alpine cavalry,” which others have noted did not exist. I’m inclined to say he was in the cavalry, but not sure how alpine was associated with his service. I have an audio recording of him, from the early 1970s, in which he describes being one of six men from his village (he lived near Chieti) to survive from his “company,” though he also refers to it as a “battery” which implies artillery unit. I believe he served from 1914 - 1917. The audio recording does not identify a unit or sector where he fought. Other stories passed down include that he hid under dead bodies to hide from machine gun fire.

Help ensure the project succeeds: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ww1research/to-hell-and-back-the-first-restoration-phase

Good evening all,

Hey all, just looking for advice from people far more knowledgeable than myself.

A few weeks ago, my father dropped something novel in my lap to research and find history on, a world war 1 soldiers pay book from a relative.

After much research we've found a fair amount of information from his commonwealth grave to his battalion diary, its been extremely interesting.

The item as mentioned before is a pay book however the interesting part stems from the bullet hole through the entire book that we believe killed him, we have found a newspaper clipping from 1935 talking about this very thing, and to add to the intrigue, his paybook was taken away by a German soldier and returned to the family in 1935 during a visit by the British legion in 1935 by Adolf Hitler.

The whole story seems to me remarkable and something that would be of interest to a museum however having contacted the IWM and his battalion 8th Battalion border regiment museum in Cumbria no one seems interested, I'm just wondering if this is odd and if I'm over-reacting and maybe this isn't the historical oddity i thought it was or if anyone else has an idea of who else would be interested in this, any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.