This is the M14 Gewehrgranate, the replacement for the M13, and the rifle grenade that would serve the German Army for much of the war, although technological advancements – the introduction of pneumatic grenade launchers and small trench mortars – and an entirely new concept in rifle grenades, would make it obsolete by mid-1917. Continue reading
This is one of those Flanders cemeteries that not only has few visitors, but my guess is that many of you have never heard of it. Continue reading
My guess is that you won’t have seen any of these photographs before. And, from a thrill-a-minute point of view, possibly won’t be in too much of a hurry to see them again. On the other hand, you might find this more interesting than it might appear at first sight, and if nothing else, it certainly answers a few questions about how troops might have been supplied when the land across which those supplies had to be transported had been turned into a quagmire by repeated artillery bombardments that had destroyed any semblance of the drainage systems that once patchworked Flanders Fields. Note I use the words ‘might have been’. Read on…… Continue reading
Another beautiful Flanders day, and a CWGC signpost. Looks promising. Continue reading
The leaves are turning in Flanders Fields. Continue reading
Apparently, kids of my generation liked tractors. I couldn’t have cared less. They just looked old and I was interested in new. But I find I quite like them now, at least those used for military purposes in the Great War. This is the Foster-Daimler (or, sometimes, Daimler-Foster) tractor, first produced in 1912, this example pictured on the Somme in 1916. Continue reading
This is the M13 Gewehrgranate, a high-explosive cast-iron rifle grenade fitted with a percussion fuse designed to explode on impact, its body segmented for maximum fragmentation on detonation. Continue reading
