WW1 Wanderer

[Tyler6357]

Hello Friends:

There are some new, never before seen, WW1 photos surfacing today on the Internet and I was browsing through the pictures and I saw this one. I thought some people here might find it interesting. Not much info on it. It was taken in France, the picture is of German officers, The caption only says: "Walter with a motorcycle", it is dated May 30, 1916 but I can see snow on the ground so it must have been taken earlier maybe?

 

[silverbear]

Thanks for posting the photo. Walter was a lucky guy. I hope he made it through the war and was able to take his motorcycle back home. Maybe it is sitting in a shed somewhere or in a museum with a card saying that Walter donated it when he was 80 years old. I'd like to think so.

It is a cool bike, for sure. I know there was a German company that made a light motorcycle called Wanderer. Pictures of them I have seen are of a later generation... 1930's and by then were powered by a 98cc Fitchel & Sachs 2 stroke, 2 speed motorcycle engine. A guy in southern Minnesota gave me a gas tank from one which I passed along to Fasteddy. That engine started production in 1932 and is not at all like what I see in the photo from WWI.
SB

 

[Tyler6357]

Well, apparently the guy who took them died and the family kept all the photos all these years. They are trying to get the volume published or something. There is a website that talks about the backstory on it but they didn't mention what happened to the bike

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deanputney/experience-world-war-i-through-a-german-officers-p

 

[silverbear]

Ah, so Walter was German which makes it all the more likely that the Wanderer was made by the same company I mentioned.

I visited the web site and spent some time looking into these faces from the past, not so very long ago in the great scheme of things and those men were not so different from you and me. I have seen a photo of my Grandfather sitting tall on a horse in his uniform. He was a captain in the U.S. Cavalry and fought in the same war on different sides of those trenches in France. So many died in that war and then in the great influenza pandemic of 1918. My Grandfather came home and became a doctor who much later delivered my sister and two brothers... & me, too, at the end of WWII.

How incredible it is to consider the changes which have come in slightly less than 100 years.
SB