"Early War WW1 German Reserve battalions" Topic

Hi, i'm currently building up forces for an early war German force centering on the battle of Mons. Hoping to correctly depict the engaged reserve formations mentioned in the Osprey campaign booklet around Nimy Bridge.

Can anybody shed light on the correct uniforms for these guys, did they wear feldgrau like their comrades in the line or were they still wearing Prussian Blue/ I've read online that many were kitted out with the feldmutz as opposed to a helmet.

Reenactment photo's taken off the web suggest Prussian blue jacket and white trousers,(Summer campaign trousers I'm assuming) in which case they present a very 1870's appearance and would add a bit of colour to endless ranks of feldgrau.

Link to German Re-enactment site
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Or would something like the Landsturm uniform pictured here be more appropiate?

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ANY HELP OR SUGGESTIONS APPRECIATED

While I cannot quote you from sources, I have never read anything to indicate the Germans attacking the British at Mons wore anything other than feldgrau. I have heard of a few Landsturm battalions in East Prussia during 1914' Russian invasion wearing the old blue but not on the western front.

The German infantry that attacked the British at Nimy bridge were regular soldiers from the two regiments in 84th Brigade.

Robert

I have never read anything to indicate the Germans attacking the British at Mons wore anything other than feldgrau.

Ditto. Reserves often had obsolete pattern equipment, but not uniforms. Upon mobilization, the Landwehr did have quite a variety of obsolete uniforms, including blue tunics.

As above, reserve divisions had proper uniforms. You may be thinking of Landsturm units.

Many thanks guys, I' m a relative newbie so your input is very much appreciated, I've got mixed up with reserves and landstrum it appears. Does anyone have possible suggestions for the prussian blue and white in the first photo's? Are these Landstrum?

Also in the Osprey Mons booklet the OB for the Germans simply states regiments as the basic tactical unit. How many battalions were fielded in a regiment? Two making a brigade of four and a division of 8?

Many thanks

During the Battle of Mons, each German infantry regiment fielded three battalions of 4 companies each (numbered 1 to 12 across the regiment – 1 to 4 in I Batallion; 5 to 8 in II. Batallion; 9 to 12 in III. Batallion). The 13th company was the MG Company.

Each infantry brigade contained two infantry regiments.

Each division comprised two infantry brigades.

Robert

Many thanks for the input guys, most helpful as always. Now time to put an order in with Pendraken, for an awful lot of Germans :-)

No problem. Are you wanting to do the whole of the Battle of Mons or just the battle for Nimy?

Robert

Doing Early War in 15mm at the moment with Rules aimed at company up to battalion level engagements. However would like to look at 10mm and divisional games in the future to capture the sense of scale of these engagements. So the actual engagement at Nimy bridge in 15mm, but looking at the greater action around Mons and a possible german flanking movement on the British right in 10mm.

Thanks. Company up to battalion level engagements can give some sense of the tactical issues facing the respective unit commanders in 1914. Be careful because some rules are just carried over from WW2 rules and the ground scales are significantly wrong, i.e. a company will cover the same frontage as its WW1 battalion counterpart would have done. If you go with historically accurate frontages then battlefields tend to be long and narrow at this level. More importantly, you can miss the impact of what happened in the neighbouring narrow sector.

The assault on Nimy bridge is a very good case in point. There were actually two German battalions I/Infanterie Regiment 84 and II/IR84 involved in the direct assault across the road and rail bridge. The attack frontage was no more than about 500m across. 'Off table' however was the whole of Field Artillery Regiment 9, whose two battalions (Abteilungen) were set up in support of the attack. Furthermore, III/IR84 crossed the canal further east and was able to converge towards the Nimy attack and support their colleagues.

There is a detailed description of this attack, and the German perspective on the whole battle, in the recently published 'The Battle of Mons: The Official German History' that was translated by Holger Puttkammer and me.

Robert

Thanks Robert for some superb input, very much appreciated and your recent work on the German perspective is on the Amazon list alongside the battleground europe title. We recently played an excellent game with the Crawley club using a forthcoming set of rules aimed at company engagements, which are fantastic, are in the playtesting stages at the moment, and hopefully will be available commercially in the not too distant future.

However it's precisely this issue of flank factors that's drawing me to 10mm and a larger scope of game. From a newbie perspective so pardon any ignorance here, Mons appears like many an ACW encounter battle to be from the German viewpoint to be a desperate bid to find the flank, so my thinking is 10mm will come into it's own.

Possibly looking at "Crush the Kaiser" – Early war supplement quick play rules for this larger scale game.

From the German First Army commander's perspective, the overall objective was to find the Anglo-French left flank and then get around it. The two books ('The Battle of Mons: The Official German History' and the Battleground Europe title) complement each other well. This was a deliberate choice. I wanted to include more from the BEF perspective but it didn't make sense. You can contrast the British descriptions of the German attacks with the German perspective.

I understand why Mons could appear to be like an ACW encounter. It wasn't quite like that though, mainly because of the excellent recon work done by the British cavalry and the superb analysis of the Intelligence Section of GHQ. Unfortunately these aspects don't really come through in the BE book but you can tell because the Germans arrived on pre-prepared defensive lines. As to what was happening from the German perspective, well that would be giving away what our book uncovered… ;-)

'Crush the Kaiser' will give you a higher level perspective, yes. To get a good feel for the battle as a whole, however, you need to go higher still. Check out what we did for the First Battle of the Marne:

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and for one part of First Ypres:

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I don't live that far from Crawley. If the group is interested then I can bring all of the troops and all of the scenery, contours, and table mats that would be required to do the whole of Mons, including the flanks. The group would just need to supply the tables.

Robert

Personally think that would be great, have to check with the club but shouldn't be a problem. I'll pm you my email to develop this further, many thanks for suggesting this Robert

Super. I look forward to hearing from you.

Robert

Sorry Robert for the delay, unable to pm you for further info, you can contact me via jonrog70 at yahoo dot co dot uk.