The German soldier carried a set of six ammunition pouches suspended from a leather belt. A Brotbeutel (bread bag), an identity disc that had engraved on it the regimental and company number as well as the number of the individual on the company roll. Initially the German soldiers wore dark brown corduroy trousers and grey-brown jackets. As the war wore on these men switched to a more plain uniform and the distinctive spiked helmet of Hogan's Hero's fame was replaced by the infamous coal scuttle 'Fritz" helmet used by the German army from 1916 until the end of the second world war.
The Army Law of 1913 was designed to produce an army of 870,000 active men with 669 infantry battalions, 633 artillery batteries, and 550 cavalry squadrons. When mobilized with reservist and fully fleshed out this army amounted to 1,750,000 men in the front lines when war was declared on August 2nd, 1914 with and equal number of second rate reservists in home guard units. This outnumbered army was to oppose the 1,100,000 man French army, the 3.5 million men Tsarist Imperial Army, the Belgian army, as well as the combined British Expeditionary Force. The German air service had about 230 aircraft, in 33 Feldflieger Abteilung (FFAs) (flying sections) with six aircraft each, ten fortress detachments of four aircraft each, plus nine airships, and 54 aircraft in the naval service
Four years of war saw 13,400,000 Germans of all backgrounds placed into the grey uniform of the nation. The graves of the eastern, western and southern fronts kept 2,040,000 of these men for all time while another five million took home visible life changing wounds. This ratio of losses in which more than half of the ranks were either killed or wounded was the highest of any of the combatant armies in what was supposed to be the War to End All Wars.
https://suite101.com/a/the-imperial-german-army-of-1914-a6830
