Anyways, feel free to share your reading recommendations as well, some of us would love to hear all about it.
Reading this one now, it's the history of the German 65th Infantry Division. They were essentially organized as a 700-series division raised in 1942 for coastal defence duty. They served in Belgium and the Netherlands and then just before the Italian defection were sent to Italy, where they spent the rest of the war.
This was written in the early 70s from surviving documents and veterans' interviews. The division was not a distinguished one, and it's interesting to get the perspectives of one of the many nameless horse-drawn infantry units that made up the majority of the Army. Most of the popular histories seem to focus on the mechanized and armoured formations, which by their nature were 'elite' troops, and then there were the elite of the elite like Panzer Lehr, GD, and LAH.
This division was nothing like that and there is a good mix of personal accounts and high-level stuff. There are for all intents and purposes no maps included, but I'm translating this for the local reenactment unit and providing illustrations as I go, which is making it easier.
It is a high-level view, so not a lot of ASL scenario ideas. I am just coming to the Anzio fighting, and their only real combat so far was the Sangro, where bombers, fighters, artillery and naval guns all made short work of the division, which was effectively wiped out during the fight to advance on Orsogna.
What is very interesting though is that the excellent New Zealand war histories are all online, and so I'm flipping back and forth between this book, and the histories of the individual New Zealand battalions that took the 65th Division on at Orsogna. The differing perspectives of the Germans and the New Zealanders are quite fascinating. (As an aside, the American, Canadian and New Zealand official histories are all available for free online, I've yet to see the British histories made available in the same way - a real shame). For example, this extract from the 24th NZ Battalion history is written a little differently than the German historian approaches things:
"The 65th Infantry Division opposing the New Zealanders in this battle of the Sangro consisted largely of Poles with no great enthusiasm for the cause in which they fought, or of young Germans incompletely trained. It held a front of nearly 15 miles with two regiments only; its transport was horse drawn, and most of its equipment second-rate. ‘The enemy’, writes Major Aked, ‘were not up to the... usual German standard we had met in Africa, and very many were found skulking in camouflaged positions on the crest [of Marabella]. They were scared stiff. One of them could have easily wiped out [A] Coy HQ. Right on the crest was a conical shaped erection. While waiting for my exploiting platoons to return I went out to this to investigate. I found it to be branches, and pulling a few aside, found myself looking into the muzzle of a spandau, complete with gunner.’"
Some interesting personalities discussed briefly in the book, and I'm expanding my research on them via the also excellent
lexicon der Wehrmacht site. The 65th Infantry Division had three commanders in its first year of existence - General Bömers from July 1942 to Jan 1943, Willi Rupprecht from Jan to May 1943, and Gustav Heistermann von Ziehlberg, who took over in May and led the division in its first combat assignments in Italy in the autumn, where it was practically wiped out in the Sangro fighting. Ziehlberg was wounded there in November 1943 and relinquished command. One of his first orders, while still in the Netherlands, was to change the divisional tactical sign from a picture of a tree, to the first letter of his own last name! He had started the war as a lieutenant-colonel in the regular army, commanded an infantry regiment in early 1943 after a long spell of staff duty before taking command of the 65th. He lost his left arm on the Sangro in an Allied air raid, and after recovery, commanded another division during the collapse of Army Group Center in Russia, where he got the Knight's Cross. On the same day as he cured his throatache, 27 July 1944, he was ordered to arrest his chief of staff (Ia) and bring him to Berlin. Instead, he questioned his chief of staff personally about the Bomb Plot, and gave the man the opportunity to hand over his duties. Instead, his chief of staff deserted to a known gap in the lines seeking suicide, but was wounded and captured. It looked bad for von Ziehlberg, who was tried in September 1944 and sentenced to seven months imprisonment. He underwent a second trial in October, was sentenced to death, and was executed by firing squad in February 1945.
Also interesting to look at the claims of war crimes associated with the division. They are naturally not mentioned in the divisional history, but I inadvertently found a website, in Italian, devoted to all the war crimes committed in Italy, broken down by unit. So finding this book a great springboard into other sources. Most valuable are the occasional personal vignettes drawn from veterans of the division. A couple chosen at random:
In one place the author uses a term which I now understand was common soldier slang - he refers to the British as "our comrades from the other field post office." Kind of a gentlemanly, sporting term one would expect from the British rather than the Germans.
On New Year's Eve 1943/44, following their thrashing on the Sangro, almost all the division's units were traveling to the Adriatic coast. The rumours here were comforting, promising that once loaded the units would be relocated to the north for refitting. Characteristic of the mood and the experiences of our soldiers during these days is the following report of a former member of Headquarters Company of Grenadier Regiment 145 (mounted platoon). Love some of the details, like the fact their horses were all named.
"On 29 December, following our deployment at Orsogna, we were relieved by a unit of 334 Infanterie Division. According to the orders, we set off for a small village called Ari (8km north of Orsogna). Everyone tried to reach the specified goal on their own. In addition to the blanket and shelter-quarter, I had to bring along an Italian machine gun. With painstaking attention to detail, during the first few days with Kampfgruppe Drost I learned how the beast was loaded, secured and taken apart. Two comrades dragged a bulky wooden box with ammunition. Soon I met some of the Landser of our 14th Company, travelling north with a horse-drawn anti-tank gun. One of them drove a cow he had tied to the gun. He described it as "supplemental rations on self-propelled gun." After handing over some mashed cigarettes, I was allowed to put my MG and other belongings on the gun limber and even sit on the gun when it was travelling downhill.
"After travelling off-road, we reached the narrow country lane to Ari, where our platoon was gathering. The horses we left behind before our deployment were now brought to Pianella, 30km away, probably for lack of food. The handful of buildings in Ari were damaged by air attacks, abandoned by their residents, and contained absolutely nothing edible. On 30 December we started from Ari via Chieti to Pianella at 16:00 hrs. Shortly after Ari, a truck took me a short way. In the immediate vicinity of Chieti Scalo (Chieti’s railway station) I was able to sleep on a straw bed in a chapel for a few hours. After an exhausting walk the next day we arrived at our horses in Pianella at 10:00hrs.
"Drizzling snow fell during the day, turning to sleet in the late afternoon. At the same time an icy cold wind was blowing. When we boarded our horses at dusk to ride to the Adriatic Sea, together with a comrade I was tasked as a security escort for our vehicle. The mounted platoon quickly disappeared on the road to Caprara towards the Adriatic. While we did everything we could to shovel the roadway for our vehicle, high snowdrifts formed along the village road. At our request, a villager willingly tried, but in vain, to attach his two oxen before our draft horses. I advised the two coachmen to wait for better weather with their draft horses “Nanuck” and “Karin” and set out with my comrade to reach the platoon on the back of our saddle horses. The heavy snowstorm took away almost all our visibility. Although we rode side by side, it was barely possible for us to communicate because of the strong wind. Whenever the horses scented a house on the side of the road, they could only be persuaded to go on with difficulty.
"Only when my horse had lost both front horseshoes at 22:00hrs did we decide to ask for lodgings in a group of houses (Villa Franca). The inhabitants kindly took us in. Our good horses “Toni” and “Ulan” were housed in a dry shed. We were treated to a meal of red wine, cornbread and salami. Soon after we fell asleep in the farmhouse kitchen. We had thought that the local Italians might have greeted us with hostility or even attack us in our sleep. We had not had experiences with partisans before. In one-on-one relationship the Italians were always friendly and helpful. In the fourth year of the war, of course, they longed for peace and quiet. The capitulation had not given them the desired end of the war. Rather, they only now learned to know the war in their own country in all its cruelty. Who could have blamed them if they liked us as human beings, but as soldiers wished for our quick defeat? An Italian expressed to me what many of his compatriots thought at that time: "If the German soldiers didn’t want to play the invincible heroes in a hopeless situation, we would have long since had peace."
"There was almost no wind as we climbed back on our chariots on New Year's morning to reach our destination on the Adriatic, Silve Marina, via Cappelle-Montesilvano. Only in the mountains was there still snow. In the now peaceful countryside, knocked over telegraph poles and uprooted trees were testimony to the storm of the previous night. We reached the coastal road at Montesilvano and suddenly heard whinnying neighs in the middle of the town. From the window of a corner house a well-known face looked at us: a Rappwallach our platoon called “Unfug” (Mischief). Was our platoon here? We learned that panzergrenadiers had captured the horse early in the morning. Along with some other horses, which ended up disappearing, the black horse had become timid of the storm and snow during the night march along the Adriatic, and had escaped his master. The panzergrenadiers gladly gave us the horse. What would a member of a fully motorized troop in Italy do with a horse? Horsemeat is eaten only in extreme times of need!
"When we reached Silvi after another 5 km ride along the coast, we found our comrades with their horses in a cinema. Although the building had a large hole in the roof that could have come from the shell of a British naval gun, it was pleasantly warm in the hall. In the middle of the vast room burned a large fire on which the riders dried their belongings and equipment. Broken cinema chairs provided the fuel. One of my comrades reported that the commander of our former Kampfgruppe, Hauptmann Drost, and a few companions, had sought shelter from the storm with Italian civilians during the night."
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