[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] RUSSIAN MILITARY as Lived by German RussianSolders.

[Richard Benert]

  Chris,

  For a start on the POW camps, check out Wikipedia.  They have an article 
on    POW camps.  #5.l lists several German camps in WW I, some of which 
were for officers, in case your grandfather was one.

  The Bolsheviks are rightly blamed for a good many things, but I don't 
think you should be too quick to blame them for your grandfather's 
imprisonment.  The people you should blame would be the politicians and 
generals all over Europe who got themselves into the First World War.   Your 
grandfather was fighting in the Russian army and, like a few hundred 
thousand other Russian soldiers, was captured by the Germans and sent to a 
POW camp.  The Bolsheviks took over the government in October, 1917, and 
quickly sought a truce with Germany.  In March,1918, they made a separate 
peace with Germany.  The Bolsheviks did not send your grandfather to the 
front.  Their concern was to pull the troops back from the front and end the 
war.  To them, the war was a battle among competing imperialist powers, and 
they wanted nothing to do with it.

  Over the past few years as I've read numerous postings from listers, it 
has seemed to me that maybe one in ten families with an ancestor in the 
Russian army says that that ancestor served in the Tsar's Imperial Guard and 
"protected" the tsar.  My estimate may be off base, but if all these men 
really were in the Imperial Guard, and Germans made up only a small part of 
the army in general, that Guard must have been pretty large for an "elite" 
unit, as most people (and I for a time) seem to assume it was.

  If you check out this URL: 
http://modern-war.suite101.com/article.cfm/russian_imperial_guards_orbat_1917, 
you will find that the Imperial Guard was very large indeed, like about 
140,000 men.  Hardly an "elite" unit.  According to whoever wrote this 
piece, included in the Guard were 12 infantry regiments, a brigade of 
sharpshooters, palace grenadiers, artillery units, a bicycle unit, a 
machine-gun unit, a railway unit, a military police unit and a marine 
battalion.  The writer names quite a few of these units.   This may come as 
a letdown for people who have assumed that their great-uncle was so revered 
and respected that he, along with a few others so  honored, spent all his 
time in St. Petersburg making like a Secret Service man making sure no one 
came to close to Nicholas.

  The point, Chris, is that I'm afraid your grandfather was probably in one 
of these Guard units sent to the front in 1914 or 1915.  A German prisoner 
of war camp wasn't the worst place in the world for an ethnic German from 
Russia.  They seem to have enjoyed some advantages.  It's just very 
unfortunate that he fell victim to an epidemic.

  Dick Benert
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: "CHRIS" <BECHTOL5 at telus.net>
  To: <ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org>
  Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2007 6:43 PM
  Subject: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] RUSSIAN MILITARY as Lived by German 
RussianSolders.


  > Dear Folks
  >     At this point I would lke to THANK EVERY ONE that mailed in the 
happenings of their ancesters that were active in the First World War as a 
russian soldier.
  >     With all the information that was given, I have come to the 
following conclusion because of the information that was given to me by my 
mother in the years that I was growing up. here is what she had told me.
  >   1. She often told me or us that her dad was a picked guard for the 
Czar of Russia.
  >   2. Then she also told us that he had died in a german prisoner war 
camp about 1918 of the Grosse Kronkiet ( flu ). The bad part of this is that 
his wife also passed away with the flu in the same year. This left my mother 
and her brother without parents.
  >     At one point I was unable to imagine how my Grandfather could die in 
a prisoner of war camp while being a guard for the Czar. The picture we have 
of him is a very smart looking man with in a smart looking uniform. This is 
the summation that I have come to believe.
  >     A.-Our Grandfather was drafted or joined the Czar's army and worked 
hard to achieve the status of a chosen guard.
  >     B.-Along came the Bolchevics and the revolution, this killed his 
previous status and was sent to the front somewhere. Not wishing to shoot 
fellow germans he possibly chose to surrender which many did  With poor 
living conditions and food shortage created his death.
  >     It would be great to know where the german prisoner of war camps 
were located on the eastern front so a person could find his place of death.
  >     How does a person get to search the church books in weurttenberg, 
The other day we were unable to find them in the family centre?  If someone 
comes up with a German organization would the be able to communicate in 
english. The size of my german vocabulary is very small.
  >         Thank You Again;    As Ever;   Chris Bechtold  at 
bechtold5 at telus.net
  >
  >
  >
  >
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