Bob Lembkes daddy....

[Chris Boonzaier]

shared a trench with the guy at the bottom of this thread.


http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...ight=burchardt

As Rick said, Burchhardt transfered to the Reserve Infanterie regt 27 where he commanded the 3rd battalion, killed in Flanders where he was shot in the head leading a counter attack against Brits who were attacking his Battalion HQ.

But... for 2-3 months in 1916 he commanded the Sturmbattalion of the 54 ID... making numerous attacks on the height 304 in Verdun.... each time assisted by Flamethrowers.....

Small world isnt it?

[Bob Lembke]

Trench-mates at Verdun

Chris;

Can't say I know anything about Burchhardt specifically, but just researched some stuff on attacks 54. ID made on 304/Toten Mann. Do you have any info on this? I am at this moment madly writing text for my book on German Flammenwerfer in WK I, currently 23. 2. 16. at Verdun.

I have tracked down a guy whose life my father saved on Toten Mann on 28. 12. 16. Do you have Markus Klauer's Die Hoehe Toter Mann ? See the last sentence on page 147. My father was the "ein strammer 155er", except he was not in IR 155, but in 2. Komp. Garde=Reserve=Pionier=Regiment, providing flame support to IR 155. He was hit a few minutes later, after taking Lt. Kuhnert to the Saenitat who cut his hand off, and wrote a letter describing the event from the Lazarett about 15. 1. 17., giving Kuhnert's name and unit. I just got a picture of Kuhnert from Germany, showing him with fellow officers in 1918, hiding his right hand stump behind his back. I still have a piece of my father's arm bone, blown out later that day by a French 75mm. His arm spit bone pieces for 15 years.

Your trip sounds great. I am off for Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Turkey on Sept. 1, so no Verdun in my immediate future. Visited Verdun once, with an uninterested wife (so I could spend hardly half a day), in about 1990, when I did not know a lot about it. Would love to do it again.

Pop saw the bodies of the 650 men killed in the great explosion in Fort Douaumont, stacked 6 feet high in the corridor. He also was wounded on Hill 304, trying to save the life of a french officer during a raid; the stupid guy shot pop from a distance of inches, and was dead seconds later, head bi-sected with a sharpened spade swung by Pop's sergeant. Pop loved the war, one of the 2% who did, one wonders why. But it was a great adventure.

Bob Lembke

[Chris Boonzaier]

Hi Bob,

I am still trying to collect info on the 54th.

By the way, found 2 more mentions of werfer incidents.
In M.K.s book on the Höhe 304 top half of page 154 a werfer gets hit and all the liquid runs out. and in the Reichsarchive Verdun book 3 (the green ones) top of page 77 in the attack of the RIR201 a werfer explodes and the regimental history says the soldiers looked in horror as the wwrferman went up in flames.

All the best
Chris

[Bob Lembke]

Exploding Flammenwerfer

Hi Chris;

Many thanks for the leads on exploding FWs. I have only been able to find two believable accounts of FWs exploding, both at Verdun. One man survived, the other at least survived the day. And I have read about 150 sources, and have details on the deaths of 889 of the 890 FW pioneers who died in the war. (I got the Totenbuch of the units, I believe it can be found in only one library in the world.)

Everyone thinks that these exploded all the time, but the German FWs had many design features to prevent it. A pressure (not flame) explosion would be much more likely, but the low pressures (top 23 atm for the last model, the Wex, even in the nitrogen pressure tank, SCUBA gear when I used to dive was 150 atm, now 200 atms or more.) would usually make this a wounding, not fatal accident. My father was always trying to convince his father, a Feuerwerk=Offizier and an ordinance inventor, that being a flame-pioneer was rather safe, but I don't think that my grand-father bought it.

The British designs, especially the first ones, were so amateur that they sometimes exploded spontaneously. They used compressed air, and even compressed oxygen, instead of inert nitrogen! I think they even exploded in the fire tube before the fuel even got out.

Thanks again!

Bob Lembke