And some awards:
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And finally, award of the Tank Destruction Badge;Comment
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Very nice indeed.
The garde Füsiliers fought at Ovilliers on the Somme, fighting against them was A guy named Tolkien..... it was while fighting the Garde Füsiliers that he got his experiances that would lead to the fight scenes in Lord of the Rings.
Here is a rough text that will go with the G.F. Rget EK doc in the EK book...
Garde-Füsilier Regiment
Garde-Füsilier Otto Behrend
Otto Behrend shared a battlefield with an opponent whose imagination would bring the horrer of war to us in the guise of fantasy.
The fighting scenes in Tolkiens Lord of the Ring Trilogy are largely based on Tolkiens experiences during the Somme offensive in 1916. Tolkien served as an Officer in the 11<SUP>th</SUP> Lancashire Fusiliers and took part in the fighting to gain the Village of Ovillers- la – Boisselle.
Ovillers was Tolkiens first Battle and his experiences in the mud on the Somme were to be reflected in those of Frodo and Sam, the desolation on the Somme battlefield transplanted into an imaginary world for millions of readers.
“They lie in all the pools, pale faces, deep deep under the dark water. I saw them: grim faces and evil, nobel faces and sad. Many faces proud and fair, with weeds in their silver hair. But all foul, all rotting, all dead”
Frodo “Passage of the marshes” The two towers.
What Tolkien presents to us as fantasy, a British officer described in everyday language…
“Beyond La Boisselle, on the left of the Albert-Bapaume road, there had been a village called Ovillers. It was not longer there. Our guns had removed every trace of it, except as it lay in heaps of pounded brick. The Germans had a network of trenches about it, and in their ditches and their dugouts they fought like wolves. Our 12th Division was ordered to drive them out -- a division of English county troops, including the Sussex, Essex, Bedfords, and Middlesex -- all those country boys of ours fought their way among communication trenches, burrowed into tunnels, crouched below hummocks of earth and brick, and with bombs and bayonets and broken rifles, and boulders of stone, and German stick-bombs, and any weapon that would kill, gained yard by yard over the dead bodies of the enemy, or by the capture of small batches of cornered men, until after seventeen days of this one hundred and forty men of the Prussian Guard, the last of their garrison, without food or water, raised a signal of surrender, and came out with their hands up. Ovillers was a shambles, in a fight of primitive earth-men like human beasts. Yet our men were not beast-like. They came out from those places -- if they had the luck to come out -- apparently unchanged, without any mark of the beast on them, and when they cleansed themselves of mud and filth, boiled the lice out of their shirts, and assembled in a village street behind the lines, they whistled, laughed, gossiped, as though nothing had happened to their souls -- though something had really happened, as now we know.”
Defending the town of Ovillers were approximately 6 Companies or German Infantry, 3 of which were Prussian Garde-Füsiliers. Garde-Füsilier Behrend seems to have avoided capture unless his award document was signed after the war.
As a young soldier Behrend may have shared the thoughts of Sam Gamgee, who Tolkien said personified the British soldier of WW1
"It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil at heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace."
Tolkien later wrote, "My 'Sam Gamgee' is indeed a reflection of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself."Comment
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Hi Chris,
Many thanks for replying. Fascinating stuff. Do you think the men of the Prussian Guard were the inspiration for the Orcs?
All the best,
Toby.Comment
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Interesting Detail
Toby;
Very nice. A tiny detail, but quite interesting and unusual. What is curious on p. 11 of the Militaer=Pass? Note the top entry set, signed by the company commander, note the stamp: "Major u. Komp.=Fuehrer". Have you ever heard of a German Major commanding a company? Especially toward the end of the war? By then probably most Bataillone only had a Hauptmann as CO.
Note that it was the Ersatz Bataillon, and that the entry notations seem to be about medical treatment. Possibly a regimental officer, a major, severely wounded, and put in a slot where he was functional? Or possibly was the CO of the Ersatz Bataillon doubling as a company CO, as it was not in combat and it was mostly administrative?
I have studied about 50 Paesse very carefully and never seen anything like it.
Bob LembkeComment
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Hi Bob,
A belated thank you for commenting. I hadn't noticed what you are commenting on previously but thank you for pointing it out. Very interesting.
Best regards,
Toby.Comment
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