O.Geyger Mauser 98 Captured WW1 Battle of Marne by 3rd Cold Stream/Irish Guards RARE

[malmartini]

Hi All,
This is my first thread, so please be gentle with me!
Looking for information on a rare Mauser in my collection. It has a Sterling Silver Plaque on the right hand side that states...

Taken from the Machine Gun Company of the Jaeger
The Guard at Boitron
Advance guard action during the Battle of the Marne
September 8th 1914

The rifle itself is an early 1898 Mauser made by O.Geyger, Berlin. Short rifle length (almost carbine), octagon to round barrel with 1/4 rib & early type 318" bore, spoon handle, adjustable double set triggers, cheek piece, Buffalo horn trigger gaurd, buttplate & else where. Lightly engraved, colour case hardened action. The odd thing with the rifle itself is the front part of the forewood can be removed to make a half stocked sporter. The steel plate that separates the two pieces of timber is engraved internally...only evident when the front section is removed.
I have located alot information on the rifle & what happened on that date. I would assume a wealthy German Officer was the owner of the rifle (what happened to standard issue?)?...& Jaeger means "Huntsman" & recall reading someplace that Jaeger refered to "German marksmen shock troops".
The village of Boitron is in France, & I have found the following reference to the Battle of the Marne on that date....

Nobel Prize winner in 1907 & famous poet, & novelist, Joseph Rudyard Kipling describes the action in his book "The Irish Guards In The Great War".

"On the 7th September the Battalion made a forced march from Tonquin to Rebais, where there was a German column, but the advance-guard of the Brigade was held up at St. Simeon till dark and the Battalion had to bivouac a couple of miles outside Rebais. The German force withdrew from Rebais on the afternoon of the 7th, and on the 8th the Brigade’s advance continued through Rebais northward in the direction of Boitron, which lay just across the Petit Morin River. Heavy machine-gun fire from some thick woods along the rolling ground, across the river, checked the advance-guard (the 3rd Coldstream) and the two companies of the Irish Guards who supported them. The woods, the river valley, and the village of Boitron were searched by our guns, and on the renewal of the attack the river was crossed and Boitron occupied, the enemy being heavily shelled as he retired. Here the Battalion re-formed and pressed forward in a heavy rainstorm, through a flank attack of machine-guns from woods on the left. These they charged, while a battery of our field-guns fired point-blank into the thickets, and captured a German machine-gun company of six guns (which seemed to them, at the time, a vast number), 3 officers, and 90 rank and file. Here, too, in the confusion of the fighting they came under fire of our own artillery, an experience that was to become familiar to them, and the C.O. ordered the companies to assemble at Ferme le Cas Rouge, a village near by where they bivouacked for the night. They proudly shut up in the farm-yard the first prisoners they had ever taken; told off two servants to wait upon a wounded major; took the parole of the two other officers and invited them to a dinner of chicken and red wine. The Battalion, it will be observed, knew nothing then except the observances of ordinary civilized warfare. 2nd Lieutenant A. Fitzgerald and a draft arrived that day.
This small affair of Boitron Wood was the Irish Guards’ share of the immense mixed Battle of the Marne, now raging along all the front. Its result and the capture of the machine-guns cheered them a little".

The Battle of the Marne shaped the entire war.
The Battle of the Marne was a WW1 battle fought from the 5 to the 12 September 1914. It resulted in an Allied victory against the German Army. The battle ended the month long German offensive that opened the war, reaching the outskirts of Paris. The counterattack by six French Armies & one British Army along the Marne River made the Germans abandon it's offensive & push towards Paris. The German retreat towards the northeast resulted in a lengthy four years of mud & blood trench warfare along the Western Front.

So, I have all this information, & a nice rifle on top.....but I have'nt been able to locate anything on the German side from that day....except, one of three German Officers captured & Machine Gun Company of the Jaeger. Can anyone help fill in the blanks? It's a pitty I can't read German!
Gotta go... the BEER is tasting SO good!
Cheers; Mal

Information

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