ALFRED SURROW - 'A DAUNTLESS LEADER'

Two sides of a story.

I acquired the photographs shown here a few years ago as a research project. The handwritten text on the back identifies one of the soldiers posing on them as Vizefeldwebel Alfred Surrow of Infanterie-Regiment ‘Herzog von Holstein’ (Holsteinisches) Nr. 85. Another shows Alfred Surrow posing with his brother Wilhelm, a Wachtmeister in Husaren-Regiment ‘Kaiser Franz Joseph von Österreich, König von Ungarn’ (Schleswig-Holsteinisches) Nr. 16. What really interested my however, was the fact the photos had been taken early on in the war, in 1914, and because Alfred is wearing an Iron Cross 1st Class which at that point in time, was still a rarity.  Between 15 August 1914 and 30 April 1915 only 7810 Iron Crosses of the first class had been awarded, the great majority of them to officers. Even four years after the outbreak of the First World War, in early summer of 1918, only 472 Iron Crosses of the 1st class had been awarded to ordinary soldiers and only slightly more than 25000 to non-commissioned officers. The first non-commissioned officer to be awarded the 1st class of the cross during the First Word War, was Feldwebel Oskar Brieger, a German-Jew serving in Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 48, who received the coveted award on 13 September 1914 for rescuing 32 men from a burning field-hospital under heavy artillery fire. I had the luck to discover a wonderful carte de visite photo portrait of Brieger in 2012.

Vizefeldwebel Alfred Surrow won his Iron Cross 1st Class on 20 September 1914, only one week after Oskar Brieger, making him one of the very first recipients who, during the early stages of the war, were celebrated like heroes. In addition to this, the act of bravery for which he was so highly decorated was so outstanding, that the commander of the third battalion of IR 85, Major Graf von Kielmannsegg, wrote an account about it, which was published in newspapers all over the German states.

‘A dauntless leader’: The ‘Kieler Neueste Nachrichten’ were the first to report written by the deed of arms performed by a platoon of the 3rd battalion of Infanterie-Regiment 85 from Kiel, in which 22 men took 475 French prisoners. During the fighting at the Aisne, the village of Chevillecourt was strongly garrisoned by the enemy and vigorously defended. It was the fire directed from a farmhouse which made entry particularly difficult. Attacking troops of other regiments had already been greatly afflicted by it when the platoon of Vizefeldwebel Surrow of 9. Kompanie, Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 85, arrived. As his platoon formed a prime target on the steep slope and suffered great casualties, Surrow ordered his men to reach the wall, which was defended by the enemy, in a single bound. Unteroffizier Hansen then crawled along beneath the rifle barrels sticking out of the loopholes, climbed up the wall together with Reservist Laurenz and Unteroffizier Peterich, all of them men of 9. Kompanie, from which he shot several of the surprised French riflemen. After the wooden gate had been smashed in, Vizefeldwebel Surrow and his platoon charged into the farmyard and the house with fixed bayonets. The French, caught off-guard by this audacity, threw their weapons out the windows and surrendered. There were 32 of them. After the platoon, which was only 22 men strong, had opened the path into the village, it advanced further. Suddenly, heavy fire erupted from the bushes on the left and right. Vizefeldwebel Surrow ordered his men to take full cover and continued to advance alone, without cover, towards a haystack from which to overview the enemy positions. The men of his platoon followed one at a time. Again the Vizefeldwebel charged forward alone to find a path into the forest opposite. Suddenly three Frenchmen with fixed bayonets advanced towards him, and the men of the platoon could not be held back any longer and keeping wide gaps between one another, surged forward to defend their leader. More and more Frenchmen with shouts of ‘Allez!’ charged from the forest towards the small platoon. Vizefeldwebel Surrow however, knowing that he would soon be overwhelmed was not baffled. Calm as if he had had several hundred men behind him he prompted the French, with word and gesture, to drop their weapons, and they felt intimidated by the small group of men. One after the other surrendered until finally the number of those taken prisoner this way amounted to 5 officers and 470 men. They belonged to the 35th Infantry Regiment from Belfort.’

For his courage and excellent leadership in this action in which his handful of men had taken a total of 507 prisoners, Vizefeldwebel Albert Surrow was decorated with the Iron Cross 1st Class which he proudly wearing on the photos which survived in the hands of his family until they ended up on an internet action platform  

A fantastic story which motivated me to seek out the regimental history of the French 35th Infantry Regiment published in Belfort-Mulhouse in 1920; in an effort to find out how it described the catastrophic failure of its troops. The short section devoted to the action reads: ‘On 20 September an enormous enemy counterattack was launched during which our 2nd battalion, after offering desperate resistance, was surrounded, decimated and taken prisoner’. 

The first casualty of war is the truth.