I was at Neuville-St Vast German War Cemetary, in 2014 (and Langemark German War Cemetary)... You really feel the Loss, when you're looking at the rows upon rows of Life Lost... My Great Grandfather fought against them, but regardless of which side they were on, they were just ordinary Men, serving their Countries... Lest We Forget... 💔💔💔
They were far from ordinary they were invaders who knew what they were doing they were killers who wanted to dominate anyone who stood up against them Just like someone braking into your home one night and holding you hostage if i had my way every German cemetery would be flattened and every memorial removed criminals lieing in a country they wished to own
At St. Laurent-Blagny, two brothers of my grandfather were buried. Rudolf died on April 21st 1918 at Queant at the age of 21, Friedrich four weeks later at Boyelles at the age of 19. When I was there I also showed my respect to the british and canadian soldiers at their cemetery.
Another touching and respectful video! So many just focus on the allied side of the war (and as I'm a brit, I can understand that), but I'm glad to see you spending time talking about the German side again, and in a respectful way. Yes, they were the enemy of the allies, but they were also sons, husbands, fathers, conscripts and volunteers from all walks of life.
Dear Mr. Cummings, thank you for your kind words! My family originally came from Silesia. After living there for 500 years, we were forced to leave as the Eastern front was over rolling our Eastern provinces in the final stages of World War 2. Much was destroyed but a church which was built by my family in the 17th century still stands today and is still used as a Lutheran church. In the church, there are placks to commemorate the members of the family that fell in World War 1. The majority of those who fell, served on the Western front.
Doesn't matter to me, if they are German, British, Commonwealth, or French, they were all brave men, fighting for their country! Politicians cause the wars, and the soldiers are the ones who pay for those decisions. It's always wonderful to see how well these cemeteries are cared for!
When my father and I visited Neuville-St Vaast the black crosses just disappear against the green background and every time you move, you suddenly realise how many there actually are. Lots of the crosses are for 4 soldiers, 2 on the front and two on the back.
The ones my relative and just pieced it together through genealogy. Josef Altmann. Wild because I been subbed here for years and never in my wildest mind thought that would ever happen. I reached out to this channel directly to thank them. My sister is mind blown as well.
13:29 A rough translation of his Todesanzeige (Death notice) is as follows; Matthias Huber who died a Heroes death for his Fatherland at the age of 37 on 5th May 1917 having completed 32 months of loyal service. His once strong arm, sinks by his side, His mighty sword rests now in its sheath, His lips pale, his eyelids closed, For him the bloody battle is ended. Our cheeks pale with pain now too, And our eyes are run red with tears. Our hearts break with the unbearable loss, Of our husband, father, son and brother. There is but one thing to help us through, The hope we cling to When we say “Auf Wiedershen” (Til we meet again)
Always puts my own life in very clear perspective watching these videos. Some things in life, and most certainly in death, are not up for debate. They are absolute.
Seeing the Scottish graves made me think of the song " Green fields of France". A powerful song about the fallen in wartime. It is worth a listen for those interested in such things.
Great video ! So sad that so many had to die on both sides but also its beautiful to see how these cemeteries are kept and maintained by the French . Out of such horror there is respect and honor and its good to see . Each man had a story to tell each man had a family only to finally lay in French fields .
Sgt Charles Stuart Mackenzie the man who the song at the end of We Were Soldiers is buried in Highland Cemetery in Roclincourt, Departement du Pas-de-Calais. He died in the Battle of Arras in the first day. He was in the Seaforth Highlanders, 6th Bn.
Thanks for showing the contribution made by Australian, Canadian and New Zealand forces during the war. apart from the Canadian contribution , very little is ever shown of the Australian and New Zealand battles as the are identified as British , something we are not, we had formed our own identity and paid for it in blood. If you are ever in the Pacific again and have the time have at look the Kokoda Trail and Milne bay where the first land defeat of the Japanese was achieved, another fact looked over.
I too was taken aback by the presence of so many soldiers of the Jewish faith in German War Cemeteries. That's a testament to the thugary of the Nazi's in WW2 creating a scapegoat for their actions. Another surprise was to see relatives of German soldiers buried with their loved ones in France. The German War Cemeteries are run very differently from the CWGC cemeteries.
Beautiful and heartwrenching video, JD. What was it that had been stated by a British politician: "Lions Led By Donkeys." The tragedy was made worse by so many unknown soldiers on both sides that are still lying beneath the battlefield of Arras. Thank you again JD.
JD just beautiful. The personal touch with the funeral cards tells us that these were real men…. Not just names on a marker. Veterans Day is coming soon. As I tell family and friends that each of those who you see the names on graves had real families, had dreams of being something besides a soldier…. They had hope but they gave it all for a belief that sometimes is hard to understand. My wish JD is you’d do a special video for Veterans Day here in the US. Thank you always. 🇺🇸
Hey at 17:52, Josef Altmann might be a relative of mine, so my family came over from around the area of Saarbrucken, we have been here for generations, but Altman isn’t a super common name. My last name is Altman, dropping the N because when they arrived, they didn’t speak English and the people here in the US documenting them just spelt it how it sounded. I’m curious to know more about him and I’m trying to find out more. He could possibly be a distant relative of mine. He looks like family memebers of mine in the Altman family, even showed my mom and she said that is wild because he looks similar to my dad who is a Altman. Update: I think we are related, my 5th great grand father was Johann Peter Altmann and he had brothers and one of the brothers descendants was a man named Josef Altmann born late 1800s. I have watched your channel for years, never in my right mind would I think you’d find my relative, we lost contact with that side of our family because we came over long before ww1 but the other half remained. It’s sad. My great grand father Birchard Altman fought for the US in WW1 and it’s crazy to think this was like a civil war for my family. Thank you for finding him I mean it
The guide on a tour I did of The area around Ypres (modern-day Ieper), told us when the headstones touch each other, it means the soldiers died together - they remain together in death.
I'm not sure if it has been said.... butI like the fact you included a photograph with the name of the soldiers killed in battle. And, being from the German side. Excellent work!
Really enjoying your World War 2 videos , but also loving you World War 1 videos also , great respect and learning a lot , especially when you bring a picture of the Man that is buried, suddenly the graves come alive with a human that is buried there just for a second, do you plan to cover The Great War in more detail , keep up sharing and keeping stories going
Thank you JD for your WW1 series. I have been following your channel for over a year. I would particularly like to emphasize your respectful and honorable dealings with both sides of the world wars. That is not a given. I hope you keep it up. Greetings from Austria PS A series about the battles between Austria and Italy in WW1 would be very cool
They had mothers and sisters too, whose lives changed in an instant. In the early 70s I saw this personally when my mother's best friend across the street from us got the notification about her son was kia in Vietnam. She was never the same🙏
@TheHistoryUnderground ask a favor my brother. I know you said in the past you usually can't remember the music you use. Was wonderin if you could tag it in the "more" description section. If not I get it yer a busy dude. God bless you and your hard work
I love this series and I really don’t want it to end. Thank you for providing German content. Also I am reminded how the sun never set on the British Empire
Excellent video as always! The funeral card for Josef Altmann is very unusual. The photo of him appears to have been taken near the front somewhere, given the muddy road and the structure behind him (possibly a bunker or destroyed building?). Almost all cards from this period feature studio photos. I collect funeral cards from the world wars and of the thousands I've seen at auction over the past few years there were maybe a dozen with photos like this.
Great video JD. I felt sad for these poor guys. They were pawns in a war they didn't likely ask for. WW1 made zero sense but once both sides were in it, neither one wanted to give ground and there were good men on both sides just ground down to dust. Seeing the funeral cards of those Germans just was a reminder these were good men sucked into the vortex. 30 and 40 months of fighting only to be blown up often by artillery. What a horrible fate
Great video! Love your channel and enjoying your WW1 content. I know very little about that war so this is a great way for me to learn more. Keep up the great work! Very much appreciated.
Great video. One of my grand-uncles is buried in Neuville-St.Vaast. He died in June 1915, aged 18. When I went there in 2012, I took the opportunity to visit a Commonwealth Graveyard, too.
My grandfather John Callender was in the Scottish Rifles/Cameronians 2nd Battalion during WW1. 1 year before the end of the war, he was shoot and captured. He was sent home when the war was over. The battle was outside of Ypres in 1918. Will you visit that area? Thank you again.
There is a bunker incorporated in the Tyne Cot CWGC in Belgium as well. Great episode! I love the fact that you acknowledge all of the militaries in the battles and not just the main players. Thanks for that. There is soo much information many people don't pay attention to.
My Father was South of Arras in May 1940, when the second battle of Arras was the end of the German advance, He had to guide his unit through the German supply columns to get to Dunkirk. He said that they were digging up bodies when digging in, in some cases, back to eighteenth century wars, along canal and river banks. Perhaps the crops grow well in that area with all the blood spilt over centuries of wars. A well thought out film, thankyou.
Hi JD. Do you plan on visiting WW2 sites in Italy? Like Monte Cassino, or the battle of Ortona by the Canadians. The Italian campaign seems to be forgotten, as Rome fell on June 4 1944, it was in the news the next day, but got rapidly obliterated by the events of June 6... You videos are amazing. I've been to a few war cemeteries in Europe, I know how it feels to visit them and the battle sites. Haunting, moving, and mind boggling.
Wow! Excellent as always JD! I love the funeral cards! Relics are a great way to make history real. I am curious what VZW stands for. I’m looking into that!
As far as I found, VZW refers to his duties and where he served. The internet led me to the German War Grave Commission, from what I could understand, loosely, he was a fusilier. I welcome anyone to explain more. Because my understanding came from an internet translation…so,
JD, I think the reminder that a bunker causes to come to mind should not be standing in a cemetery! War is in the past for these men lying here as well as the people that came to visit them (past tense because they have passed on as well.) Only the peace that came to each of these men as he fell on his dying day should be felt in this most honorable place! Thoughts?
there is another DVD or book you need to read is warhorse again it reflects again the horror that is called war and the shear determination that can be achieved by these heroes that were in it
The Eastern Front would be a little tough for me to get to right now. I have done a bit of WWI Eastern Front stuff that you can see on the WWI playlist.
Just amazing JD. Thank you for throwing some light on what happened on both sides of WWI. It was the war of My Grandfather, and we don't know enough about it.
My family on both sides were German immigrants in the late 1800s after the civil war. I'm sure I had relatives that fought on the German side. I'm curious where you got the funeral cards from and where you did your research to find out where they were buried.
the abreviation VZW means Vizewachtmeister which is the same as Vizefeldwebel, which would be in the English army staff sergeant. Erich Abraham was born in Charlottenburg on 10.12.92
I live not very far from diksmuide. Been to many cemeterys couple of times, it always makes me very sad, many died for nothing, because politics in their fancy manions far away from the war couldnt come to an agreement because of their bloated ego. I sit their sometimes, in these graveyards and frontlines wondering and thinking of things in life., and be very thankfull, I have huge respect for these soldiers no matter wich side they where on
On the funeral card of Josef Altmann, it reads in the text that "... he followed his brother in death". which means that that family lost two sons in the war.
My great-uncle was killed on the first day of fighting of Belleau Wood. My grandfather was his little brother and he never had a family of his own. The second death for a military man is to be forgotten. He will not suffer the second death as long as I am alive. I have tried to pass his memory onto my daughter. He is her responsibility now.
Nous français, nous avons une grande reconnaissance à tous ces soldats tombés sur nos terre, venue de si loin pour mourir pour la liberté ……qu’ils reposent en paix, ne les oublions pas
I find my self wondering wen I see conflict content how many remains are still lost to the battle fields.. especially WW1with all the trenches and tunels all the artillery shelling... No way all are laid to rest...
Such a tragic loss of all that human potential. What would Europe look like today if all these men, British and German, and those of the generation that came after them, had never been killed?
I was at Neuville-St Vast German War Cemetary, in 2014 (and Langemark German War Cemetary)... You really feel the Loss, when you're looking at the rows upon rows of Life Lost... My Great Grandfather fought against them, but regardless of which side they were on, they were just ordinary Men, serving their Countries...
Lest We Forget... 💔💔💔
They were far from ordinary they were invaders who knew what they were doing they were killers who wanted to dominate anyone who stood up against them Just like someone braking into your home one night and holding you hostage if i had my way every German cemetery would be flattened and every memorial removed criminals lieing in a country they wished to own
VZW stands for Vizewachtmeister, a rank of the field artillery or cavalry. It is somewhere between a corporal and a sergeant.
At St. Laurent-Blagny, two brothers of my grandfather were buried. Rudolf died on April 21st 1918 at Queant at the age of 21, Friedrich four weeks later at Boyelles at the age of 19. When I was there I also showed my respect to the british and canadian soldiers at their cemetery.
God Bless for your respect 🇬🇧
Another touching and respectful video! So many just focus on the allied side of the war (and as I'm a brit, I can understand that), but I'm glad to see you spending time talking about the German side again, and in a respectful way. Yes, they were the enemy of the allies, but they were also sons, husbands, fathers, conscripts and volunteers from all walks of life.
@@petercummings3208 👍🏻
Ordinary young men placed in an impossible situation by mad people in power.
Well said Peter.
Dear Mr. Cummings,
thank you for your kind words!
My family originally came from Silesia. After living there for 500 years, we were forced to leave as the Eastern front was over rolling our Eastern provinces in the final stages of World War 2.
Much was destroyed but a church which was built by my family in the 17th century still stands today and is still used as a Lutheran church. In the church, there are placks to commemorate the members of the family that fell in World War 1. The majority of those who fell, served on the Western front.
Doesn't matter to me, if they are German, British, Commonwealth, or French, they were all brave men, fighting for their country! Politicians cause the wars, and the soldiers are the ones who pay for those decisions. It's always wonderful to see how well these cemeteries are cared for!
It kind of matters, the French were defending their homeland, the Germans invaded it…
But overall yes, they didn’t have much choice.
When my father and I visited Neuville-St Vaast the black crosses just disappear against the green background and every time you move, you suddenly realise how many there actually are. Lots of the crosses are for 4 soldiers, 2 on the front and two on the back.
I always like it when you speak about a specific soldier. The funeral cards make it personal. Thanks for doing this .
The ones my relative and just pieced it together through genealogy. Josef Altmann. Wild because I been subbed here for years and never in my wildest mind thought that would ever happen. I reached out to this channel directly to thank them. My sister is mind blown as well.
13:29 A rough translation of his Todesanzeige (Death notice) is as follows;
Matthias Huber who died a Heroes death for his Fatherland at the age of 37 on 5th May 1917 having completed 32 months of loyal service.
His once strong arm, sinks by his side,
His mighty sword rests now in its sheath,
His lips pale, his eyelids closed,
For him the bloody battle is ended.
Our cheeks pale with pain now too,
And our eyes are run red with tears.
Our hearts break with the unbearable loss,
Of our husband, father, son and brother.
There is but one thing to help us through,
The hope we cling to
When we say “Auf Wiedershen” (Til we meet again)
Always puts my own life in very clear perspective watching these videos. Some things in life, and most certainly in death, are not up for debate. They are absolute.
So so sad, young men on both sides laying where they died nearly. Hauntingly beautiful forever all together in peace. God bless you all ❤
Seeing the Scottish graves made me think of the song " Green fields of France". A powerful song about the fallen in wartime. It is worth a listen for those interested in such things.
Anti-war song also called No man's Land or Willie Mcbride, Eric Bogle Scots Australian
Great song ,
Have you heard Sargent Macenzie
Great video ! So sad that so many had to die on both sides but also its beautiful to see how these cemeteries are kept and maintained by the French . Out of such horror there is respect and honor and its good to see . Each man had a story to tell each man had a family only to finally lay in French fields .
I am always impressed by your fair and objective reports, which focus with compassion on peoples fate. Kind regards from Germany👍
Thank you, J.D. It overwhelms me to contemplate the vast numbers of young men who have died in war. You honor them.
Sgt Charles Stuart Mackenzie the man who the song at the end of We Were Soldiers is buried in
Highland Cemetery in Roclincourt, Departement du Pas-de-Calais. He died in the Battle of Arras in the first day. He was in the Seaforth Highlanders, 6th Bn.
Thanks for showing the contribution made by Australian, Canadian and New Zealand forces during the war. apart from the Canadian contribution , very little is ever shown of the Australian and New Zealand battles as the are identified as British , something we are not, we had formed our own identity and paid for it in blood. If you are ever in the Pacific again and have the time have at look the Kokoda Trail and Milne bay where the first land defeat of the Japanese was achieved, another fact looked over.
I too was taken aback by the presence of so many soldiers of the Jewish faith in German War Cemeteries. That's a testament to the thugary of the Nazi's in WW2 creating a scapegoat for their actions. Another surprise was to see relatives of German soldiers buried with their loved ones in France. The German War Cemeteries are run very differently from the CWGC cemeteries.
I'm always amazed with the great lengths that you go to and bring us accurate history. Thank you so much. I learn something each time I watch.
This series got me back into the family genealogy, my great uncle John Franklin Riffle served in WWI with the 61st Artillery CAC in Libourne France.
Awesome!
@@TheHistoryUndergroundyou literally found my relative tonight JD! Left you a comment about it. I’m just mind blown right now.
Can you even imagine 37 months in that hell of ww1? Man o man
@@michaeldouglas1243 awful
Such beautiful country. So sad that so many died here. Thank you for telling us their story
The numbers of dead is just unfathomable!!😳
Beautiful and heartwrenching video, JD. What was it that had been stated by a British politician: "Lions Led By Donkeys." The tragedy was made worse by so many unknown soldiers on both sides that are still lying beneath the battlefield of Arras. Thank you again JD.
Thanks again for telling us their stories…
Showing faces to the names begs for more appreciation of the marker's and cemetaries. Excellant touch Teach! Great job, as usual.
JD just beautiful. The personal touch with the funeral cards tells us that these were real men…. Not just names on a marker.
Veterans Day is coming soon. As I tell family and friends that each of those who you see the names on graves had real families, had dreams of being something besides a soldier…. They had hope but they gave it all for a belief that sometimes is hard to understand.
My wish JD is you’d do a special video for Veterans Day here in the US.
Thank you always. 🇺🇸
@@Chris-Nico much appreciated. Thank you.
Hey at 17:52, Josef Altmann might be a relative of mine, so my family came over from around the area of Saarbrucken, we have been here for generations, but Altman isn’t a super common name. My last name is Altman, dropping the N because when they arrived, they didn’t speak English and the people here in the US documenting them just spelt it how it sounded. I’m curious to know more about him and I’m trying to find out more. He could possibly be a distant relative of mine.
He looks like family memebers of mine in the Altman family, even showed my mom and she said that is wild because he looks similar to my dad who is a Altman.
Update: I think we are related, my 5th great grand father was Johann Peter Altmann and he had brothers and one of the brothers descendants was a man named Josef Altmann born late 1800s.
I have watched your channel for years, never in my right mind would I think you’d find my relative, we lost contact with that side of our family because we came over long before ww1 but the other half remained. It’s sad. My great grand father Birchard Altman fought for the US in WW1 and it’s crazy to think this was like a civil war for my family. Thank you for finding him I mean it
Well done JD. keep up the good work! It is very much appreciated.
The guide on a tour I did of The area around Ypres (modern-day Ieper), told us when the headstones touch each other, it means the soldiers died together - they remain together in death.
Putting faces to names really hits different, 😔 well done JD
I'm not sure if it has been said.... butI like the fact you included a photograph with the name of the soldiers killed in battle. And, being from the German side. Excellent work!
Such a respectful and touching video. Thank you J.D. Wishing you wonderful travels and wish you had a TV show on the History Channel.
@@kathygreen6283 - Too ugly for TV, but thanks!
Really enjoying your World War 2 videos , but also loving you World War 1 videos also , great respect and learning a lot , especially when you bring a picture of the Man that is buried, suddenly the graves come alive with a human that is buried there just for a second, do you plan to cover The Great War in more detail , keep up sharing and keeping stories going
Amazing journey. Thank you so much for taking us with you.
Thank you JD for your WW1 series. I have been following your channel for over a year. I would particularly like to emphasize your respectful and honorable dealings with both sides of the world wars. That is not a given. I hope you keep it up. Greetings from Austria
PS A series about the battles between Austria and Italy in WW1 would be very cool
They had mothers and sisters too, whose lives changed in an instant. In the early 70s I saw this personally when my mother's best friend across the street from us got the notification about her son was kia in Vietnam. She was never the same🙏
Gosh. Awful.
@TheHistoryUnderground ask a favor my brother. I know you said in the past you usually can't remember the music you use. Was wonderin if you could tag it in the "more" description section. If not I get it yer a busy dude. God bless you and your hard work
I love this series and I really don’t want it to end. Thank you for providing German content. Also I am reminded how the sun never set on the British Empire
Another great video: good to see places so familiar to me yet so rarely visited by a wider audience have some exposure - thanks for this JD.
My grandfather was half Jewish and a German soldier in ww1,,,two years in a French pow camp.
Excellent video as always! The funeral card for Josef Altmann is very unusual. The photo of him appears to have been taken near the front somewhere, given the muddy road and the structure behind him (possibly a bunker or destroyed building?). Almost all cards from this period feature studio photos. I collect funeral cards from the world wars and of the thousands I've seen at auction over the past few years there were maybe a dozen with photos like this.
Love your videos great content 👌🏼
I appreciate that!
Great and moving video as always - the two funeral cards add so much of a human touch how did you find them?
Great video JD. I felt sad for these poor guys. They were pawns in a war they didn't likely ask for. WW1 made zero sense but once both sides were in it, neither one wanted to give ground and there were good men on both sides just ground down to dust. Seeing the funeral cards of those Germans just was a reminder these were good men sucked into the vortex. 30 and 40 months of fighting only to be blown up often by artillery. What a horrible fate
Just tuned in-I know I’m gonna learn something! Love your channel ❤
👊🏻
"But on this battlefield, no one wins".
Slaughter & death. Ask the dead. Did they win? RIP, all the fallen. It's our duty not to forget.
Thank you, JD, for the respect, you pay for the Deads of my country. Yes, they where the Ememies of the Allies, but they where humans too.
Great video! Love your channel and enjoying your WW1 content. I know very little about that war so this is a great way for me to learn more. Keep up the great work! Very much appreciated.
Great video. One of my grand-uncles is buried in Neuville-St.Vaast. He died in June 1915, aged 18. When I went there in 2012, I took the opportunity to visit a Commonwealth Graveyard, too.
Great job on the video JD
@@dankorolyk5917 🙏🏼
My grandfather John Callender was in the Scottish Rifles/Cameronians 2nd Battalion during WW1. 1 year before the end of the war, he was shoot and captured. He was sent home when the war was over. The battle was outside of Ypres in 1918. Will you visit that area? Thank you again.
@@steveerwin2527 wow! I’ll be getting back to Ypres at some point.
Great video mate, you have to remember that there are two sides in a conflict, nice one for telling some of their stories
😉👍
Awesome content once again thx JD
There is a bunker incorporated in the Tyne Cot CWGC in Belgium as well. Great episode! I love the fact that you acknowledge all of the militaries in the battles and not just the main players. Thanks for that. There is soo much information many people don't pay attention to.
My Father was South of Arras in May 1940, when the second battle of Arras was the end of the German advance, He had to guide his unit through the German supply columns to get to Dunkirk. He said that they were digging up bodies when digging in, in some cases, back to eighteenth century wars, along canal and river banks. Perhaps the crops grow well in that area with all the blood spilt over centuries of wars. A well thought out film, thankyou.
Holy smokes. Thanks for sharing that.
Always a great job. The research, the finding of the men show you care and it not just for clicks!
Really enjoyed it mate 👍 really interesting
@@PaulDouglasDouglas97- Thanks!
Stunning footage JD, so sad to see. Thank you.
Well done JD, thanks.
Hi JD. Do you plan on visiting WW2 sites in Italy? Like Monte Cassino, or the battle of Ortona by the Canadians. The Italian campaign seems to be forgotten, as Rome fell on June 4 1944, it was in the news the next day, but got rapidly obliterated by the events of June 6...
You videos are amazing. I've been to a few war cemeteries in Europe, I know how it feels to visit them and the battle sites. Haunting, moving, and mind boggling.
I would love that.
well- done, mate
Wow! Excellent as always JD! I love the funeral cards! Relics are a great way to make history real. I am curious what VZW stands for. I’m looking into that!
Thanks!
As far as I found, VZW refers to his duties and where he served. The internet led me to the German War Grave Commission, from what I could understand, loosely, he was a fusilier. I welcome anyone to explain more. Because my understanding came from an internet translation…so,
Thanks for the video and hard work JD 👍🏼🇺🇸💪🏼
JD, I think the reminder that a bunker causes to come to mind should not be standing in a cemetery! War is in the past for these men lying here as well as the people that came to visit them (past tense because they have passed on as well.) Only the peace that came to each of these men as he fell on his dying day should be felt in this most honorable place! Thoughts?
Well done, as always. Staggering numbers of KIAs.
Completely mind boggling.
Thank you JD for awesome video love your channel JD
Thanks for watching!
@ you are welcome JD
there is another DVD or book you need to read is warhorse again it reflects again the horror that is called war and the shear determination that can be achieved by these heroes that were in it
That’s staggering to think there’s 22 thousand unidentified soldiers in that one space. Such a waste of young life
Thanks for the Matthias story, it makes me very sad unfortunately.
Some of the headstones early in the clip need to be repaired or replaced,
Some are in shocking condition.
Do you do any battlefield tours of the eastern front (ww2). Great videos by the way ❤
The Eastern Front would be a little tough for me to get to right now. I have done a bit of WWI Eastern Front stuff that you can see on the WWI playlist.
Farmer's in Germany and France still unearthed pockets of Mustard gas in the 80's and 90's from WWI.
@@donaldhodge2504 yikes!
They never used gas on german soil ... They did in belgium
Just amazing JD. Thank you for throwing some light on what happened on both sides of WWI. It was the war of My Grandfather, and we don't know enough about it.
Those headstones are just packed together.
Great respectful video once again 😢
The sheer number of casualties is still staggering, all these years later.
You have always respects, and i like that!
Thank you!
My family on both sides were German immigrants in the late 1800s after the civil war. I'm sure I had relatives that fought on the German side. I'm curious where you got the funeral cards from and where you did your research to find out where they were buried.
Picked those up off of eBay and then went to the German War Graves website to research the veterans.
So sad. Was it worth it? When will it ever end? RIP to all.
Looking at those now peaceful farm fields you have to wonder how many are still out there, never recovered.
Many
the abreviation VZW means Vizewachtmeister which is the same as Vizefeldwebel, which would be in the English army staff sergeant. Erich Abraham was born in Charlottenburg on 10.12.92
VZW is a volunteer, so was not conscripted into the Army.
@@petercummings3208 thanks!
VZW stands for Vizewachtmeister, not for volunteer; the term for volunteer would be 'Kriegsfreiwilliger'.
South African Infantry - We will remember
You should go to the Netherlands! There they have an even bigger German cemetery Ysselstein In the province of Brabant! WW2 cemetery.
I live not very far from diksmuide. Been to many cemeterys couple of times, it always makes me very sad, many died for nothing, because politics in their fancy manions far away from the war couldnt come to an agreement because of their bloated ego. I sit their sometimes, in these graveyards and frontlines wondering and thinking of things in life., and be very thankfull, I have huge respect for these soldiers no matter wich side they where on
On the funeral card of Josef Altmann, it reads in the text that "... he followed his brother in death".
which means that that family lost two sons in the war.
Awful.
@@TheHistoryUnderground thank you for the great videos! What is the name of the app which shows you the location of the trenches on the map?
@ Linesman Trench Maps, I believe
@@TheHistoryUnderground Vielen Dank!
My great-uncle was killed on the first day of fighting of Belleau Wood. My grandfather was his little brother and he never had a family of his own.
The second death for a military man is to be forgotten.
He will not suffer the second death as long as I am alive. I have tried to pass his memory onto my daughter.
He is her responsibility now.
The last German soldier you showed was four years old before Germany was even formed as a unified country.
Respect..
Its not Balle Road Cemetery, it is Bailleul Road East Cemetery, St. Laurent-Blangy
There's something extremely sobering about learning history. Even more so when JDs the teacher. 🧡🙏
Nous français, nous avons une grande reconnaissance à tous ces soldats tombés sur nos terre, venue de si loin pour mourir pour la liberté ……qu’ils reposent en paix, ne les oublions pas
How did you find the funeral card of the German soldier Mathias Ub..?
I hope it is not a problem, but I posted some of your videos on Facebook, trying to let more people to find about your excelente work...
Did the Germans in WW2 destroy the German Jewish headstone in those cemeteries?
In the main the answer was No. There was a high mutual respect for all fallen dead of all sides from WW1.
A bunker in a cemetery. Then that area was a battle zone ?
I find my self wondering wen I see conflict content how many remains are still lost to the battle fields.. especially WW1with all the trenches and tunels all the artillery shelling... No way all are laid to rest...
Many are still out our on the battlefield.
You’d think we’d of learned our lesson from all this death and destruction. I guess not.
Such a tragic loss of all that human potential. What would Europe look like today if all these men, British and German, and those of the generation that came after them, had never been killed?
What were the German crosses make of?
On the Jewish grave the letters VZW below the name is the soldier's rank. Vizefeldwebel (VZW) was a Platoon Senior NCO.