“I was born on November 15, 1891 in Heidenheim an der Brenz, the second son of the local professor Erwin Rommel and his wife Frau Helen, née Lutz. Both of my parents were evangelical. My first years passed, as far as I remember, especially pleasantly, since I could be alone for days in the yard and adjacent garden.
This is what our hero limited the tale about his childhood to, when, at the reception of the 6th King Wilhelm I of the Württemberg Infantry Regiment, he was asked to write a short autobiography. But how he got into this very acceptance is a more interesting story. Initially, the views of young Erwin were far from these maneuvers and offensives of yours - he dreamed of a career as an aircraft design engineer. But the harsh reality in the person of the no less harsh father - Erwin Sr. - did not appreciate the high aspirations of little Rommel, and soon he had two chairs in front of him as a future profession: a teacher or an officer.

Family photo. The Rommel you are interested in is third from the left.
The choice was too obvious, and in the middle of 1910, the fanen-junker Rommel plunged into the depths of the hard everyday life of army training and not only. Well, what, just like that, people and the military do not acquire pregnant mistresses. Thus, by the end of 1913, Erwin became the father of the illegitimate Gertrude. Coupled with the death of his own dad, this makes our hero think about giving up everything and leaving to build his own life.
However, a whole host of these and similar peace plans were not destined to come true: the fateful summer of 1914 was coming, and with it the Great War. Before the embassy workers had time to knock out telegrams, they immediately began to beat the marching drums - it was the 6th Württemberg that was heading to the lands of Luxembourg, and now Lieutenant Rommel as well.

"Wurttembergers" with captured "Lewis". Yes, the photo is later, but I did not find normal ones from an earlier period.
A small country could not offer serious resistance to the German war machine, and did not intend to. And therefore, soon our hero and his regiment had to meet with a much more serious enemy - the French army. And the very first real battles showed that at the front Rommel feels like a fish in water, and the fish is quite intelligent: it was easy for him both to lead people and to find the most non-standard, but no less effective method of solving the problem.
So, even years later, he told how he single-handedly captured the height, in the fortified house on top of which no less than a platoon of French soldiers settled. How did he magically do it? “It's simple, I crawled closer and fired a flare gun into the hay nearby. It caught fire, and the enemy was forced to leave, ”Erwin answered.
I don’t know if this is true or just another tale, but against the background of subsequent annealings of the hero of this story, it looks, not only realistic, but even rather faded.

In general, Rommel managed to fight and prove himself worthy on many fronts of the First World War from France to Romania, but he undoubtedly gained his greatest success on the Italian front, in the battle of Caporetto. After all, it was here that he received the highest Prussian military decoration, the Order of Merit (Pour le Mérite). So let's dwell on this in more detail.
It all started in August, when, after two years and ten (sic!) attempts, the soldiers of His Majesty Victor Emmanuel III Ferdinand Maria Gennaro, King of Italy, Sardinia, Cyprus, Jerusalem, Armenia and the entire visible Universe in general, finally managed to push the Austrian troops in the river valley Isonzo. The army of the Danubian monarchy was already at the limit, and therefore the 14th German army of Otto von Belov was to play a decisive role in attacking the Italians.

So to speak, a modern look at the battlefields.
The section between the mountains Matazhur and Kolovrat (the battle took place in the area of ​​​​the modern border between Italy and Slovenia) was to be stormed by the German Alpine Corps. And since the thousands of Italian soldiers who occupied the fortifications on the commanding heights were clearly not enough, Belov (with such a surname is clearly an agent of Russian intelligence, not otherwise) decided to add more enemies or, at least, rivals to the soldiers on the front line.
The Württemberg Mountain Battalion (where our hero was at the head of the 1st company) and the Royal Bavarian Infantry Life Regiment were to move forward. Between the Swabians and the Bavarians, a tense struggle for the title of boss of the South German rocking chair was in full swing for hundreds of years, and therefore the intensity of the rivalry has not weakened even now. Especially considering that the commander personally promised a double dose of beer and sausages, as well as glory and honor to those who first break through and take Matajour, and the cherished Pour le Mérite especially for their commander. By the way, the special piquancy of the situation is added by the fact that another, much less well-known and beloved Hitler's field marshal took part in the competition: the 12th company of the Life Guards was headed by Ferdinand Schörner.

Young evil. In command positions, he became famous as a big lover of killing anyone without hitting, so much so that in Germany he was already convicted for shooting German soldiers. But there was still an effect, to the same Konev, he “drank blood in liters, and wound his nerves in kilometers”
And so, at two in the morning on October 24, the offensive began. As a very talented officer, Rommel received command not just a company, but even a whole detachment of his own name (Abteilung Rommel - in general, it can be at least translated as a “battalion”, but since this unit was subordinate to the battalion headquarters, then let it be a detachment) numbering about 500 human. Overcoming thickets and rubble, the Germans advanced towards the Italian positions in order to reach them, fall under heavy machine-gun fire and begin a tactical retreat.
And it turned out to be such a joke, because soon the detachment turned around and in half an hour was sixty meters from the Italians, who did not notice Rommel. Apparently, they had already begun to celebrate the victory and were doing it with something stronger than pasta, as eight German mountain rangers calmly approached them. The Italians took them for their own, and when it became clear that this was not at all the case, they preferred to lay down their arms.

A column of captured Italians, November 1917.
The line has been broken, and now Rommel can allow himself and his men to rush through the Italian positions like mad: first, an unexpected attack from the rear destroys the Italian defenses on the top of Kolovrat, after which a turn towards the coveted Matazhur follows, but halfway, at Mount Kuk, the offensive slows down . Then the detachment turns and goes through the Italian rear points on the mountains Kragonzo and Mrzli Vrh (if you accidentally summoned the devil or Cthulhu, it's not my fault).From such speeds, the unit simply falls apart and under the command of Erwin there are only a hundred or one and a half soldiers who do not lag behind. It got to the point that during the capture of Mrzli Vrh, Rommel alone (sic!) ran towards the Italians from the 2nd regiment of the "Solerno" brigade. The failures of the past days and, most importantly, the stream of selected German foul language hit the morale of the heirs of Rome so hard that they simply gave up, without even trying to end the career of a lone target with a well-aimed shot.
The clock was 11:00 on October 26. And after forty minutes, the foot of the German lieutenant (guess which one) set foot on the top of Matajur. The first finest hour of Erwin Rommel struck, albeit with some difficulties. But more on that below.

On October 27, Emperor Wilhelm II personally arrived at the front near Caporetto. With him, he carried an encouraging speech and the same Order of Merit, which he solemnly hung with his own hands on the neck of an outstanding lieutenant ... Walter Schneiber, thanking him for the courage, energy and skill shown during the capture of Mount Matajour. “Author, what the hell? Where did Rommel go? - you ask me.

Someone is flaunting a brand new order.
And here's the thing. More than one detachment was engaged in flanking bypasses, as early as October 25, the 4th company of the Upper Silesian Infantry Regiment occupied Mount Column, located right behind Matazhur. The commander honestly reported this, and the information went upstairs. However, in the higher headquarters they mixed everything up, deciding that since the height directly behind was taken, then the one standing in front of it was also taken, and therefore Schneiber received the Blue Max, and Rommel ... Well, you yourself know.

"Blue Max" in person in a larger and better way.
No one began to put up with such injustice, and therefore Erwin and his immediate superior, Strösser, began to scribble angry complaints to everyone who could and could not, starting with the army chief of staff and ending with the Kaiser himself. The latter, by the way, saw her and soon awarded two Swabians Pour le Mérite, however, this time not personally.

Wilhelm supports and congratulates his outstanding soldiers.

After some time, Rommel had already changed his epaulettes to the captain's. It would seem that the balance of awards and temperatures has been restored, there are more and more reasons to build a career as a successful commander, but fate and the Entente had other plans. In August 1918, a general offensive began on the Western Front, which would later be called the Hundred Days. A month later, an offensive begins on the Thessaloniki front in Greece, and by the end of September, Bulgaria capitulates. On October 29, the defeat of the troops of the collapsing Austria-Hungary near Vittorio Veneto is completed, the next day Turkey withdraws from the war.

HMS Agamemnon, it was on board that the Armistice of Mudros was signed, according to which Porta ceased hostilities.
At the same time, Wilhelm II makes a gesture of despair: the Hochseeflotte - the pride of the Second Reich Navy - receives an order to go to sea to clash with the English Grand Fleet and die heroically, but inflict at least some losses on the hated British. Only now the sailors' desire to die for the Fatherland has already disappeared, and the rest of the Kaiser's subjects too, because the uprising in the fleet becomes only a spark from which a revolutionary fire flares up. November 9 becomes the last day in the history of the German monarchy, and at eleven o'clock in the eleventh month of the year nineteen hundred and eighteen of the birth of Christ, the shots stop - the Great War is over.

Representatives of the Entente at the Compiègne carriage, where the Germans had already signed the truce.
Against the backdrop of these events and the subsequent Versailles restrictions, the lives of many warriors went downhill. Rommel was lucky to be one of the lucky ones, he got a legal wife and children, and he also managed to stay in the army. First, he commanded a machine gun company in the garrison of the former Württemberg capital, Stuttgart, and eight years later he was transferred to the post of head of the inspectorate in one of the Dresden infantry schools. In practice, this meant primarily teaching.I don’t know if he was satisfied with the life of a simple teacher, albeit a military one, but that in some ten years he, a captain who trains Fenrichs and Fann Junkers, is waiting for the post of division commander, which, having hit both his own and others , will become a real "ghost" of a new lightning campaign against France, Erwin Rommel could hardly have dreamed of. However, this is a completely different story.

Erwin is in awe of peaceful life and future prospects.