joerookery
Well-known member
I received this question this morning on e-mail. I get an awful lot of these questions about specific reserve units so I thought I would share my thoughts on this one -- no one ever said I was right. This is an amazingly complicated question that I do not have a simple answer for. Perhaps some of the more discriminating members might see this as a simple thought or one that has been beat to death, but I just do not think so. There are several key questions you must ask yourself.
Was there an RJR 119?
Yes, there was and it was directly aligned with JR 119. At least in part. The regimental commander and the commander of the first Battalion both came from JR 119. However, the second Battalion commander came from JR 127 and was formed in Rottweil. The third Battalion commander came from JR 126 and was formed in Reutlingen.
Where did they get their helmets from?
A variety of sources no doubt. Some helmets were handed down from the regiments that directly formed the reserve regiment. The regiment consisted of about an equal mix of reservists and Landwehr soldiers. Therefore some of the Landwehr soldiers could easily have come with helmets provided by the Landwehrbezirke. These could be old helmets, hand-me-downs, and odds and ends. Another source of helmets would have been purchases probably Ersatz with God knows which wappen. So there could have been silver wappen that came from JR 119 and brass colored wappen that came from other Würrtemburg infantry regiments. Photographic evidence seems to indicate that Prussian wappen were the default for many minor contingent forces. I do not have an example of this regiment directly.
Did they wear a Landwehr cross?
They were supposed to. It seems as though mostly they did not. A Landwehr cross on an enlisted helmet is much scarcer than the numbers would support.
This is actually much cleaner than many. These guys were in the same Army, had matching numbers, and recruited from the same general area. Number matching, while it makes sense was clearly not the case all the time. And then you ended up with problems like JR 123. There was no RJR 123. There was an LJR 123.
