This book is the first volume about Artillery Regiment 1 of the 1st
Waffen-SS Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler (LAH). The artillery
batteries of the LAH during the whole of World War II faced some of the
hardest combat, and probably no other artillery unit was used as often
at critical spots on all fronts. While it had only three batteries of
light field howitzers during the French campaign, when the full
artillery regiment was set up in August 1940, it later received heavier
guns and 88mm flak. In April 1941, at Lake Kastoria in Macedonia during
a tremendous artillery battle, the full regiment fired as a unit for the
first time. During the battles on the Russian Front the regiment's
artillery equipment was constantly upgraded. One of the artillery
batteries was equipped from 1943 with Wespe and Hummel self-propelled
guns and later with Nebelwerfer rocket launchers that gave the regiment
its tremendous firepower. Especially during the difficult defensive
battles in the winter of 1943-1944 in the Ukraine, every artillery
piece - whether a heavy field howitzer, or 15cm rocket launcher - was
often used at such close range that it was fired with barrels in a
horizontal position. The battery was later attached to the
reconnaissance unit in the vanguard of the LAH and experienced the
hardest battles while using "Panzermeyer tactics" that required rapid
marches and lightning fast deployment into firing positions. Nearly 300
photos, most never before published, document the bitter battles of the
LAH artillery regiment.
