Machine Gun Man (I)

On 27 February 1898, Karl Albert Gustav Ponath, a pastor serving a rural community in the Prussian province of Pommerania, welcomed his third son into the world. Ten years later, that son, Gustav Karl Ernest Ponath, entered the cadet school located in the castle of Plön, the capital of the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein.

The outbreak of the First World War found Ponath studying at the senior cadet school in Lichterfelde, then a suburb of Berlin. Within hours of mobilization, he reported for duty, as a senior officer candidate, with the 5^th West Prussian Infantry Regiment, Number 148.

The first number in the name of the unit indicates its place in the list of infantry regiments belonging to the province of West Prussia. The second number tells us that the outfit is the 148^th infantry regiment to be formed for service with one of the armies of the German Empire (other than that of the Kingdom of Bavaria, which numbered its regiments in separate series.)

In attending the cadets school at Plön and Lichterfelde, and joining Infantry Regiment 148, Gustav Ponath followed a trail blazed by his older brothers Johannes (‘Hans’) and Friedrich (‘Fritz’). On 23 August 1914, Lieutenant Friedrich Ponath, who had been seconded to the 1^st Jäger Battalion, died while fighting the Russian invaders of East Prussia. Three days afterwards, Lieutenant Johannes Ponath received a wound that put him out of commission for several months. Johannes Ponath, who appears in the photo at the top of this post, would later command rifle companies of Infantry Regiment 148, suffer two additional wounds, and 27 July 1917, die while serving as an aerial observer.

In the last week of August of 1914, and thus the same week in which one of his brothers died in action and the other fell wounded, Fähnrich Ponath commanded a two-gun platoon of the Machine Gun Company of his infantry regiment. He performed so well in that role that he won both the Iron Cross (Second Class) and promotion to the rank of lieutenant. Thus, on 1 October 1914, Gustav Ponath became the youngest commissioned officer in any of the armies of the German Empire.

Source

Gustav Ponath Die Geschichte des 5. westpreußischen Infanterie-Regiments Nr. 148 (History of the 5^th West Prussian Infantry Regiment Number 148) (Oldenburg i.O., G. Stalling, 1933)

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