Female German snipers??

[Juju]

I was reading a book about D-day yesterday. It contains mostly first person accounts from the men who were actually there.

In it there was also a private letter from Montgomery to a friend where he comments on the succes of the landings.

At one point he mentions that Canadian troops had encountered female snipers ('probably wives of German soldiers' he states) and that they had killed four of them.

How common was it, if at all, for women to see active duty, like this, in the German army? First time I've ever heard of it, anyway. Was this a 'spur of the moment' heroics thing, or were women actually trained for this?

Grogs, enlighten me, please!

[Sirocco]

In the book Caen : Anvil of Victory, the author recounts an allaged incident in which several Canadian tank commanders were shot by the girlfriend of a German soldier killed earlier in the day. The house in which she was firing was stormed and she was shot. I don't know how accurate that is.

[Michael Emrys]

I never heard of this before. I very much doubt that they were in the German army at all. My guess is that they were the French girlfriends of German soldiers who realized that liberation would likely bring retaliation from their neighbors for collaborating and figured they had nothing to lose by taking up a gun against the Allies.

Miichael

[Firefly]

I also saw mention of something similar in Peter White's 'With the Jocks'. White, an officer in the King's Own Scottish Borderers, tells of an instance during tha landings on Walchern island, where he was supervising the landing of equipment and evacuation of the wounded, when a carrier driver constantly came under sniper fire in his trips to and from the front line. Finally getting fed up with this the driver dismounted and shot the sniper, only to find it was a women. White says it was not clear if she was German army or a civilian collaborator.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Firefly:

I also saw mention of something similar in Peter White's 'With the Jocks'. White, an officer in the King's Own Scottish Borderers, tells of an instance during tha landings on Walchern island, where he was supervising the landing of equipment and evacuation of the wounded, when a carrier driver constantly came under sniper fire in his trips to and from the front line. Finally getting fed up with this the driver dismounted and shot the sniper, only to find it was a women. White says it was not clear if she was German army or a civilian collaborator.

Walcheren Causeway is one of my regiment's proudest battle honours...

Given that the German Army did not induct women I would have to say that option is not very likely, unless she was able somehow to conceal her gender. That probably wasn't as easy to do in 1944 as it was in 1861, when several notable females did just that to serve in the US and CS armed forces.

[GoofyStance]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Walcheren Causeway is one of my regiment's proudest battle honours...

My apologies for going off-topic, but Mr. Dorosh's comments prompt me to ask a question that I'd had for years, but never followed up on: what caliber(s) were the German coastal artillery on Walcheren Island? I wondered since they were largely responsible for denying the Allies the use of the docks of Antwerp for months in 1944.

[Firefly]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Walcheren

I was using the Dutch spelling, which White also does .

[Juju]

Thanks for the swift replies, all. I already thought it unlikely that these women were actually in army frontline service.

BTW, for those interested; Montgomery mentioned this in a private letter (dated june 8th) to General Dempsy.

[Firefly]

Dempsey

[The Hapless General]

Well, while we're on the topic of women fighting in WWII, I was telling a friend of mine who lives in Australia about the interesting decsription of the Maori batallion's battles. He then told me that while travelling to NZ, he heard stories of the heroism of Maori women in WWII battles. I conducted a brief search of this but could find no mention of Maori women fighting for NZ in the war. Does anyone know if this is true?

[Holman]

Well, I played Silent Storm, and there were *definitely* female German snipers.

[Michael Emrys]

Well, that definitely settles the matter then, doesn't it?

Michael

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Firefly:

Dempsey

Smart arse

[Juju]

Okay, so the book has Dempsey spelt wrong, not Montgomery, who actually addresses him with "my dear Simbo."

[Schoerner]

Women were not allowed to participate in active combat.

The only woman i heard about, that did something 'similar', was Beate Uhse (rank: Hauptmann). She was testpilot of repaired Messerschmidts and Focke Wulf fighters.

[REVS]

I've just started reading an interesting military history of Afghanistan (by Stephen Tanner, published 2002) and so far I'm still reading the first chapter on Alexander the Great.

He says: "In the summer of 330BC, Alexander rested and reassembled his army southeast of the Caspian Sea. Athletic Games were held, and at one point the queen of the Amazons came in from the north, hoping to bear a child by the great conqueror. For centuries historians doubted the truth of this tale, but modern archaeologists have discovered gravesites with ample evidence of a female warrior culture in the lower Eurasian steppes. On balance, the ancient accounts of Amazon warriors must be accepted, though the formidabe Sarmatians - cousins of the Scythians - of whom they seemed to be a part, may have used them primarily for diplomacy. As for Alexander siring a child, it was reported to have taken 13 days, a length of time that probably indicates his difficulty with the process more than his enthusiasm."

So they're an old tradition...

[Firefly]

Originally posted by Juju:

Okay, so the book has Dempsey spelt wrong, not Montgomery, who actually addresses him with "my dear Simbo."

Actually I read somewhere that his nickname was 'Jumbo', but when asked he would never explain

why.

I'll leave it to the forum to draw their own conclusions.

[von Lucke]

Interesting.

I was under the impression that late in the war, all-female flak-gun crews were not that uncommon. AAMOF, a recounted in The Raid, the task force sent to liberate Hammelberg POW camp encounters one such flak gun, and it's only after they kill them all do they realize that the crew was female.

I assume though, that these women were all volunteers, and that the whole idea was to free up able-bodied males for the front lines.

[Joachim]

Originally posted by Schoerner:

Women were not allowed to participate in active combat.

The only woman i heard about, that did something 'similar', was Beate Uhse (rank: Hauptmann). She was testpilot of repaired Messerschmidts and Focke Wulf fighters.

But I guess this was less based on an extensive research on females in the German armed forces of WW2.

OTOH you could then count nurses as well. I remember a tale about somebody who was just doing surgery in a barn when 2 Russians entered. He clamped the cut, took his Schmeisser from beneath the table, shot and continued. As medics were among the best-armed troops on the Eastern front, I guess several nurses did some firing, too.

Women were not assigned front-line duty. But the front line sometimes moves rapidly.

Gruß

Joachim

[Agua]

Originally posted by Sirocco:

Caen : Anvil of Victory

Excellent read, btw.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Firefly:

Actually I read somewhere that his nickname was 'Jumbo'...

Aren't you confusing him with Wilson?

Michael

[Philippe]

Originally posted by REVS:

I've just started reading an interesting military history of Afghanistan (by Stephen Tanner, published 2002) and so far I'm still reading the first chapter on Alexander the Great.

He says: "In the summer of 330BC, Alexander rested and reassembled his army southeast of the Caspian Sea. Athletic Games were held, and at one point the queen of the Amazons came in from the north, hoping to bear a child by the great conqueror. For centuries historians doubted the truth of this tale, but modern archaeologists have discovered gravesites with ample evidence of a female warrior culture in the lower Eurasian steppes. On balance, the ancient accounts of Amazon warriors must be accepted, though the formidabe Sarmatians - cousins of the Scythians - of whom they seemed to be a part, may have used them primarily for diplomacy. As for Alexander siring a child, it was reported to have taken 13 days, a length of time that probably indicates his difficulty with the process more than his enthusiasm."

So they're an old tradition...

And where, pray tell, was Alexander's boyfriend Hephaistion while all of this cavorting with female Amazons was supposedly going on?

Out of curiosity, does Tanner have a footnote on this evidence found by modern archeologists for amazons? I would be very curious to see what it was. Evidence supporting pet myths and theories is often larded with a liberal dose of wishful thinking.

As for the Alexander story, there are a couple of things you have to remember when reading something like this. Because of an accident of history (or rather, several accidents of historiograhpy) there are no near contemporary accounts of his campaigns. At the same time, the mythologizing of Alexander began during his lifetime. I haven't looked at the Alexander material in a few years, but I think this might be one of the Alexander myths that grew up during his lifetime. If not, the stories had several hundred years to develop before they show up in the histories.

Alexander myths were often harmless folktales, but were often politically motivated attempts to acquire some kind of legitimacy. For example, just after Alexander's death, when the Macedonian army was trying to decide whether to give the kingdom to Alexander's unborn child by Roxanne or to his allegedly half-wit half-brother, one of the generals tried to suggest in public that there was a living, breathing love-child of Alexander by Barsine who would make a suitable candidate. The proposal was met with laughter and derision, not just because it was politicaly naive, but also because everyone who had campaigned with Alexander knew that he only resorted to producing legitimate male heirs out of the direst necessity.

[Firefly]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Firefly:

Actually I read somewhere that his nickname was 'Jumbo'...

Aren't you confusing him with Wilson?

Michael </font>

[Holman]

The proposal was met with laughter and derision, not just because it was politicaly naive, but also because everyone who had campaigned with Alexander knew that he only resorted to producing legitimate male heirs out of the direst necessity.

Wait--so you're saying that Alexander the Great did not sire a race a female sniper-fanatics?? You wouldn't be one of that new breed of revisionaryist histoorians, now would ya?

The way I see it, either Rachel Weisz stopped Hitler at Stalingrad or else the terrorists have already won.

[Firefly]

Originally posted by Philippe:

And where, pray tell, was Alexander's boyfriend Hephaistion while all of this cavorting with female Amazons was supposedly going on?

He was probably the reason for 'his difficulty with the process'.