Last week, I presented my only Waffenrock (for now) and talked a bit about the history of the Royal Bavarian Leib Regiment, just before the start of the World War 1.
Now I am going to talk about a 19 years old guy, called Josef Löw and the Leibregiment between 1914 and 1917, the year he served there.
Josef was born on the 9th of August 1898 in Schnaitsee, 90 Kilometre east from Munich, not so far away to the Frontier with Austria. He was the son of a Blacksmith (Schmiedmeister) and Student in the city of Freising, not that far away from Munich (if you got the Train S1 to go Munich Airport, you may have ended up in that city by mistake…. Wrong part of the train).
Josef joined the army on the 1st of December 1916, being moved to the Leib Regiment on the 27th of March 1917. In this moment, the unit was in Romania, but about to be sent to the Reserve and soon later to France.
At this point, it makes sense to talk briefly about the previous war years of the Leib Regiment. It started the war in France with the Royal Bavarian First Division. It was accused to be too eager to fight the French, what was translated in a big amount of casualties, which could have been avoided.
In 1915, it went from the 1st Division, to another important and elite division: The Alpenkorps. It saw action during that year in the Alps (Tirol) and in Serbia.
From the east to the west and then, Verdun. The names of Fort Vaux, Fleury or Thiaumont were synonyms of Hell in 1916. And the Leib Regiment was there, suffering appalling casualties.
In August 1916, it was moved to suffocate the fire of Romania joining the war against the Central Powers. We may tend to underestimate this front, but the Romanians kept many valuable German and Austro-Hungarian troops busy, which could have been used in other fronts.
Back to our man, Josef. He saw action for the first time with the Leib Regiment in May 1917, in Oberelsaß (Rhone-Rhine Canal, Aspach). But just 2 months later, it was sent back to Romania. There, Josef participated in the Battle of of Mărășești against the Russian and Romanian armies.
And there, on the 29th of August, just 20 days after his 19th Birthday, Josef died in the battlefield (Heldentod). Just 19 years Old.
Unfortunately, his name is not listed in the Data Base from the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. (Great Organization), but I am sure, Josef still lies there in Romania.
Sorry guys, not a happy story today.
Sources:
– Histories of the 251 Divisions of the German Army, which participated in the War 1914-1918
– Picture from Wikipedia.
– Translation from Andreas Jäger.