Flak in macedonia

I think his name may be Lempert which is more common.
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Here are some more examples of the name
name2320003.jpg

this one was mailed to him
name2320002.jpg


He wrote to his sister and also to some other young lady in Charlottenburg. It does not seem like these were heavily censored -- I include this perhaps you can translate more of it than I can.
name2320001.jpg
 
I suppose that letter is to his girlfriend. This is about what he writes:

He received her letter and the package she sent him on december the 10th, with cigarets, cookies, nuts, candles etc. and a new picture of her. He is happy to have two pictures of her now, and says the last is particularly nice. He had easy christmas holidays and will leave the military hospital tomorrow. When he arrives at his unit he will write again ... (that part is difficult to read) ... greet your sister and parents and also to you many greetings and kisses from your dear Gustav (the last two words are upside down, under the date).

The two cards that I have are to his sister Martha and to his father August. Just the normal smalltalk you would write back home, like best wishes for his fathers 57. birthday etc.
 
I also have a letter to Martha -- it does not say much.
This letter is to the girlfriend. One of the pictures on the way to Germany, is of a boy and girl maybe a wedding picture but I cannot tell if it is him -- there also were three copies of that picture. The girlfriend's name was Gerdrut. But I cannot read the entire card. He says it is terrible there but I am not sure what he is talking about.
girlfriend.jpg
 
The spelling of her name Gerdrut is actualy very old this way, hardly used in Germany after the 19th century. Maybe it is possible to locate her in archives because of her uncommon name.

"... it is terrible hot here and therefore we are very exhausted. We can hardly sleep at night because of the heat ... "

The writing is difficult to read because its a bit small. Do you have a larger picture?

BTW, my great grandfather who was in Macedonia evidently complained about the heat there too. My grandmother did not recall any other wartime stories from him beside it beeing so hot down there and that many men cought malaria. I wonder whether there was a particular heat wave that year.
 
Bigger picture Robert -- you are so good at translating these!

girlfriend_1.jpg


:twisted: I wonder if the heat caused his hospital stay?
 
Yep thats fine, actually his writing is easier to read than most others I saw.

"Written june, 23rd 1917
Dear Gerdrut!
Many thanks for your last letters from may(?) the 12th and april the 16th. I was very happy. Dont be mad that I am writing fewer (?) cards but it is terrible hot here and we are very exhausted. We can hardly sleep at night because of the heat.
Can you recognize on the picture on the post card, because this was taken in rainy weather? Many Greetings u. k. (probably "und küsse" - and kisses) from your dear Gustav. Tell ... greetings to from me."

I also found that the book I mentioned has an error concerning GMGA 232. It is not mentioned in any battle report and is only in the appendix, while on the oher hand GMGA 233 is mentiond several times but misses in the appendix. So I guess in the apendix the number is simply wrong, it should list 233 instead of 232. That would indicate that GMGA 232 was withdrawn from Macedonia before the final battles, probably to be used in the 1918 spring offensive.
 
Another interesting pic of an officer wearing a scroll helm in Macedonia. It appears he is not infantry (has swedish cuffs). Don't know what the story is with his feldmutze next to him...maybe he was a "switch hitter"....

Regards

Dave

 
Dave

What makes this picture even more different is that the helmet actually has a spike. Scroll helmet pictures do not have spikes. There are spikes in this photograph of the higher ranking guys but they do not have a Nackenshutz and you tend to believe they are not scroll helmets because there is an Uberzug.
scroll_pray2.jpg
 
The magic postcard finally arrived. This cost almost as much as my son and potential daughter-in-law's airplane ticket from Seattle --
gmga22800011.jpg


The writing on the back is extremely faint. I did what I could to increase the contrast and am hoping that Robert can translate some of it.
gmga2280002.jpg

gmga2280003_1.jpg

gmga2280003_2.jpg
 
Horrray :D wered you gobble that one, great! 107th div and a nice stamp from ´15, that is probably the earliest so far.

The scan is difficult to read though I can only make out pieces (Many Greetings etc.) I am still at it. Maybe can you post a large scale picture of the writing with normal contrast (simply the original scan)?

An observation: it seems that canes were particularly popular in the GMGAs. Maybe their use was the same as todays hiking stick which is helpful when carrying a heavy backpack.
 
Robert

The original scan is illegible:
gmga22800021.jpg


This represents the smallest amount of contrast I can put in and see the writing.
gmga22800022.jpg


gmga22800023.jpg


Picture was on German eBay -- probably a dozen people e-mailed me when they saw it and thought of me. I beat you to the punch on this one! I am going to e-mail you the scans.
 
Regretably it was not possible to decipher everything, here is what I could find out.

The card is addressed to a Mr. Kurt Plutz in Bensheim an der Lauter, which is a city in southern Hessen. My best guess of the writers own name is Adolf Schohr.

In the upper part of the text he identyfies his own unit with ".. Art. Reg 213 Geb. M. G. Abt. 228". Maybe the GMGA was stationed in the facilities of this reg in Germany?

The actual letter is something like
"Monday, the 1st of November 1915
Many greetings sends you [plural] ... Adolf Schohr.
Not much time.. therefore greet with a short letter whom we .. [greetings to a third male person]"

By the way, meet a few gentlemen with "Balkanmützen" (from left): Oberleutnant Scherler from Elberfeld, "me", Dr. Simon from Leipzig, Rittmeister Sacher (?) from Torgau, Hauptmann Reibig from Lützen, Hauptmann Blochius Hartmann from Düsseldorf. Date Oct 12th, 1915.

bmuetze_1.jpg


bmuetze_2.jpg
 
Art. Reg 213
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Very possibly this was the depot where the Abteilung was formed. These guys could have come from the class of 1915 or the class of 1916. We are closing in on more information all of the time!

a few gentlemen with "Balkanmützen"
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Does the postcard show what unit?

Those hats had to be a joke -- didn't they???
 
Does the postcard show what unit?
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Regretably no. It has no stamp, only the names of the soldiers and a few remarks. Maybe they wore confiscated serbian officers headgear? Considering the ranks there ought to be some earnestness about the situation you should think.
Picture was on German eBay
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Oh yes I see $$$€€€!
 
I just saw that his name may also be Schühr or Schöhr. The first line of the senders address reads "Abs. Schütze Schühr (?) 107. division.."

Somebody with references could maybe check whether Art. Reg. 213 belonged to the 107. div and were they were deployed in 1915/16.
 
I can't believe that foto..why would anyone dress soldiers in that type of headdress? They all look like garden gnomes! Brian
 
16.


Well most of the regimented did belong to the 107th division.
IV Reserve Corps - Genlt von Winckler

105th Division.
21st Regiment.
122nd Fusilier Regiment.
129th Regiment
107th Division.
52nd Reserve Regiment.
227th Reserve Regiment.
232nd Reserve Regiment
11th Bavarian Division.
3rd Bavarian Regiment.
22nd Bavarian Regiment.
13th Bavarian Reserve Regiment
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They were in Serbia from October to the end of November 1915. I could find no reference to a relationship between the machine gun Abteilung and the artillery Regiment. The postcard is from division 107. But it does not seem as though artillery Regiment 213 had their own Ersatz Abteilung but rather used the 10th Field artillery's.... the plot thickens!

They all look like garden gnomes!
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so true!
 
Robert

A gentleman named Adrian provided his view of the translation of the 228 card.

Sender block:
Abs. Schütze Schohr, 107. Division, Feld-
Art.Reg. 213, Geb.M.G.Abt. 228.

Addressee block:
An [To]
Karl Plutz
Fuhrunternehmer [= haulier, probably a carter in those days]
Kaiser-wielhelmstr. 7
Bensheim an der Bergstraße

The message:
Monkbg. d. 1.11.15 [poss. Monkberg, a mountain in the Schwäbische Alb, south of Tübingen]

Viele Grüße sendet Euch
[?Adolf/Ralf] Schohr

The next bit is a little rhyme:
Wenig weile, große Eule [=Eile]
drum nur Gruß mit einer
Zeile
"Not much time, great haste, so only a one-line greeting"

The last line says why, but I can't make it out:
den[=denn] wir müssen [?sieben]
"because we have to ..." something! Apart from the number seven, sieben means sieve/grade/select, so maybe some sort of selection/passing-out process was imminent. Or it could be that the message was continued on another card, in which case we'll never know.

I know nothing of Gebirgs-MG-Abteilungen, but I've read that 107th Division was already in Serbia in November 1915. Perhaps these men were detached from FAR 213 and sent back to Germany for MG training.
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Thats the darn kurrent writing - very similar letters so use your fantasy:

Wenig weile, große Eile drum nur Gruß mit einer Zeile denn wir müssen
-> Not much time, great haste, so only a one-line greeting because we must..

or

Wenig weile, große Eile drum mir Grüß´mit einer Zeile den wir müssen
-> Not much time, therefore greet with a line whom we have to..

I think he is right about the last part of the address being short "Bergstr." which is the region in southern Hessen named after a road coming from Darmstadt.

The Kaiser-Wilhelm street evidently does not exist any more but a Kaiser-Wilhelm place does. I could not locate a Schohr or Plutz in the town - that would have been really nice :dontknow: .
 
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