by Neil Storey
APPENDIX 2
German Airship and Zeppelin Aircrew now buried at the Friedhof – the German Military Cemetery at Cannock Chase, Staffordshire.
SL-11
(Sixteen crew) brought down at Cuffley on 3 September 1916, East Terrace, Grave 1.
Obermaschinist Jakob Baumann
Obermaschinist Hans Geitel
Goltz, Vizefeldwebel Rudolf
Feldwebelleutnant Karl Paul Hassenmuller
Gefreiter Bernhard Jeziorski
Untermaschinist Fritz Jourdan
Untermaschinist Karl Kachele
Obersteuermann Fritz Kopischke
Obermaschinist Friedrich Modinger
Obermaschinist Reinhold Porath
Obersteuermann Rudolf Sendzik
Unteroffizier Heinrich Schlichting
Hauptmann Wilhelm Schramm
Unteroffizier Anton Tristram
Oberleutnant Wilhelm Vohdin
Untermaschinist Hans Winkler
Grave markers and burial plots of the Zeppelin aircrew buried in the German Military Cemetery, Cannock Chase, Staffordshire.
The crew of SL-11were given a military funeral at Potter’s Bar Cemetery on Mutton Lane. Men of the Royal Flying Corps bore the coffins, the service was conducted by a vicar and a military chaplain who conducted an Anglican form of burial service, and buglers from the Grenadier Guards sounded the ‘Last Post’.
L-32
(Twenty-two crew) brought down at Snail’s Hall Farm, Great Burstead, 24 September 1916, East Terrace, Grave 2.
Obersignalmaat Adolf Bley
Obermaschinistenmaat Albin Ernst Bocksch
Funkentelegraphieobermaat, Karl Bortscheller
Oberheizer Wilhelm Otto Brockhaus
Leutnant Zur See Karl Friedrich Brodrück
Maschinistenmaat Paul Dorfmüller
Obermaschinistenmaat Richard Hermann Fankhanel
Obermaschinistenmaat Georg Hagedorn
Oberbootsmannsmaat Friedrich Heider
Funkentelegraphieobergast Robert Klisch
Obermaschinist Hermann Franz Oswald Maegdlfrau
Obersegelmachersgast Bernhard Johannes Mohr
Matrose August Müller
Bootsmannsmaat Friedrich Paul Pache
Obermaschinistenmaat Karl Hermann Paust
Oberleutnant Zur See Werner Chustau von Peterson,
Obersignalmaat Ewald Johann Heinrich Picard
Maschinistenmaat Walter Prüss
Obermatrose Paul Rudolf Schiering
Steuermann Berhard Johann Schreibmüller
Sailor Karl Johann Petin Volker
Oberbootsmannsmaat Alfred Robert Johannes Zöpel
The crew of L-32 were buried in the nearby churchyard of St Mary Magdalene, Great Burstead, three days after the crash. Officers and men of the Royal Flying Corps bore the coffins, a vicar and an army chaplain conducted the graveside service. The bodies were transferred to the German Military Cemetery at Cannock Chase in November 1962, where they were buried in caskets in one grave.
L-31
Brought down at Potters Bar, 2 October 1916.
Kapitänleutnant Heinrich Ferdinard Fredrich Mathy
Maschinistenmaat Eugen Boudange
Bootsmannsmaat Arthur Budwith
Obermatrose Karl Dornbusch
Maschinistenmaat Nikolaus Hemmerling
Obermaschinistenmaat Karl Hiort
Segelmachersmaat Ernst Kaiser
Funkentelegraphieobergast Ernst Klee
Steuermann Siegfried Korber
Signalmaat Gustav Kunish
Maschinistenmaat Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Mensing
Obersteuermannsmaat Friedrich Joahnn Peters
Obermatrose Heinrich Phillipp
Maschinistenmaat Friedrich Karl Christian Rohr
Maschinistenmaat Hubort Karl Ernst Asmin Stender
Maschinist Joseph Friedrich Wegener
Leutnant Zur See Jochen Julius Otto Hubertus Werner
Bootsmannsmaat Heinrich Witthöft
Obermaschinistenmaat Viktor Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Woellert
The bodies of the German aircrew from L-31 were buried at Mutton Lane Cemetery, alongside their comrades from the SL-11 Cuffley crash on 5 October 1916. Each crew were buried in caskets in one grave at the German Military Cemetery in September 1962.
L-34
Brought down at the mouth of the Tees, 28 November 1916.
Signalmaat Julius Wilhelm August Petitjean. Grave Reference: Block 14, Grave 397.
Maschinistenmaat Alfred Rueger. Grave Reference: Block 14, Grave 398.
Initially none of the bodies of the twenty-two crew were recovered from the submerged wreck, but the following January five bodies were washed up and buried in Redcar Cemetery, Yorkshire. Only two of them – Petitjean and Rueger, – were identified. They were transferred to the German Military Cemetery in June 1962. Around the same time, two further unidentified comrades were exhumed from Holy Trinity Churchyard at Seaton Carew, and laid to rest in Graves 402 and 403 in the same row.
L-48
Brought down at Theberton, Suffolk, 17 June 1917.
Kapitänleutnant Franz Eichler
Korvettenkapitän Viktor Schutze
Obermaschinistenmaat Heinrich Ahrens
Maat Wilhelm Betz
Obersignalmaat Walter Dippmann
Obermaschinistenmaat Wilhelm Glückel
Obermaschinistenmaat Paul Hannemann
Signalmaat Heinrich Herbst
Bootsmannsmaat Franz Konig
Funkentelegrafiemaat Wilhelm Meyer
Obermaschinistenmaat Karl Milich
Obermaschinistenmaat Michael Neunzig
Obermatrose Karl Ploger
Obermatrose Paul Suchlich
Obermaschinistenmaat Hermann Van Stockum
Steuermann Paul Westphal
Sixteen crew died, fourteen of them were buried three days later in St Peter’s Churchyard extension, Theberton. Another two were buried a further two days later, after their bodies had been recovered from the wreckage. They were granted military honours, the funerals were conducted by the rector, a military chaplain and a Roman Catholic priest. Upon the coffin of Korvettenkapitän Schütze was a wreath bearing the inscription ‘To a brave enemy, from R.F.C. Officers’, a gesture criticised by local people who were fed up with the Zeppelin menace. (Indeed, one story tells of how local men refused to dig the grave and munitions girls from Garrett’s Works at nearby Leiston were called in to do the job.)
The bodies of the crew of L-48 were transferred to the German Military Cemetery at Cannock Chase in January 1962. Although the bodies are gone, the site of the graves in Theberton is still marked and retains the epitaph from Romans XIV–IV: ‘who art thou that judgest another man’s servant?’
L-70
Brought down in the sea off Wells-next-the-Sea, Norfolk, on 5 August 1918.
All twenty-two crew were lost, including Zeppelin chief Peter Strasser. Personnel from Admiralty Intelligence spent three weeks searching the wreck. Any bodies that were recovered were searched, weighted down and sunk again. Some of the bodies were washed up on a beach in Lincolnshire, but they were ordered to be taken out by boat and committed to the deep, as local people refused them burial in their parish.
Later still, in October 1918, a body was washed ashore in north Norfolk and was buried in All Saints Churchyard, Weybourne. The body was claimed to be that of Leutnant Kurt Krüger, but the official records simply show him as an unknown officer. In January 1963, the remains were removed to the German Military Cemetery at Cannock Chase and interred in Block 16, Row 9, Grave 116.
APPENDIX 3
‘I was London’s First Zepp Raider’ by Major Erich Linnarz
Major Linnarz, who was commander of Zeppelin LZ.38, had been four times over England before, on May 31, 1915, he succeeded in reaching London. This was London’s first air raid.
It was not until January 1915 that the Kaiser at last sanctioned the bombing of England, and not until four months lat
er that he was prevailed upon by his advisers to give his consent to attacking London. The proud ship LZ.38, the latest product of Count Zeppelin’s works at Friedrichschafen on Lake Constance, which I commanded, was one of those detailed for the job.
On the morning of May 31 orders in cipher were brought from Berlin to me at Brussels to raid London. Preparations for the flight were carried out all that day. Engines were tested, ballast tanks examined, the radio apparatus thoroughly overhauled, and the huge deflated envelope closely inspected for flaws. Presently there was the hiss of gas and slowly the monster took a more rigid shape. Then the bomb-racks were loaded. One hundred and nineteen bombs there were in all – eighty nine incendiary, thirty high explosive ones. A ton and a half of death.
As the perspiring soldiers wheeled the infernal things on trucks before placing them in position, the setting sun sank behind the shed and stained the sky a deeper and more ominous red. My crew, clad in their leather jackets and fur helmets, were standing in groups on the landing ground. A siren sounded shrilly and they moved to the shed, entered the gondola and took up their posts. Gently guided by ropes the ship slid smoothly forward. The sounding of a second siren indicated that the ship was clear of its shed.
‘Hands off, ease the guides,’ I shouted. The men at the ropes let go.
Great Eddies of dust swept through the air as the final test to the mammoth propellers was given. An officer approached and told me all was ready, I stepped in, gave a signal, and mysteriously the ship soared upwards. We were on our way to London.
From my cabin, with its softly lit dials – everyone with a story to tell – its maps, its charts, and compass, I could hear the rhythmic throb of the engines; feel the languorous swing of the gondola as we rode smoothly through space. Over invaded Belgium we flew. Here it was that one of my crew at the helm reported that he had sighted what he thought to be a hostile airship approaching. For safety I altered course and steered in the direction of Ostend.
Often raiding Zeppelins, on their way out from Belgium to England, encountered enemy craft endeavouring to intercept their passage. But, as it afterwards turned out, this one was only Captain Lehmann, who was killed in an airship crash in America last year, on one of the other Zeppelins detailed to raid England. He had left Namur earlier, also with London as his aim, but over the Channel he had broken a propeller, which had pierced his gas-bag and forced him to return to his base.
He was on his way back when we saw him. None of the other ships reached London that night, but discharged their bombs on East Coast towns. On, on we sped. It was a beautiful night – a night of star spangled skies and gentle breezes, a night hard to reconcile with a purpose as grim as ours. And then the glimmer of water showed below and we knew we were over the sea. Tiny red specks winked at us. They were patrol boats keeping their ceaseless watch in the Channel, and we were looking down their funnels into the glowing heart of their stoke-hold furnaces. England!
We crossed the black ridge of the coast. Immediately from below anti-aircraft guns spat viciously. We could hear the shells screaming past us. We increased our altitude and our speed. Across the Thames estuary we raced, wheeling inland at Shoeburyness, over Southend, which I had raided the week before – and then, following the gleaming river, we made straight for the capital. Twenty minutes later we were over London. There below us its great expanse lay spread. I knew it all so well. I had spent several months there five years before. There seemed to have been little effort to dim the city. There were the old familiar landmarks – St. Paul’s, the Houses of Parliament, and Buckingham Palace, dreaming in the light of the moon which had now risen.
I glanced at the clock. It was ten minutes to eleven. The quivering altimeter showed that our height was 10,000 feet. The air was keen, and we buttoned our jackets as we prepared to deal the first blow against the heart of your great and powerful nation.
Inside the gondola it was pitch dark save for the glowing pointers of the dials. The sliding shutters of the electric lamps with which each one of the crew was provided were drawn. There was tension as I leaned out of one of the gondola portholes and surveyed the lacework of lighted streets and squares. An icy wind lashed my face.
I mounted the bombing platform. My finger hovered on the button that electronically operated the bombing apparatus. Then I pressed it. We waited. Minutes seemed to pass before, above the humming song of the engines, there arose a shattering roar.
Was it fancy that there also leaped from far below the faint cries of tortured souls?
I pressed again. A cascade of orange sparks shot upwards, and a billow of incandescent smoke drifted slowly away to reveal a red gash of raging fire on the face of the wounded city.
One by one, every thirty seconds, the bombs moaned and burst. Flames sprang up like serpents goaded to attack. Taking one of the biggest fires, I was able by it to estimate my speed and my drift. Beside me my second in command carefully watched the result of every bomb and made rapid calculations at the navigation chart.
Suddenly from the depths great swords of light stabbed the sky. One caught the gleam of the aluminium of our gondola, passed it, retraced, caught it again, and then held us in its beam. Instantly the others chased across the sky, and we found ourselves moving through an endless sea of dazzling light. Inside the gondola it was brighter than sunlight. Every detail of the car was thrown in sharp relief. The crew at their posts looked like a set of actors grouped in the limelight without their make-up. And so began a game of hide and seek in the sky. The helmsman and I tried every way of eluding the searchlights, practising every trick of navigation.
Then came the bark of the batteries. Shells shrieked past us, above us, below us. There were glowing tracer shells which we had never seen before, but had heard all about – slim projectiles that tore a hole in the ship’s fabric and then burst into flame. It was this thought that sent us home quickly. We had been over London for an hour. Soon we left the thrusting searchlights behind. We could see ahead of us the sea, through which the moon had laid a silver path to guide us home. As we crossed the black ridge of the shore we were met with a further attack from the anti-aircraft guns at Burnham and Southminster. I think our gondola light, now alight and casting a feeble glow over the cabin, perhaps had betrayed us. I put it out. Shell after shell whizzed past, some of them the dreaded incendiary type. Some burst dangerously near. On, on we flew, and at last we were out of range and the firing died down.
Now a new menace threatened us – aeroplanes. We went in dread of these since your pilots had orders that if they failed to reach us with the machine-gun fire they were to climb above us and ram our gas-bags with their machines. Evidently the supreme sacrifice meant nothing to these brave men. One by one they came from the airfields that had been established round the coast to intercept returning raiders. My look-out thought he spotted one flying towards us. Higher we rose out of reach. The British aeroplanes were faster than we were, but they couldn’t reach our height limit.
Presently in the fading moonlight, we could see the waves beating against the Belgian coastline far below. We were feeling cold and hungry, exhausted and spent from the high-pitched hours of that night – rather like the remorseful reveller returning in the hour before the dawn. It was almost dawn. The first vague light was edging the horizon as we flew over invaded Belgium. We had been away ten hours. The first attack on London had been accomplished. Our bomb rack was empty. Behind us we could faintly make out the red glow of fire on the sky’s rim. It was ravaged London. And as we sank to the earth and the gondola bumped across the landing-ground at Brussels-Evere, the sun, rising in front of the Zeppelin sheds, smeared the sky with crimson streaks as though fingers dipped in blood had been drawn across the horizon.
(First published in The Great War: I Was There Part II, 1939)
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