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WWI

A German soldier’s life behind WWI lines

Saturday June 28th marks 100 years since the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo which sparked World War I. We mark the anniversary by showing rare photos from a German soldier of everyday life behind the front lines.

Published: 27 June 2014 13:01 CEST
A German soldier's life behind WWI lines
Photo: Europeana 1914 - 1918.eu.de

Walter Naumann from Leipzig was sent to the Western Front in 1914 with the 105 King Wilhelm II infantry regiment of the Royal Saxony Army.

He was an amateur photographer and had worked in hotels in London, Paris, Grenoble and Atlantic City before the war.

His father owned a restaurant in Bad Düben, north of Leipzig, but Naumann was a keen photographer and his pictures give a rare glimpse of an ordinary soldier’s life 100 years ago away from the fighting.

He served in Belgium and France from 1914 to 1918.

CLICK HERE to see some of Naumann's photos

After the war he returned to Leipzig and went on to work in restaurants across Germany and died in 1952.

The hundreds of photos stayed in a trunk with his family, but have been published thanks to an EU-funded online project called Europeana which is gathering archive photos and documents about World War One from across the globe.

The Local first published a small section of of his photos in February.

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BOMB

Bomb de terre: WW1 grenade found in French potato shipment

A German World War I hand grenade was found among a shipment of French potatoes imported for a Hong Kong crisp factory, police said.

Published: 3 February 2019 10:23 CET
Bomb de terre: WW1 grenade found in French potato shipment
Photo: Hong Kong Police Force/AFP

The device was safely detonated after it was discovered at the Calbee snacks factory Saturday.

“The grenade was in an unstable condition because it has been previously discharged but failed to detonate,” Superintendent Wilfred Wong Ho-hon told reporters.

Police detonated it on site, Wong said, with a police video showing bomb disposal officers packing the grenade in a drainage channel at the factory before blowing it up.

The grenade was eight centimetres wide and weighed about one kilogram.

“All the information to date suggested that the grenade was imported from France together with the other potatoes,” Wong said.

The grenade is believed to have been left in a trench during World War I and accidentally gathered up with potatoes planted a century later in the former battlefield.

“If it was covered in mud, the grenade was likely to have been left behind, dropped by soldiers there during the war, or left there after it was thrown,” Hong Kong University military historian Dave Macri told the South China Morning Post.

“The ditch was then filled up and used as a growing field, and the explosive was tossed into the mix of harvested potatoes… and sent to Hong Kong.”

Hong Kong police are used to dealing with old munitions, though more usually US bombs dropped on the city after it fell to the invading Japanese during World War II.

Last year the bomb disposal squad defused three large WWII bombs, two of which were found at a site in the busy Wanchai district where work was underway to build a new metro railway station.

Unexploded wartime bombs or grenades are frequently found by hikers or construction workers in the southern Chinese city, which was the scene of fierce fighting between Japanese and British allied forces in 1941.

The then-British colony was heavily bombed by US and allied forces after the city fell to the Japanese imperial forces.

READ ALSO: French fishing trawler nets one tonne WWII bomb

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