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Medieval WWI Trench Weapons

Sld1959 said:
The trenches were rough in firearms, knives and clubs were more reliable. My grandfather was wounded twice in the trenches. He told my dad he would rather have had a baseball bat inside the trenches than a firearm.

Men actually disappeared into the mud in places. It was a brutal place to live and fight.
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Wow. He must have had stories. Did he keep them to himself? My grandfather served in the navy during that time. He died before i was born so i never was able to speak with him about it.
 
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My grandfather served in WW1. He did tell us some funny stories but he never talked about all the misery that happened. My grandmother said he had dreams until the day he died.
 
mikep said:
Wow. He must have had stories. Did he keep them to himself? My grandfather served in the navy during that time. He died before i was born so i never was able to speak with him about it.
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He died before I was born but he told dad a few things, usually around the hunting campfire and a drink or two. He said that dogs, knives, and clubs were the best friends of those living in the trenches. He said guys would give the dogs thier own rations to keep them around. They killed tons of rats, and they could smell the mustard gas before it got there. According to him more men died of disease than in battle.

He also said the best thing in his life, then was the invention of the screw wire retainer. He was a smaller man and part of his job was to put out wire at night. Before the screw they crawled out and pounded the retaining stakes with a hammer, drawing fire aimed at the sound. That was how he got wounded one time. Afterwards the screw was silent.
 
My great grandfather fought in France (world war 1) and years later, after his suicide by kissing a shotgun muzzle, they found an old Springfield, his bayonet, something like 1,000 rounds of military ammo, his helmet and a grenade or two.

On the non warring side of items he brought home was a grape plant that still exists on that farm.
 
Sld1959 said:
He died before I was born but he told dad a few things, usually around the hunting campfire and a drink or two. He said that dogs, knives, and clubs were the best friends of those living in the trenches. He said guys would give the dogs thier own rations to keep them around. They killed tons of rats, and they could smell the mustard gas before it got there. According to him more men died of disease than in battle.

He also said the best thing in his life, then was the invention of the screw wire retainer. He was a smaller man and part of his job was to put out wire at night. Before the screw they crawled out and pounded the retaining stakes with a hammer, drawing fire aimed at the sound. That was how he got wounded one time. Afterwards the screw was silent.
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Before antibiotics about there were about equal number of deaths from infection as bullets or shells.
Bacteria is a tiny killer that is pretty much unstoppable without antibiotics.
 
mikep said:
Before antibiotics about there were about equal number of deaths from infection as bullets or shells.
Bacteria is a tiny killer that is pretty much unstoppable without antibiotics.
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...and it's also pretty much a certainty in the kinds of conditions encountered in the trenches. Even if the wound wasn't from a bullet or shrapnel.
 
My maternal grandfather was an infantry Sgt. in the Meuse-Argonne and was gassed. Before that he was with Pershing in Mexico. My mother and aunt both said he never talked about his experience. He passed when I was 3 so I never got to know him but I have a photo of him in uniform on my wall and a copy of his dog tags hanging from it. He served from 1915-1919.
 
Well written article. As an amateur historian, I've focused more on the Great War era than other periods, quite a bit. So most of the information in the article wasn't surprising, but a good brief synopsis of the conditions and the weaponry employed in Trench Warfare. Rifles were of little use in the raids, thus pistols, shotguns and issued as well as improvised weapons were the primary tools of the raiding party. Rifles and early light machine guns were far too unwieldy in the tight confines of the trenches to be of any real use.
Towards the close of the war, Submachine Guns, like the Bergman MP-18, would be introduced, but far too late to have any real effect on the outcome of the war.
The Great War is easily summed up as a conflict with modern weaponry meets 19th Century Tactics, as the High Commands on both sides of the war were woefully unprepared for the effect modern weapons would have in battle. The Gallipoli Campaign a perfect example of Senior Officers without a clue, and so hidebound in their belief of old Tactics, the loss of life was great. Yet still they persisted to cling to their failures in the face of the obvious.
Losing two Great- Uncles (my Great-Grandfather's brothers) to the Great War, left a deep impact on my family. I can still remember my G-Grandfather's grief whenever the subject was broached. Both were killed on November 11th of 1918, by commanders in the AEF trying to make a name for themselves even though the cease fire and armistice were but hours from conclusion.
 
Speaking of "modern weaponry meets 19th Century Tactics" I remember learning that at the beginning of WWI, the French were wearing pretty much the same uniforms they were wearing during the Napoleonic campaigns almost a hundred years earlier. Imagine the sight of French troops literally riding into battle on horseback with swords drawn, wearing white gloves and bright red pants against the Germans. They had fallen into the classic trap of still "fighting the last war" and not understanding how much technology had changed, and that a new type of warfare had evolved, which the Germans had mastered.

In pretty short order, the French realized their archaic red and blue uniforms stood out as perfect targets for German snipers on the battlefield, and that their swords were more of an encumbrance than a useful item in this new era of fighting, as their troops were being mowed down en masse. Their uniforms were quickly redesigned to be much more muted and swords were ditched.

Fascinating times.
 
Mike H. said:
Hello all, here is today's article posted on TheArmoryLife.com. It is titled “Medieval WWI Trench Weapons” and can be found at https://www.thearmorylife.com/medieval-wwi-trench-weapons/.

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Hey don’t get me wrong about this, I am a huge supporter of our country the men and women who have and do serve our military and our nation and to support our constitution and I was in the military as well but WWI had some really harsh things happen in it.

My grandfather Russel Rogers was in WWI he passed away August 17 of 1986 at the age of 84 and drank and smoked every day of his life trying to forget and live with his horrors of losing friends that he fought together with against the Germans in WWI.

He very rarely spoke of anything to do with his combat experience in WWI but when he did my brother and I always paid close attention to what ever he said and the stories were always of horrible horrific experiences that he and his two closest friends lived through in the war.

It would always be something else that happened at the time for him to tell us of something that happened over there.

When I was seven I bought my first real gun a WWII 1903A3 Springfield and as he was looking it over he showed us a picture of him with a WWI campaign hat on holding a 1903 Springfield rifle and he told us that was the only time that he really ever saw a 1903 Springfield the entire time that he was in the military and that picture was taken at their last day of basic training and they wedged that same foam filled with sweat had into hundreds of soldiers and had them hold that same rifle as they quickly took that picture. Because they didn’t even have guns or hats of their own because they were so short on supplies. He said that he was issued a Remington made 1917 Enfield rifle in 30-06 and those were the guns that all of them were issued over there and he never even saw a 1903 Springfield over there.

I wanted to buy a surplus mummy sleeping bag back in the 1970’s and he told us about the time that a soldier had his hole face eaten off my the hordes of thousands of rats that would eat anything because his zipper was stuck on his mummy bag and that the soldier who was on guard duty against the rats fell asleep, he said that that was what they used the shotguns with bayonets for was on them was for the rats.

His wife our grandmother was crazy in some ways and she would only ever give him chicken wings to eat because only two times of the two years that he was over there did they get any chicken to eat and it was wings because no one else wanted to eat the wings and that was the only way that they ended up with them. He said he should have never told her that story because that was all that she would give him. So my brother and I each gave him the breast and legs that we had but made sure to switch the bones back so that she wouldn’t yell at him.

He was missing a small pocket knife and kept asking me and my brother if we had seen it because it really meant a lot to him. After a couple of weeks he found the pocket knife in the bottom of his slippers and he told us about how after the half a year that him and his two friends were in combat that the military took away all of their guns, knives and gear and that they were in the same uniforms for the rest of the year and a half that they were there digging up dead bodies out of the ground to ship back to the United States. Well one day one of his two friends that he signed up with and lived through the war with came up missing and they had all shared this one little folding blade pocket knife together for all kinds of needs, they hoped that maybe he had gotten a ride on ship back to the USA and that he just wasn’t able to tell them goodbye before he had to leave. But that wasn’t the case, he had been killed some how no body ever found out what happened to him but my grandfather dug up his body in one of the grave yards to send back to the US.
He told us that was one of the reasons why he drank every day was because he had nightmares every night several times a night about digging his friend up out of the ground and what horrible condition what was left of his not emboldened body was in falling apart in his hands. And that knife was on him.

Then another time he had just gotten back home from being in the hospital for several weeks after a major heart attack (mid 1970’s Kiser hospital Fontana CA. USA) and he was showing us how the chicken skin on his neck and chest were still holding up after all of these years and how the doctors were all coming by his room to see it and him and that he probably could of been out of the hospital weeks ago but they kept him in there so that other doctors from different hospitals could come see it and him.
The he showed us the remains of a US Army tattoo that had been on his left upper arm and he showed us a picture of what it had looked like and all that was left was the tip of the arrows, the tip of the Eagle’s beck and the talons of one of the feet.
My Grandmother chimed in and said that was the first time that they told me that he was going to die and he lived through that and he lived through this and I just laughed at them when they told me that you were going to die this time.
So he told us this story about when him and his friend that he survived WWI with were both working as electricians right after they got back from the war at a steel mill back east.
They were laying wires on top of some existing high voltage wires way up in the air in between the towers.
The plant manager decided that he couldn’t have the down time without power to part of his plant and he turned the power back on with them still up on the wires.
He said he was the lucky one because his fell off the wires 60 feet to the ground.
He was in the hospital with severe electrical burns to over 90% of his body plus all of the broken bones from falling that fare to the ground.
So the doctors used chicken skin to put on for the skin that he was missing.
He said that some of the skin worked and some didn’t so they would have to pull it back off of him and that pain was just something terrible.
He said that he was in the hospital for six months and that it took him another three months before he could get back to the plant / steel mill where it happened and that there was still melted parts of his friend up on those wires and that the plant manager had took off as soon as he heard that he was up and walking.
So he had them shut off the power and had some of the other electricians take down what was left of his friends body and one of them handed him the little pocket knife that he had been missing.
He said that it took him another three months to find the plant manager who had turned on the power on them working as a plant manager at another steel mill.
He said that he had gotten a WWI trench knuckle knife and that he took care of him.

After he passed away at his funeral the VA placed an American flag over his coffin with a barrow’d metal of honor on top and told all present how he and his two friends who had survived the war that they were awarded The Congressional Medal of Honor for being the only three soldiers to survive out of 2000 man unit and to have captured almost a hundred enemy soldiers.
We had never known.

He wanted to be buried with that little pocket knife that he and his friends used and after the services and he was in the ground my grandma his wife who was a little bit crazy showed me the knife and said how that he wanted to be buried with that knife and that she took it out of his pocket just for spite because he died before her.

After their son my Uncle Russ Rogers passed away a few years ago I believe that I found that knife tucked away in all of his stuff, so I believe that I have it now and I try to keep it safe.

Thanks for reading through all of this stuff, my nickname is Story Time Dave after all.
 
StoryTimeDavid Collins said:
Hey don’t get me wrong about this, I am a huge supporter of our country the men and women who have and do serve our military and our nation and to support our constitution and I was in the military as well but WWI had some really harsh things happen in it.

My grandfather Russel Rogers was in WWI he passed away August 17 of 1986 at the age of 84 and drank and smoked every day of his life trying to forget and live with his horrors of losing friends that he fought together with against the Germans in WWI.

He very rarely spoke of anything to do with his combat experience in WWI but when he did my brother and I always paid close attention to what ever he said and the stories were always of horrible horrific experiences that he and his two closest friends lived through in the war.

It would always be something else that happened at the time for him to tell us of something that happened over there.

When I was seven I bought my first real gun a WWII 1903A3 Springfield and as he was looking it over he showed us a picture of him with a WWI campaign hat on holding a 1903 Springfield rifle and he told us that was the only time that he really ever saw a 1903 Springfield the entire time that he was in the military and that picture was taken at their last day of basic training and they wedged that same foam filled with sweat had into hundreds of soldiers and had them hold that same rifle as they quickly took that picture. Because they didn’t even have guns or hats of their own because they were so short on supplies. He said that he was issued a Remington made 1917 Enfield rifle in 30-06 and those were the guns that all of them were issued over there and he never even saw a 1903 Springfield over there.

I wanted to buy a surplus mummy sleeping bag back in the 1970’s and he told us about the time that a soldier had his hole face eaten off my the hordes of thousands of rats that would eat anything because his zipper was stuck on his mummy bag and that the soldier who was on guard duty against the rats fell asleep, he said that that was what they used the shotguns with bayonets for was on them was for the rats.

His wife our grandmother was crazy in some ways and she would only ever give him chicken wings to eat because only two times of the two years that he was over there did they get any chicken to eat and it was wings because no one else wanted to eat the wings and that was the only way that they ended up with them. He said he should have never told her that story because that was all that she would give him. So my brother and I each gave him the breast and legs that we had but made sure to switch the bones back so that she wouldn’t yell at him.

He was missing a small pocket knife and kept asking me and my brother if we had seen it because it really meant a lot to him. After a couple of weeks he found the pocket knife in the bottom of his slippers and he told us about how after the half a year that him and his two friends were in combat that the military took away all of their guns, knives and gear and that they were in the same uniforms for the rest of the year and a half that they were there digging up dead bodies out of the ground to ship back to the United States. Well one day one of his two friends that he signed up with and lived through the war with came up missing and they had all shared this one little folding blade pocket knife together for all kinds of needs, they hoped that maybe he had gotten a ride on ship back to the USA and that he just wasn’t able to tell them goodbye before he had to leave. But that wasn’t the case, he had been killed some how no body ever found out what happened to him but my grandfather dug up his body in one of the grave yards to send back to the US.
He told us that was one of the reasons why he drank every day was because he had nightmares every night several times a night about digging his friend up out of the ground and what horrible condition what was left of his not emboldened body was in falling apart in his hands. And that knife was on him.

Then another time he had just gotten back home from being in the hospital for several weeks after a major heart attack (mid 1970’s Kiser hospital Fontana CA. USA) and he was showing us how the chicken skin on his neck and chest were still holding up after all of these years and how the doctors were all coming by his room to see it and him and that he probably could of been out of the hospital weeks ago but they kept him in there so that other doctors from different hospitals could come see it and him.
The he showed us the remains of a US Army tattoo that had been on his left upper arm and he showed us a picture of what it had looked like and all that was left was the tip of the arrows, the tip of the Eagle’s beck and the talons of one of the feet.
My Grandmother chimed in and said that was the first time that they told me that he was going to die and he lived through that and he lived through this and I just laughed at them when they told me that you were going to die this time.
So he told us this story about when him and his friend that he survived WWI with were both working as electricians right after they got back from the war at a steel mill back east.
They were laying wires on top of some existing high voltage wires way up in the air in between the towers.
The plant manager decided that he couldn’t have the down time without power to part of his plant and he turned the power back on with them still up on the wires.
He said he was the lucky one because his fell off the wires 60 feet to the ground.
He was in the hospital with severe electrical burns to over 90% of his body plus all of the broken bones from falling that fare to the ground.
So the doctors used chicken skin to put on for the skin that he was missing.
He said that some of the skin worked and some didn’t so they would have to pull it back off of him and that pain was just something terrible.
He said that he was in the hospital for six months and that it took him another three months before he could get back to the plant / steel mill where it happened and that there was still melted parts of his friend up on those wires and that the plant manager had took off as soon as he heard that he was up and walking.
So he had them shut off the power and had some of the other electricians take down what was left of his friends body and one of them handed him the little pocket knife that he had been missing.
He said that it took him another three months to find the plant manager who had turned on the power on them working as a plant manager at another steel mill.
He said that he had gotten a WWI trench knuckle knife and that he took care of him.

After he passed away at his funeral the VA placed an American flag over his coffin with a barrow’d metal of honor on top and told all present how he and his two friends who had survived the war that they were awarded The Congressional Medal of Honor for being the only three soldiers to survive out of 2000 man unit and to have captured almost a hundred enemy soldiers.
We had never known.

He wanted to be buried with that little pocket knife that he and his friends used and after the services and he was in the ground my grandma his wife who was a little bit crazy showed me the knife and said how that he wanted to be buried with that knife and that she took it out of his pocket just for spite because he died before her.

After their son my Uncle Russ Rogers passed away a few years ago I believe that I found that knife tucked away in all of his stuff, so I believe that I have it now and I try to keep it safe.

Thanks for reading through all of this stuff, my nickname is Story Time Dave after all.
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That's a great story and I think you should get that knife in the ground with your grandfather. Bless his soul.
 
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