Adventures in My Youth

2 July–September 1942: First actions

From 15 October 1942 Infanterieregiment 7 was a Grenadierregiment, a unit in the Prussian tradition. It served in the First World War as Grenadierregiment König Friedrich Wilhelm II (1. Schlesisches) Nr 10. After reorganisation and reformation it had participated from 1935 to 1939 as Infanterieregiment 7 in the campaign in Poland. In 1939 and 1940 it fought in the campaign in the West. Within the unit of the 28th Infanteriedivision, to which it had belonged since the beginning of the war, it was prepared for the attack on the Soviet Union in the Suwalky sector in East Prussia.

It served in the following actions in Russia, 1941–42:

- 22–27 June 1941: breakthrough of the ‘Bunker Line’

- 29 June–9 July 1941: Bialystok-Minsk encirclement battle

- 10 July–9 August 1941: advance and fighting at Smolensk

- 10 August–1 October 1941: defensive fighting on the Popij, before and around Jarzewo

- 2–14 October 1941: the Vyazma battle

- 15 October–18 November 1941: the Regiment was released from the 28th Infanteriedivision and placed under the command of the 252nd Infanteriedivision

- 19 November–4 December 1941: the attack on Moscow

- 5 December 1941–15 January 1942: retrograde movements into the Rosa-Stellung and trench fighting

- 16–25 January 1942: the Winterreise, or the winter journey (Translator’s note – the term Winterreise ironically echoes the 19th century poet Heinrich Heine’s sequence of poems under the same title, and also Franz Schubert’s subsequent musical arrangement of Heine’s poems)

- 26 January–28 February 1942: widespread defensive fighting to the east of Gschatsk.

It was in the Gschatsk-Stellung, some 150km west-south-west of Moscow, that I joined the regiment. On 2 July, in St Avold, I had begun my journey which, as a straggler following my comrades, I had to make on my own. The journey passed through Berlin and Warsaw. At first I was in trains carrying men back to the front from leave. But from Warsaw to Smolensk through West Prussia, Kovno, Vilna, Dünaburg, Polotzk, Vitebsk, I was in an empty hospital train. On 4 July I sent to my Mother and sisters ‘very best wishes from the German-Russian frontier’. From Vyazma I wrote on 8 July that I was ‘very impressed’ by the Russian landscape and by what I had seen on the journey, and that I was hoping to arrive at my unit ‘the day after tomorrow’.

At last, on 10 July, I wrote my first letter as a ‘sender’, with field post number 17638 C, from the 6th Company of Infanterieregiment 7. From Gschatsk onwards, to which goods trains were travelling, I had to march with my knapsack. At the regimental command post the commander ‘even shook my hand to welcome me’. Then there was a further march via the battalion command post to the company, which was commanded by Oberleutnant Beyer. I was immediately assigned my post as MG-Schütze, Machine-Gunner 1. The company had just been resting for some days in the woods close to the regimental command post and the baggage-train village of Shabino. We were to go back up the line the following night and relieve another company. As the 7th Company was being relieved I met Jochen Fiedler and his section leader Kräkler, our block seniors from St Avold. Fiedler said that of ‘the eleven’ of us only six were with Infanterieregiment 7, the others had joined Infanterieregiment 232 or 235.

The relief had proceeded smoothly so that the sections, at intervals of several minutes, and of course in single file, marched away, to avoid making any noise and alerting the enemy. In the trenches during the day it was more or less quiet. The Russians fired off some shells only now and then and those were only of light calibre. By contrast, during the night the Russians did not trust the calm. So the nights were dominated by a perpetual, blind cacophony of explosions. At midnight, when the summer night was at its darkest, for the first time I went alone on sentry duty. Somewhere else and under other circumstances I might have thought of Lenau’s night, ‘whose dark eye was resting on me, solemn, gentle, dreamy and unfathomably sweet’ (translator’s note: Nikolaus Lenau, German lyric poet, 1802–50).

But then I had a redoubled sense of loneliness. I did not know my way about the positions, which were strange to me, and I had not yet seen them in daylight. I did not know where the enemy was, and could only guess where my fellow-sentries were. I only knew the way from the sentry-post to the bunker. For a short time I was overcome by a feeling of being deserted. It seemed to bode ill for my probation at the front that the company ‘sarge’, immediately after I arrived in the baggage-train village, had ordered that I get my hair cut. Then, at the field church service in the full glare of the sun, when I was wearing my Stahlhelm, I had felt ill. I felt completely alone. I had no view in the direction of the enemy, since our trenches were behind an incline. The only thing that happened during those first two hours on sentry duty was the tour of inspection by the company commander. I scarcely heard his approach. Eyes directed forward, I quietly made the regulation report: ‘Nothing unusual to report’.

It was only on 14 July that I had to transfer into the first platoon of the company, to take over the section of a NCO who was going on leave. A week or so later we officer cadets were assembled in Shabino, near to the regimental command post. We had to take yet one more ‘revision course’ before our promotion to NCO. That was expected on 1 August. The course was given by Oberleutnant Steiff, the then regimental adjutant. (I met him again in 1975 in Vienna, where, as a Brigadegeneral in the German Bundeswehr, he was taking part in the negotiations which dragged on for years concerning bilateral reduction of forces in Europe). As far as we could see, the reason for the course was that the regimental commander wanted to get an idea of our theoretical knowledge and capabilities.

On 1 August I was proud to tell my Mother and sisters that, together with the five other officer cadets, I had been promoted to Fahnenjunkerunteroffizier, Officer Cadet NCO. On that occasion three of them received the EK II, Iron Cross 2nd Class. I was very pleased because ‘my appendix didn’t stop me’. Because I was a few days short of the minimum 2 months’ probation period at the front, in actual fact I should not have been allowed the promotion. However, the commander, Oberstleutnant von Eisenhart-Rothe, a gaunt gentleman with the elegance of a cavalryman, and evidently of a similar elegance in thinking, took the responsibility upon himself. Then, I wrote to my Mother, I had a salary, and the business of ‘public assistance for the children’ was at an end.

The previous day we sat together and wrote to our nearest and dearest ‘with liquor and cigars’. The ‘official’ celebration of our promotion, with the commander and some officers from the regimental Staff, was planned for the evening. Our celebration was part of it, because after the commander had left, Oberleutnant Roy, the commander of the 13th Infanteriegeschütz Company, took over the presidency of the Corona and we moved up into so-called ‘increased drinking’. (I met Roy, who, despite his twenty-five years, even back then had a bald patch, at the Division reunion in Stuttgart. While reminding him of that evening in Shabino, I told him that it was he I had to thank for getting drunk worse than I ever had in my life.) It happened that Roy, himself a drinker of note, ordered us officer cadets to drink up in turn.

Finally, ‘to conclude the evening’, he got me to gulp down within five minutes all the drink remaining in the glasses on the table. I managed it, too, under the astonished eyes of my comrades. But after a while I had to be taken back to my quarters while being held up on both sides. But I must not have been able to manage to stay there for the rest of the night, because towards morning I found myself lying in the ferns beside the cottage in which we had our quarters. That was the end of the promotion celebrations. It was the next day, when I was already back with my company, before I got over the hangover.

I then took over the 8th section of the company again. On a piece of paper I had written down for myself the names, dates of birth, occupations and addresses of my men. The slip of paper I had folded twice and placed in my field hymn book. That little book, 5 x 7.5cm in size and ½cm thick, was an Army regulation (No. 371), in a Protestant and a Catholic edition. It contained, in addition to the professional duties of the German soldier, the oath before the colours, and also extracts from the war letters of German soldiers killed in action. It had prayers beginning with the Our Father to the prayers In Gefahr, In danger, and In der Todesstunde, At the Hour of Death, for the dying. There were prayers for burials, chorales and hymns, and finally Bible texts designated as ‘essential sayings’.

My men were —

Füsilier Werner Mutz, born 30 April 1923 in Stolp (Pomerania), a shopkeeper in Stolp,

Gefreiter Helmut Budewizk, born on 4 March 1922 in Hamburg, a student in Berlin-Steglitz,

Gefreiter Albert Vickendey, born on 3 April 1913 in Rickensdorf, Kreis Helmstedt (Brunswick), blacksmith in Brunswick,

Gewehrschütze 1: Obergefreiter Anton Neumann, born on 11 December 1910 in Himmelwitz, Upper Silesia, tailor in Himmelwitz,

Gewehrschütze 2: Füsilier Wladimir Stamer, born on 26 July 1909 in Sosnowitz, Upper Silesia, baker’s assistant in Gleiwitz,

Gewehrschütze 3: Füsilier Otto Beer, born on 2 December in Süptitz, Kreis Torgau, agricultural worker in Süptitz.

My deputy section leader was

Obergefreiter Rudolf Iwanek, born 20 October 1919 in Vienna, automobile painter in Vienna.

I can see the faces of almost all those men in my mind’s eye, as I read their names, even though I have never seen any of them since. I knew that Mutz was killed in action a few days later, and that Budewizk, a happy lad with a friendly face, was posted missing.

Though I had reported from my post on sentry duty ‘nothing unusual to report’ to the company commander, the situation for the battalion suddenly changed drastically. I quote from the regimental history:

My personal experience was more exciting than the picture painted by the dry report from the regimental history. During the night the battalion was relieved from its position and removed from the Division’s Field Reserve. I handed over my section sector and the stocks of ammunition, hand-grenades, and machine-gun belts. We thought it was a relief that those supplies did not need to be dragged along. I marched off with the section in the direction of the assembly area to which we had been ordered.

Company after company joined us on the route. Soon the whole battalion was on the march with us. We went in line, one behind the other at long intervals in order to invite as few casualties as possible in the event that we were attacked from the air, or fired on. From Shabino, the baggage-train village, the battalion went to Gschatsk, to the camp in the woods some kilometres north of the town. In the summer of 1941 that camp had served as headquarters to the Russian Supreme Commander, Central Sector, Marshal Timoshenko.

Hauptfeldwebel Melin, the ‘sarge’, a strict, self-possessed man, had his cross with the drivers, not only those of the horse-drawn vehicles. In a mighty voice he gave out his orders. In pure Silesian, one of them asked, ‘Wot ‘ave ah for’t tek, Herr Hauptfel?’ And the Hauptfeldwebel replied, ‘Tek ‘t’ Poischou’, by which he meant a captured French Peugeot lorry. Several ways led to Gschatsk. The one that went via Staroje was the furthest, but was better for the vehicles and the Peugeot. We followed the route that had more ‘corduroy’ roads and was therefore better. But even so, to the accompaniment of dreadful cursing, horses and motor vehicles had to be heaved out of the sticky mud.

On the way it was passed from man to man that we had set off as Army Reserve and should be getting some rest. I believed it, the old hands did not. On 23 August 1942, in the brightness of the dawn morning, we arrived in the camp in the woods and settled ourselves down in the barracks. I slept for some hours. Towards noon there was something to eat and afterwards there was a front-line film show. While the film Der grosse Schatten, ‘The Great Shadow’, was still running, the Battalion Adjutant shouted ‘Alert!’ Barely five minutes later the battalion was standing ready to march. When the lorries of an Army mobile column arrived we were immediately loaded up. We were told that the Russians had broken through at Juchnow and that we were to be thrown in to the gap created by that move.

The journey through the bare countryside, only here and there crossed by bushes and woods, was not exactly pleasant. We travelled standing, squatting, or sitting on machine-gun boxes. The ‘oldies’ who had taken part in the advance and the winter retreat, said that it was no picnic which awaited us. We younger ones, ‘dropped in the shit’, again, did indeed feel the tension hanging over everyone. It could be read in the expressions of the officers. But it was more with curiosity and interest than with fear that we looked forward to the things that this ‘fire brigade’ action would bring.

Outside the village of Saawinki, some thirty kilometres north-west of Medyn, we were unloaded. Immediately, a security line was formed in platoon strength in the direction of the enemy. I lay with my section beside the road that led to the enemy. Somewhere in front there were still supposed to be German troops. No-one knew any more. A motorcycle with sidecar drove up from behind us. A strange officer got out. To my report he said, sounding surprised, ‘Infanterieregiment 7! My God, that’s an active regiment!’ To my ears it sounded as if he had determined that from then nothing else could happen and that it was a dead certainty that the Russian breakthrough would be cleaned up.

Just as we had hastily dug in, I was taken by a runner to the battalion commander. He ordered me, and the section, to carry out a reconnaissance patrol into the woods that lay about two kilometres in front of us. The object was to find out if they were occupied by the enemy. It was my first reconnaissance patrol. It was the real thing, the active beginning of my probation at the front. On the successful completion of this depended my whole life’s ambition! I instructed the men and we set off.

The first signs of dusk were just becoming noticeable when we reached the woodland. We went in line, spaced widely apart, but could see no trace of the enemy. We crossed a tongue of woodland, while I, as I had learned during training, tracked our direction of march with a compass. Finally, we marched in a long curve leftwards as far as the road and turned back. Halfway the battalion met us. In the meantime they had been ordered to take up positions in front of the wood facing the enemy. The tongue of woodland we had just crossed was the edge of a larger forest that stretched over to the right. It offered the Russians a good opportunity to take us unopposed in the rear. An attempt was then made to counter the danger by having the 7th Company take up position almost at right angles to the forward-deployed 5th and 6th Companies. We would provide cover for the battalion from the direction of the wood.

To my disappointment, my section was held in reserve. We had to dig in again, but on fairly open ground. By that time night had fallen and it seemed to me that we would not be staying in that position for very long. I had the men dig only moderately deep foxholes, just deep enough to be able to snatch some hours’ sleep in them with adequate protection against shell splinters. The foxhole I had myself dug barely reached to my knees, so that my body, lying on bushes as a kind of bedding, and covered in the same way, did not protrude above the level of the ground. Within moments there crept over me the uncomfortable thought that I was lying in a coffin.

Night passed and gave way to morning. The enemy, it was said, were preparing to attack. From my ‘coffin’ I watched uneasily as, to the right of the sector of the 7th Company, 300m to 400m away, individual brown figures, at intervals of a minute or so, were jumping across a small clearing between covering undergrowth. To judge from the direction in which they were moving, they were evidently trying to get into the tongue of woodland lying to the battalion’s rear. The Russians were demonstrating their well-tried tactic of ‘trickling through’. You could work out how long it would take a company or still larger units to have gathered in the wood behind us. Those movements had been reported to the battalion.

Then the orders I had expected reached me. With my section, I had to take up position at the extreme wing of the 7th Company, facing west, in thick woodland. There was virtually no field of fire. In places it was only five to ten metres. On the left I was beside the section led by Kräkler, our old block senior. On the right there were no neighbours at all. When Kräkler and I saw each other neither of us thought of our time together being polished up into soldiers. It is true, it was a time that had not been as much an effort for him as it had for me. We just shook hands and said, as if with one voice, ‘Eh, lad, what a bloody mess!’

Once again it was the old story of digging holes. After we had finished it began to rain. Thin, continuous streams of rain trickled down from the sky. Sooner or later it would have soaked us to the skin. Of the enemy there was nothing more to be heard. We could only suspect that they must be somewhere ‘in front’ of us in the wood, in considerable numbers. Wrapped in branches and tarpaulins we tried to protect ourselves from the penetrating rain that fell even more heavily. Soon water began to gather in the foxholes. Hours passed. Still there was no end to the rain. The sound of the rain and the wind, and the darkness of night as it began to fall, could almost make us forget that we were on the front line and had to watch out for an enemy. After I had assigned the watch I tried, as I sat on the hollow side of my Stahlhelm in the puddles in my foxhole, to find some degree of comfort.

I was shaken out of my chilly doze when the order came to take two men on a reconnaissance patrol in the wood. I had to find where the Russians were. It seemed pointless to me. The rain was getting even heavier. There was complete darkness. It was already midnight. I considered the task to be well-nigh impossible. I would either find out nothing at all or possibly run right through the foxholes that the Russians had dug for themselves. I could lose my way, despite the compass, or even fall into a Russian foxhole unawares. In any of those cases the reconnaissance I was ordered to carry out would show no satisfactory result. I chose two volunteers and we set off. It was so dark that from time to time each of us had to keep hold of the other so as not to get separated. Again and again we would stop, and crouch down to listen. The darkness of the wood and the crackling rain did not allow us to hear or to see anything. With my machine-pistol cocked I felt my way, and crept forwards, my finger on the trigger, always expecting to be fired on suddenly out of the darkness, or to bump into a Russian, or at least a tree.

Then, in a clearing, the existence of which was more to be sensed than seen, there was a sound that did not fit in with the ‘symphony’ of the storm. We dropped straight to the ground and saw a section of Russians, six or eight men, cross the clearing. I saw their silhouettes, the contours of the plain, old-style Russian helmets outlined against the sky. They came quite close to us, went past, and were swallowed up in the darkness. My two men, experienced Obergefreiters, did not think of giving themselves away. As for me, however, my heart stood still. I held my breath and pressed the trigger. The bolt of the machine-pistol shot forward with a crack, but no shot was fired. There was a blockage. Despite that mishap, nothing happened. In the wind and rain the Russians had heard nothing! We turned round and, with the help of the compass, searching and feeling our way, we reached our positions. I reported our observations.

At about 1.30am on 15 August 1942, the kitchen arrived after almost two days. It brought cold bean soup that had gone sour. Even so it was gulped down ravenously. In the foxhole, under the dripping tarpaulin, I dismantled the machine-pistol by the light of a tallow candle, and cleaned it with clammy, wet fingers. Sand and water had caused the blockage during the reconnaissance patrol.

In the open country it should have become light soon after midnight, but in the wood nothing could be seen of the dawning day. Only towards 3am did the coming day show itself. At the same time men’s voices could be heard from the direction of the enemy. They indicated that the enemy were pushing forward. By means of loud shouts the Russians ensured that they kept together. They came nearer and nearer. We had to let them approach to within 10m of us because we could not see them sooner. Once again I went from foxhole to foxhole and gave instructions, especially to the leading machine-gunner. Both he and I were facing our first real battle. The young Pomeranian had arrived a few days before with the replacements. It was the first time since the beginning of the Russian campaign that, for the Silesian regiment, the replacements did not come from Silesia. The Russian voices became louder. There was the crack of branches. They must already have come to within fifty metres of us. Meanwhile, we stood in our foxholes, and stared into the undergrowth out of which they had to appear.

There they were – at last! The place was heaving with brown figures! The wood seemed to be spitting them out. To judge by the direction of their bodies and their eyes, they intended to push by obliquely on the right. We fired on them from the flank. The machine-gunner was scattering the first bursts of fire from his weapon. In what direction was he firing? He didn’t seem to be hitting anything, because I saw no Russians falling. But he had to be hitting them, they were no more than ten paces away! This time my machine-pistol did not misfire. But I caught myself not aiming at all. I was simply pointing the gun and pulling the trigger, but I was firing too high. I pointed lower.

Out of the cluster of brown figures into which the machine-gun was spraying its bullets, a tall young Russian came forward and flung an ‘egg’ hand-grenade at the machine-gunner. The latter was still trying to get out and change position with the machine-gun, while I gave him covering fire. Then the grenade exploded and the poor young lad collapsed, half out of his cover, across his machine-gun. The men from my section had withdrawn. I had lost contact with them. I was standing alone, when a hand-grenade rolled up at my feet. Darting from side to side, I jumped back. There was nothing else I could do. I had to leave the dead machine-gunner and his weapon where they lay.

Quite some time later, the section was ordered back by the battalion. I reported again to the company commander, who was glad that we had been able to withdraw. He was holding the section in reserve at the command post. We took up our ‘coffin’ holes from the previous night and hurriedly made them deeper. Things did not remain quiet for long. The pressure on the 5th and 6th companies was even greater. One infantry attack had already been beaten off. During the next few hours it was announced that we were getting air support, and the order was given to lay out the aerial recognition cloths. Ground troops carried those cloths with them so as to identify themselves at any given time to their own air force. They were about one square metre in size, either orange-coloured cloths, or swastika flags. They were to be spread out on the ground, on buildings, or on vehicles. The loud sound of engines announced the arrival of the aircraft. The approaching aeroplanes gave us cause for hope.

Despite the extremely serious situation a feeling of strength overcame me, because up to then we had seen nothing of the Russian air force. First a flight of Stukas, Ju (Junkers) 87s, flew in. Almost vertically they dived down with their engines screaming. The detonations of the bombs followed. Then, a squadron of Ju 88s also attacked, and, finally He (Heinkel) 111 bombers. Unfortunately, ahead of the 5th Company sector they had dropped their bombs too short. There were dead and wounded. Among them was the excellent company commander, Oberleutnant Esken. Not long after that short pause there suddenly rang out shouts of ‘Tanks, tanks!’ and for the first time in my life, I heard the characteristic dull rumble, that unforgettable grinding noise of heavy tank engines.

A scout car was the first to drive from the left through our lines. Unconcerned, he rattled on up the Saawinki-Upolosy road. When he got as far as the battalion command post, he was polished off with one shot from a 5cm anti-tank gun. From my inactivity in the reserve, I was able to watch from the command post how the gunners let him approach and then, from 30m range, let him have it so that he lurched to a halt. With his hands in the air, a barefoot Russian, smeared with blood and oil, crept out.

Our company commander told us a few days later that the prisoner said the Russians deployed entire families as tank crews. ‘The husband was the driver, the wife aimed and fired the gun, and the adolescent son loaded the gun’. You could well believe it. From the tongue of woodland where the 7th Company and my section had been, shortly after the scout car had been destroyed, a single Russian ran out with loud cries. He shouted in a hoarse voice, Kamerad, Kamerad. As if he himself wanted to desert to us, or wanted us to desert to his side, he held up one hand, gesticulating. But suddenly the older man pulled a hand-grenade from his pocket, pulled out the pin and held the grenade in the air. It exploded and mangled his hand. Thereupon he ran back into the woodland, wailing loudly. What he wanted remained a mystery to all of us.

The Russians again mounted a frontal attack on the main fighting line with tanks and infantry. The tanks fired with their cannon and machine-guns while we were under heavy mortar fire. In front they were shouting Urraih, and were already breaking through. A runner came under the heaviest covering fire and reported what we had realised without him telling us, that the main fighting line could not be held. Oberleutnant Bayer, the commander, without waiting for orders from the battalion, decided to withdraw some hundred metres. On his order the entire company ran across the short stretch of level ground. When they had reached the level of the command post, he, too, ran back and I with him. The Oberleutnant, in a bleached summer tunic with a yellow-brown belt, knew that he presented a particularly good target to the enemy. He sprinted like a runner in a race and had overtaken the company in no time.

Behind us, the tanks rattled up, firing with everything they had, while our men ran back in front of them. Where were the anti-tank guns? At the edge of a small hollow, in which the company was then to take up position, the battalion commander Kelhauer stood erect, unmoving, and without cover. Only his moist eyes gave any sign of how moved he was, and then the words: ‘Bayer, lad, you can’t just bolt with the lads!’ From his words there spoke the complete shock that German infantrymen had given up a position without higher orders and had given way to enemy pressure. The fact that it had happened in the form of a completely orderly withdrawal, and the men had immediately taken up positions again, altered nothing of that inconceivable fact. Hitherto, there had never been such an event in the regiment’s history. In December, facing Moscow, they had had to withdraw. But that was following orders. Even so, the tears had run down Oberst Boege’s frozen cheeks, as those who were there tell with awe.

While I was running back over the level ground, the right-hand pocket of my tunic had been shot through. Even in retrospect, that discovery sent a jolt of horror through my limbs, because in this pocket I was carrying two ‘egg’ hand-grenades! A tank shell had lacerated the company commander’s breeches. A Feldwebel had had a grenade in his hand shot through by a bullet, luckily without it hitting the detonator.

The fire became heavier. It even compelled those who were tired to dig in hurriedly. The hollow at the edge of which we then found ourselves attracted the enemy mortar fire like a magnet. The strikes were good. For us, they were dangerously near. I was still standing in the open. Some 15 metres from me a shell hit a fully-occupied foxhole. A Gefreiter with blonde hair and a chalk-white face was somersaulted by the blast of the explosion some 5 or 6 metres out of the hole. All around the earth was spraying up with the shells exploding. There rang out the blood-curdling screams of a fatally-wounded man crying for his mother. I used to think that was an invention of fiction writers. After a while, in obviously unbearable agony, he looked at Bayer, and cried, ‘Herr Oberleutnant, shoot me!’ Bayer, at other times never at a loss for words, shrugged his shoulders helplessly and turned away without a word.

‘God Almighty, let it soon be evening’, I thought. Unsure, under the stress of being in the thick of events, and under cover in the hollow, I could see nothing of the enemy. In the immediate main line of resistance, 50 metres further forward, I would have been able to survey the ground. I would have seen them attacking and breaking through. I would have been able myself to take aim and fire. But there at the company command post, I was condemned to wait under gruelling fire unable to do anything.

Finally, the decisive attack was made. Three tanks of the types KV 1 and KV 2, the latter 56 tons in weight and armed with a 15cm howitzer, drove up the road and through the battalion’s front. The anti-aircraft guns were gone, the anti-tank unit long since lost. From in front there rang out Urraih. Then, our men were getting out of their trenches and retreating. They could no longer be stopped. The tanks had also overrun the field dressing station where a number of wounded were waiting to be transported away. The tanks then formed up some 200 metres behind the scattering remnants of the battalion. In a triangle on the elevated open ground, each one gave the other cover.

Beside the knocked-out scout car I noticed as I passed, the dead platoon commander of the 7th Company. A man took his pay book and broke off his identification tag. I could see no outward injury on the dead man. It must have been a tiny splinter in the head, or in the heart, that had brought his life to an end. While I was standing by the dead man, suddenly I could no longer see any of my own men. The air was ringing out again with Urraih, the whistling and bursting of the shells and infantry guns. Even the company commander was no longer to be seen. So I hurried after some Landser who were striving to get across a small hollow to a wood, evidently with the intention of getting around the tanks. I caught up with them, and we hurried together along the edge of the woodland to get past the firing monsters. After we had successfully got round them, we reached a river that had overflowed its banks. From somewhere or other bullets crackled in the water.

I began to wade and sank deeper and deeper. With one hand I held my machine-pistol over my head. In the deepest places I had to move as if swimming. Soon I felt the bottom under my feet. Again and again, probably from one of the tanks, a machine-gun spat fire at us. The fellow must be able to see us. What should I do now? Inexperienced as I was, I thought myself to be the only survivor of the company. The men with me belonged to another unit. We decided to look for the baggage-trains, which surely had to be in one of the neighbouring villages.

Night had fallen by the time we found them. The ‘sarge’ welcomed me. There was not one word of reproach. He knew what had happened. I had to make my report. I did so and was secretly ashamed that I had run to the baggage-village instead of looking for my comrades further forwards. The ‘sarge’ left me no time for that. He himself gave me fresh dry clothes and ordered me to sleep in late. The next day at noon I was to go forwards again with the food vehicle. Then he took me into a floor-boarded room in a Russian house, in which nine other scattered men were sleeping. I lay down with them, my haversack under my head, on the hard floor of the farm cottage.

On the morning of 16 August 1942 I awoke from a leaden sleep with the feeling that I had only just gone to sleep. Washing, shaving, the fresh clothes without lice, what a joy! Then I inspected the contents of my pockets. The letters were washed-out, the photographs stuck together and useless. But worse still, my pay book was similarly illegible. Some of my papers, among them my driving licence, were missing. I had just put them down in my gas mask case with my gas mask and then forgotten them when the CO gave the order to withdraw. During the previous days I had not dared to think of the imminent end of my probation at the front. But the fact that the order to return to my regiment came on that very morning was a new piece of good fortune. Then I only needed to report in up front. With that relieving certainty within me, I joined the food vehicle.

The Russians were taking a breather. The company was not even under fire. The command post was based in a house, not in a hole in the ground. The CO was pleased to see me when I reported, and immediately gave notice of departure. He looked weary, and had long stubble. He had once again had ‘uncanny luck’, he said. When he was standing under cover behind a hayrick, a tank shell came through the several metres of hay but was slowed down so much that only its head came out on the other side. There, it was finally brought to a halt by Bayer’s belt buckle. It gave him quite a fright, but nothing happened. It did not explode!

He wished me all the best for the journey home and sent his greetings to the regiment. Then I left. But however depressing the events of the last few days had been, and however much I was looking forward to getting to War College, it was not an easy thing for me to leave the company. It seemed to me undeserved that the Scheisse (I have to use the proper expression for the action!) should be at an end, for me of all people. Among many others, even our old friend Kräkler had been killed. The battalion of more than 500 men had shrunk to a fifth that size. The ‘Sixth’ then only numbered twenty-six men. With such thoughts in my mind I got in to the lorry travelling to the Division. As we were driving out of the baggage-village, rifle fire was cracking behind us into the morass of the road. The road was under enemy observation.

3 October 1942–January 1943: Training courses and promotion

The effects of the Upolosy adventure were with me for a long time. To Rudi I wrote that I had experienced ‘atrocious and terrible things’, but where need was greatest, ‘God’s help was closest’. Apart from a few tiny splinters in my hands, that today I can no longer remember, I told him that I had remained unscathed. Our chaps had said that the battles of the winter had not been as bad as those terrible days. The return from Gschatsk to St Avold took us eight days. I can remember several stops that lasted many hours, first in Vyazma then in Molodetschno and Dünaburg. Only from Warsaw were regular trains running, but we had to change trains many times. In Berlin we arrived at the Silesian station and had to go to the Zoo station. From there a train went to Metz. Our destination was St Avold, where we were given a few days’ leave.

From my correspondence I note that I must have visited my Father in Vienna. He was in the Reserve Military Hospital there, on the Rosenhügel. It was only while in the position at Gschatsk that I had found out he had had a surprise move to Russia. During the course of the advance in the south, which then led on into the Caucasus and to Stalingrad, his military hospital group had got as far as Stalino and Artemovsk, in the eastern Ukraine. We suffered considerable casualties in the offensive. They led to the associated overload on the resources of the dressing stations, the field and main military hospitals. It also led to the overwork of the medical officers and other medical unit staff. At the age of fifty, in a state of nervous exhaustion, he himself had to be taken into hospital. But he was able to tell of his good fortune that he was not sent back to service behind the lines on the Eastern Front. Instead he was sent to the West, to Cambrai.

On 13 September 1942 I was back in St Avold. From there we three active officer cadets, Henschel, Popovsky and I, were sent to Metz for a preparatory course for War College. About sixty Reserve officer candidates were assembled there for ‘a revision of the ABC’, as I wrote home. Once again it was a matter of cleaning our boots and belts. Apart from the danger of being killed, life in the field, I said, ‘was far better’. I asked Mother to send me fifty marks because we were hungry, and were being ‘woefully shoo’d about’. In the evening we went into the town to eat un-rationed standard meals in the inns. The course was supposed to last until 9 October and the course at the War College to begin on 12 October. But we still did not know to which school we would be sent. On 29 September I asked Mother to send immediately, and by registered post, my certificate of Aryan ancestry and my fifth-form German essay exercise book. Father sent me a textbook on stenography on which I worked from time to time. At the grammar school I had not taken that option so as not to further increase my workload. The course in Metz ‘gradually petered out’ at the beginning of October. In the mornings we were supposed to undertake duty with a company, but ‘since no-one is bothered, we lie in really late in the morning and then go into town’.

We three from Regiment 7 were ordered to ‘School I for Probationary Officers of Infantry’ in Dresden. It was the War College for the active junior infantry officers and could be found in Neustadt under the really civilian-sounding address of 11 Marienallee. I arrived early on 12 October and as the first to arrive had rung them up. Then in the afternoon I went out by tram to the War College. I did not meet the prescribed requirement of at least two months’ probation at the front, so at first it seemed doubtful whether I would be accepted. It was with relief that I noted the positive decision. Part of that was doubtless due to the fact that the regiment, which knew what the entry requirements were, had sent me there nevertheless.

It was a pleasant surprise for Popovsky and me that almost half the course participants and a large part of the teaching personnel were southern Germans. I even found a room with Popovsky. In fact it was an apartment. The rooms, each provided for four men, consisted of bedrooms and living rooms. As it was war-time, by means of double beds they were occupied by twice the normal complement of men. So there were eight of us. As well as the two of us there were six more Gebirgsjäger, among whom we immediately felt at home.

I can still remember Ernst Lauda from Kapfenberg, Hubert Melcher from Obdach, Adolf Aschauer from Goisern, Dauth from Munich, Jakoby from Konstanz, and Zilinski from Stettin. The man from Stettin had reported to the mountain troops for the same sort of reasons that many southern Germans and Austrians went into the Navy. At the War College I also met Bäuerl from Stockerau, the brother of one of Rudi’s classmates, and my fellow-pupil from Sonneberg, Klausnitzer. Once again, I wrote urgently for my Ariernachweis, because non-Aryans, covering those who were up to one-quarter Jewish, were not allowed to become officers (translator’s note: the certificate of Aryan ancestry required under the National Socialist racial laws before an individual could be admitted to many institutions).

The accommodation was unbelievably comfortable. We had white bedclothes, running water in the bedroom and the rooms were cleaned by cleaning ladies. I wrote that the War College was ‘the best time I had had as a soldier so far’. It required not only physical, but also mental and spiritual qualities. The superiors, all officers, were selected men. The head of the Inspektion was a Hauptmann from Infanterieregiment 19 Munich, the Group Officer Oberleutnant Maltzahn. I also recall the tactics teacher, Major Rousen from Infanterieregiment 49 Breslau. The Inspektion corresponded to a company, the Group to a platoon. The aim of the course was to train us to become platoon commanders, the normal function of a Leutnant. The exercises took place on the famous Dresden troop training ground, the ‘Heller’. We had little free time. What little time I could spare I spent with my relatives, mainly with Uncle Rudolf and Aunt Hanni Löhner. At that time Rudolf had much to do. He was working on commissions for the memorial to Richthofen, the fighter pilot, at the Invalidenfriedhof in Berlin. He worked too on figures for the Dresden Opera and the Reich War Ministry.

In our room we often had a ‘beano’, to which the Styrians, Ernst Lauda and Hubert Melcher from Gebirgsjägerregiment 28, especially contributed. Their Ersatz troop unit was at that time in Marburg on the Drau. A short time previously they had heard a production there, of Verdi’s Traviata. Erni Lauda was really taken with the champagne aria and sang, over and over again, ‘Up, drink in thirsty draughts from the glass that Beauty presents to you’. The two of them teased each other with the amatory adventures they had had in Marburg. It emerged that Erni had once spent the conclusion of such an evening in the Marburg municipal park. He had got so hot that in no time he had taken off at least his field tunic, as well as his belt.

Ernst Lauda was killed in April 1944. Hubert Melcher lost a leg. Adolf Aschauer survived the war in one piece. (Once after the war I looked him up in the Rassingmühle in Goisern, his home. Ernst Lauda’s father at one time entered into correspondence with me and I met him in Schweidnitz.) He was at the time on the Staff of Heeresgruppe Süd with Feldmarschall Kesselring and he told me of one absurd order from the Führer. This order required that the sarcophagus of the Hohenstaufen Emperor Friedrich II be brought back with the Army on the evacuation of Sicily. However, Kesselring refused the order on the grounds that he needed every cubic metre of ship for troops and ammunition.

The star of our group was Arnold Suppan, a smart Kärntner with brown hair and brown eyes. He already held the Iron Cross First Class and the silver Infanteriesturmabzeichen (Infantry Assault Badge). The Gebirgsjäger told a lot about the Murmansk front from which they came, about the bright summer nights and the dark winter days in the Arctic Circle.

The weeks passed quickly and in the middle of November we heard the great news that the course would finish on 16 December. The best group of students, to which I too belonged, would be promoted on 1 December to Fahnenjunker-Feldwebel. The majority of the candidates were handed out their uniform chits. My request to Rudi was to the effect that he should obtain a sword, an officer’s belt and a holster, because it looked as if there were not any in Dresden. In actual fact, a sword was never required. In any event, I would only have been able to wear it on very few occasions. My first officer’s uniform I had made by Uncle Rudolf’s tailor. He rejoiced in the cosy name of Trautvetter. For my overcoat and the second uniform I waited until my Christmas leave. I had them made at Splinar in the Theobaldgasse, by the tailor of the Steinbach family. The tunic was of better material, and the overcoat displayed all the skill of a Viennese Bohemian tailor.

Our instructor, Oberleutnant Maltzahn, professed himself to be very satisfied with us from the Ostmark. On the occasion of our promotion to Feldwebel he told us the notes he had made on our assessment. He found me, among other things, ‘very intelligent’. I had never before been praised in that way. It certainly said a lot for his judgement! He himself was of above average intelligence and culture, and in addition showed us a lot of what it means to live like an officer. Our promotion to Leutnant was to take place on 12 December. I announced that I would be arriving home on 16 December, a Wednesday. I asked Rudi to collect me, and I ordered a ‘celebration meal’, of whatever Mother wanted to rustle up. Before then, however, we had the trip to Berlin. There, in accordance with tradition, the Führer was to speak to us in the Sportpalast.

The entire War College marched from the Anhalt Station. We were divided into several groups and went by different routes. On one we passed through a quarter of Berlin which showed city slums that shocked us. The event took place in the Sportpalast. Several thousand young officers were assembled there. At first there was a long wait for Adolf Hitler. After some time it was announced that, in Hitler’s place, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring would speak to us. After another long wait, Göring came hurrying in. He gave the impression that he was under severe psychological pressure which the content of his address underscored. We later found out that it was on that very day that the tragedy of Stalingrad began to loom. It explained why Hitler had not come, and made it disconcertingly clear why Göring praised the death of the Spartans at Thermopylae under their king, Leonidas. ‘Wanderer, should you come to Sparta, tell them there that you have seen us lying dead as the law ordained’. The Reichsmarschall simply substituted the word ‘duty’ for the word ‘law’ and almost punched it at us. ‘As duty ordained, as duty ordained’. At the end of his address we were immediately marched off to the station and straight away began our return journey to Dresden.

It had been the previous day when the names of those who had been promoted were read out in the gym. It began with the members of Infanterieregiment 1 (Königsberg) and ended with those in the Gebirgsjägerregiment who were last in the numerical series. We from Regiment 7, in alphabetical order, were Henschel, Popovsky, and Scheiderbauer. We soon had our turn. Afterwards Wiggerl and I dozed off in a half-sleep of emotions of release and tiredness.

The night before, following an order given by our Leutnant Riedl, we had hoisted ‘the white flag’ on the chimney of the boiler house. To accomplish that, one of our bed sheets had to be brought along, we had to cobble together something to raise it, and the 20 metre high chimney had to be scaled. Since you could climb the chimney on iron rungs on its inside wall, it presented not too much difficulty, but nevertheless it required some courage. It was Popovsky who volunteered to take up the duties of the climbing party and not one of the Gebirgsjäger. It might be imagined that the task would fall more easily to them because of the arm of the service they were in. Oberleutnant Maltzahn was pleased that his group, the twelfth group in the third Inspektion, had carried out the task.

With my promotion to Leutnant I was then to a certain extent ‘grown-up’. I was not then nineteen and would not come of age for a long time. I had already been an Unteroffizier. But then I was capable of supporting myself and was in receipt of a salary with my own account at the Stockerau savings bank. At that time a Leutnant’s salary was 220 Reichsmarks per month. It was a considerable sum for a grammar-school boy, but also for a soldier who had to live only on his service pay and that meant from his additional front-line allowance. In any event, the freie Station was guaranteed. It guaranteed a barracks roof over your head, and military rations that were more or less adequate and digestible for a young stomach. As well as our salary we got a one-off ‘clothing payment’, the enormous amount of 750 Reichsmarks. My kind Aunt Lotte had given me an additional 50 Reichsmarks for my Equipierung, an expression she used from the old Imperial Army. In a letter to Mother she wrote about it and told her, quite touched, that I looked ‘like a young nobleman’. Father, with great seriousness, had written me the following:

The Christmas leave passed off harmoniously, even if the atmosphere was really not Christmas-like. There was no snow on the ground. I had missed Father. He had been given a short period of special leave from his post because his brother, my Uncle Erich, had been killed in action, on 29 November, by Lake Ilmen in the Northern sector of the Russian front. Thus he was able to visit his brother’s widow, Anneliese. She was in Eisting, near Schwertberg, with her three small children, Theja, Harald, and Ute. He also visited his mother who lived in Hadersdorf-Weidlinggau.

I got angry about grumbling townspeople who were losing nothing and from whose families no-one had joined up, but who still grumbled about the situation. From my class Iwan Wagner, who was also an infantry Leutnant, as well as Erhard Hameter and Friedl Schiffmann, both Fähnriche in the Navy, were all on leave. With Friedl Schiffmann’s sister, Heidi, I struck up a fleeting and short-lived friendship. However, by the summer Herta had turned away from me. Admittedly, I visited the Henk house. When I was visiting one afternoon I left my officer’s cap, overcoat and dagger in the hall. That ‘con-man’ Ewald took possession of the uniform and had his photograph taken, dressed in it, in his father’s studio.

The course at the War College was followed by a company commanders’ course at the Infantry School in Döberitz near Berlin. I arrived there after New Year. Popovsky and I were given a double room together in the bleak barracks. There, in contrast to the luxurious conditions in Dresden, unfavourable conditions prevailed. The barracks were unheated and therefore ‘perishing cold’. The food was ‘terribly little, bad, and cold’. At night we had to sleep in our underwear, pullovers, and training kit, or else the cold would have ‘done you in’. We were allowed to go to Berlin only on Saturdays and Sundays. I immediately suffered a bout of angina, which when I was young I got almost every winter.

On my birthday, 13 January 1943, which I designated as the saddest in my life up till then, while in a foul mood, I wrote a letter to Rudi. Like me he wanted to become an active officer. I asked him whether he had sent off his application, because if not, he should think it over very carefully. I said that at such a young age one could not always make 100% correct decisions, i.e. decisions that affected one’s entire life. I told him there was nothing worse than a life that was ruined by choosing the wrong profession. I said there was one thing he had to give particular thought to, something that I unfortunately had realised too late, and that was the mostly spiritual hollowness and emptiness of the service. For that reason I doubted whether the profession would satisfy my brother. With me this was, I confessed, not the case, and perhaps after the war I would still change professions in some way.

Aunt Lilli, Father’s eldest sister, had at that time been living in Berlin with her family. Uncle Leopold Pohl was a clergyman in the Neukölln area of the city. In fact I turned up at their house, to the horror of my Mother. My parents had quarrelled with the Pohls over Grandmother. However, I was cordially welcomed, and they were obviously glad I had taken the step, especially as the argument had been Uncle Pohl’s fault. Against Mother’s reproaches I justified myself – not very seriously – by saying that it was of because of our need for heating that I had been directed to them, but also said that Uncle Pohl had lent me an immersion heater and had offered an electric heating stove. I said that I would therefore prefer if they began to get along together again, even if only under the motto of ‘coals of fire’. In actual fact the contact with my relatives was a gain for me, since I could spend the night there from Saturday to Sunday.

One Saturday I heard in the Neukölln parish hall the lecture of a Rostock university professor on the subject of ‘The Johannine Testimony to Christ’. The lecture took place in the air-raid shelter because of a British air-raid. We felt like the first Christians in the catacombs in Rome. During the lecture the anti-aircraft shells were crashing outside and there was a hail of shrapnel on the roofs. The following Sunday I was at the service in Uncle Pohl’s church. After a long absence it was spiritually edifying for me. I was able to sit down at the piano and to play as my fancy took me. The two Pohl lads, at that time 15 and 13 years old, were not at home. Wolfgang had not changed schools when they moved to Berlin, and was visiting his grammar school in Schleusingen. He was at boarding school there and only came home in the holidays. Helmut had been taken out of the city with the so-called Kinderlandverschickung.

Only Ilse was in the house with her parents. She sang with the Philharmonic Choir. Son afterwards, a performance of the ‘St Matthew Passion’ took place in the Berlin Garrison Church, she took part and I listened to the concert. In the row in front of me there happened to be sitting Grossadmiral Raeder and his wife. At that time Raeder was Supreme Commander of the Navy.

One Saturday evening, my uncle treated us to a bottle of wine. It had been given to him as a present, shortly after the war began, by a former member of his confirmation class. He had, in the meantime, been killed in action. We drank the wine, as Uncle Pohl said, ‘in memoriam Eduardi Feldmann’.

Rudi took many photographs and even, by using an automatic shutter release, did his own portrait studies of himself. In those pictures he showed an inclination to clowning and to elegance. My classmate Novak wrote to me that Rudi was one of the ‘best-dressed, most charming, and thus also one of the most popular’ young men in Stockerau.

The work was hard. On Saturdays we worked till noon. On the other weekends we worked nine to ten hours a day. Of course, infantry matters were in the foreground, i.e. how to lead a platoon was then followed by how to lead a company. We had instruction in tactics, combat, weapons instruction and firing. Once again the officer-instructors were excellent people. The head of the Inspektion was a sensitive, seemingly vulnerable aristocrat, Hauptmann von Koenen. One of the tactics instructors was a young holder of the Knight’s Cross, Hauptmann Johannsen, and our Inspektion officer was a Viennese, Oberleutnant Brucker. (I also recall another Austrian, Major Watzek, whom I happened to meet after the war in the street in Vienna. He ended his career as the Austrian General und Kommandant of the Vienna Neustadt Military Academy.)

Once we took part as spectators in a production of the Infanterie-Lehr-Regiment. It portrayed the attack of a reinforced infantry battalion, supported by a battery of light field howitzers, i.e. 10.5cm, four assault guns and aircraft. Heavy and light infantry guns, i.e. 15 and 10.5cm, also supported the attack. The exercise was completely true to life. Naturally the shooting was accurate and the system of command of classical precision! In the audience were twenty Army Generals, five from the Waffen-SS and three from the Luftwaffe. There were some 100 staff officers and some 20 Luftwaffe Leutnants to whom the spectacle was completely new. With their Leicas and other cameras, they all snapped simultaneously every exploding shell.

While the instructional element was really interesting, I was still disturbed by the ‘exaggerated Preussentum, as always and everywhere’. With this I meant, and still mean, not the spirit of Prussia in itself, but the way in which many small people believed they had to express this spirit. The spirit of Prussia had its home to a certain extent in Potsdam, which we visited one Sunday. The unassuming old houses, the small well-known Garrison Church and the summer residence Sans Souci, itself so modest, showed us that the Prussian kings obviously always knew their limitations. As one of the officer instructors, Hauptmann Schubart, quoted, ‘little things made Prussia great’.

The training was mostly based on the Heeresdienstvorschrift (Army Service Regulations: H.DV. 300/1) Truppenführung (i.e. Troop Command), Part One, vulgarly known as Tante Frieda or Aunt Frieda. The introduction to these regulations is classical in its clarity and reminds one of sentences from the seminal work on warfare Vom Kriege by General von Clausewitz. I quote it as follows:

I have not yet mentioned the marching songs, and other songs that played a significant part in my training period. The character of the soldier’s song had changed. Certainly there was still in use a series of songs that the German Army had sung in the First World War. Those were to be sung as Volkslieder in a march rhythm. But in the period between the wars, and through the Hitler Youth, new songs had come along and, above all, many songs were sung ‘more snappily’. Most comrades, however, did not like that way of singing, and that also expressed itself in the choice of songs. In the Dresden War College we had caused something of a sensation, because our group, with its many Gebirgsjäger, used to sing some Austrian soldiers’ songs. Our favourite was the Südtirolerlied with its completely un-Prussian yodel at the end of the verse. Die blauen Dragoner, sie reiten, Ein Heller und ein Batzen, Schwarzbraun ist die Haselnuss, Es klappert der Huf am Stege, Ich bin ein freier Wildbretschütz, Jetzt kommen die lustigen Tage, Weit ist der Weg ins Heimatland, Wer recht in Freuden wandern will, are a few of those songs. I particularly liked Es klappert der Huf am Stege.

True, we were not cavalrymen, but it matched our youthful spirit when it said, ‘We ride and ride and sing, in our hearts the bitterest distress. Longing seeks to conquer us, but we ride longing down’. In the final verse, ‘We ride and ride and hear already the battle afar. Lord, let us be strong in the battle, then our life will be accomplished!’ Of the songs that were sung in our room in the evening I will mention Heilig Vaterland, Du voll Unendlichkeit, Kein schooner Land in dieser Zeit, or ‘Nothing can rob us of love and faith in our land, to preserve it and to form it is what we are sent to do. Should we die, then to our heirs will fall the duty of preserving and forming it. Germany will never die’.

‘Belief in Germany’ was the title of a well-known and much read book from the First World War. Belief in Germany had seized us all, whichever Germany that meant. It also played a part in the letter that Uncle Erich’s battalion commander had written to Aunt Anneliese after Erich had been killed in action. The letter was doing the rounds of the family. Erich’s death touched us all to the quick. We were glad, that as a fanatical National Socialist, who had left the church, he had still become reconciled with my Father. It moved me deeply and I wrote home about it. In February, in a large parcel from Aunt Anneliese with apples and other things, I received a tin of marmalade that had been meant for Erich. It had already been to Russia, but was too late to reach its recipient.

4 Spring/Summer 1943: Platoon commander in Silesia, trench warfare at Nemers

When the course finished at the beginning of April 1943, we got 14 days’ leave. After that Popovsky and I had to report on 15 April to the Ersatz unit, Grenadierersatzbataillon 7, in Schweidnitz/Silesia. The Silesian Ersatz-Armeekorps had a few months earlier been moved back from Lorraine and Alsace to the home garrisons in Silesia. We then came for the first time into the place that had been talked about by our comrades. We believed that from then on and even after the war, the place would be our home. Schweidnitz was called the Potsdam of Silesia. Before the war it housed the Staff, the first and the third battalion of Infanterieregiment 7, the Staff and the first and second Abteilungen of Artillerieregiment 28, a medical unit, District Military Command, Military Records Office and Army Ancillary Office.

Schweidnitz was the Stadtkreis and Kreisstadt in Lower Silesia, principal seat of the principality of the same name. It lies in a fertile valley between Zobten and the Eulengebirge. The city has two Protestant and two Catholic churches, among them the Pfarrkirche founded in 1330 by Duke Bolko II. It has the highest (103m) tower in Silesia with a triple crest (1613). There is a synagogue and an old Town Hall with a famous cellar, and various monuments.

Economic activity comprised the manufacture of electricity meters, machines, furniture, gloves, tools, terra-cotta and pottery ware, feather edging materials, vehicles, cigars, needles, paper and paper goods, bricks, iron casting and textiles. Long since famous was also the beer brewery (Schweidnitzer Schöps). In addition, the city possessed a chamber of commerce and a Reichsbank office. There were two grammar schools, a theological institute, an agricultural winter school, two orphanages, an educational institute, a theatre, and an archive. It was the seat of a district court, a magistrates’ court, a Landkreis administrative office, a motor sport school and several technical schools.

The early fortifications were removed in 1868, and transformed into beautiful parks. The Neptune Well, four market wells and a Neopomuk Column of 1718, enlivened the picture presented by the city. The residential houses originated in part from the eighteenth century. Of the royal castle only the Renaissance-Portal of 1537 was retained. The town of Schweidnitz was founded during the first half of the thirteenth century as a town laid out on a grid pattern between two roads. In 1260 it was granted its town charter. It was the residence of the first Piasten and an important festival ground in Silesia. In the later Middle Ages Schweidnitz developed into the second-largest trading city after Breslau. The principality of Schweidnitz was founded in 1291, and joined with Jauer in 1326. Through the marriage of the heiress Anna with Kaiser Karl IV, it passed in 1368/69 to the crown of Bohemia. In 1526 it went to the Habsburgs, and in 1742 to Prussia.

In 1427, Schweidnitz was besieged, in vain, by the Hussites. In the Thirty Years’ War (1642) it was destroyed by the Swedes under Torstenson. In 1747 it was taken by the Prussians and developed as a fortress. In 1761 it fell once more by trickery, into the hands of the Austrians. Then it was retaken in 1762 by the Prussians, after a stubborn defence, remained under Prussian control and was significantly reinforced by four forts. In 1807 the French took possession of them and razed the outworks to the ground. In 1816, after the fall of Napoleon, they were rebuilt, but completely flattened again in 1867. According to the census of 17 May 1939, Schweidnitz had 39,100 mostly Protestant inhabitants. According to the regimental history that was the past of Schweidnitz.

The officers’ accommodation in the barracks was insufficient, therefore many officers were quartered in hotels. Popovsky and I had a room in the Hindenburg-Hof, evidently the first house to hand. It was next to the railway station. The square in front had a small park, on to which we looked down, from our first-floor room. As far as work went, there was not much to do. We were simply waiting for our marching orders. After Popovsky left on 29 April, I felt a bit lonely. I became accustomed to the feeling. But I soon found a few good comrades. One was a chap from Linz, one was from Franzensbad in Bohemia, and there was a Feldwebel-Offizier candidate. He was a clergyman in the Confessional Church and, at forty years old, was waiting for his promotion to Leutnant.

From a letter to Father, I find that I gave him the ‘Stalingrad Letter’ to read and copy out. That was the shocking letter of a clergyman to his congregation who had remained in Stalingrad. (I still have the copy). In the same letter I asked Father urgently for cigarettes. Mother still kept her cigarette ration card ‘z.b.V.’ i.e. zur besonderen Verfügung, for special use. With cigarettes she could probably obtain food or could meet other obligations on which she depended.

The food in the barracks was frugal. Once I succeeded, on a forty-kilometre march, in getting into a village inn and in eating there, ‘naturally for nothing’, i.e. without having to hand over any Reichsmarks, Eierspeis or Eröpfelschmarrn. I remember my conversation with the landlady, who thought I was from Schweidnitz. As a result of a musical ear I could get the Lower Silesian accent very well. She was amazed when I told her that I came from the Vienna area. On such marches through the countryside around Schweidnitz I often had leisure to indulge in my thoughts. From Breslau, Silesia, in 1813, the War of Liberation began against Napoleon. King Friedrich Wilhelm III had founded the Iron Cross. The simply-styled decoration can be traced back to a design by Schinkel, the brilliant Berlin architect. Few people know of that connection. During my time in Schweidnitz I found out that the Zobten had played a similar role to the Wartburg, and that the students of Breslau had once made pilgrimages there.

As in St Avold and Mörchingen, in the buildings of the barracks in Schweidnitz, in passages and over doors there hung the various coats of arms of the places of Lower and Upper Silesia. It meant that in every place a piece of the Fatherland should be looking down on you. The Haus Vaterland, in Berlin was a large room in that gigantic establishment dedicated to every German region. There was a similar one in our barracks for the Silesian homeland and its sons. The fact that the character of the Wehrmacht was based on the wider concept of Greater Germany had at least loosened a little the principle of local allegiance. It had by no means got rid of it. After all, I then knew what Schweidnitz was like and how our regiment belonged there in peacetime. It was, as the old soldiers’ song says, ‘my real home’.

The wait for my marching orders did not, thank God, last much longer. I was glad when it was time and I could set off via Breslau to Minsk. There I had to report to the Führerreserve of Army Section Centre. On that journey to Russia I did not have a ‘goal’ in the same way as I had had the year before. I did not have the prospect of being sent on a course after a few months. My real probation at the front was just beginning, and all the more important since I was then an officer. Strangely, I did not think of the possibility of being wounded. A Heimatschuss, i.e. wound necessitating evacuation home, could bring the coming experience on the front line to a speedy end. In the First World War the Austrians had called it a 1000 Gulden Schuss. It was more as if I felt myself travelling to meet an uncertain future. The recollection of Upolosy joined itself to that feeling. It was a kind of fear of being tested that weighed upon my spirits.

We soon got to Bialystok and Stolpcze, formerly Polish border crossings. With me in the compartment of the leave train returning to the front were sitting a senior MO and two paymasters. The MO was going to a military hospital, the two paymasters were in other lines of communication posts. The gentlemen were carrying much more luggage than I. I only had my miserable Wehrmacht haversack. Dawn broke and the train crawled at about thirty kilometres per hour through a region where there was the threat of partisans.

Suddenly, an explosion shook me out of my doze, and the train lurched to a halt. It threw me off the seat on which I had been stretched out. The senior MO’s case fell out of the luggage rack and hit me on the back of the neck. From outside could be heard the crack of rifles. Bullets crashed through the walls and the windows of the carriage. In the train there was considerable excitement. The people from ‘behind the lines’ reacted with panic. One paymaster fired with his 6.35 pistol through the closed window. I spoke to him and asked him to be sensible.

Then I got out of the carriage and jumped into the ditch beside the tracks. I waited under cover until the rifle fire had ceased. It could have only been a few partisans who had been firing. But the damage was considerable. The empty carriage pushed in front of the locomotive, and the locomotive itself, had been blown off the tracks. The forward half of the first of the long express carriages had been compressed as if it had been made of plywood. There were dead and wounded.

Hours later a fully manned handcar came from the next post up the line. In the morning we were at last able to continue our journey. Meanwhile, the cause of the explosion had been discovered. The Russian improvisers had managed, by means of a much cobbled-together wire, to detonate an obviously home-made mine placed under the track. Then they had made off, not without first having put the fear of God into a couple of travelling paymasters with a bit of rifle fire.

That experience caused me, at least for the next twenty years, not to get in to the first carriage of a passenger train. From Minsk the journey went on to Vyazma. There the line ended. Gschatsk, after the ‘Buffalo’ withdrawal movement in the Spring, was no longer in German hands. I had to continue on towards Spas-Demensk and get off in Jelnja. Many houses had been destroyed. Only a few remained intact and were the distinguishing characteristics of that village in the lines of communication. The Soldatenheim was housed in the one single storey building. The next day a vehicle was to travel to the Division. So I reserved a straw mattress for myself as the last soft bed before I arrived at the front. Then I visited the overcrowded front-line cinema, to see the ‘Judge of Zalamea’.

The film had not finished when suddenly there was the roar of enemy aircraft. While bombs were already falling round about, the cinema was hurriedly evacuated and everyone dived into the cellar. Experience teaches that it is a good sign if you can hear the whistle of the bombs because then they explode further away. But in those moments it was poor consolation. There remained the dreadful feeling of having to crouch in the overcrowded cellar without being able to do anything. Getting on for 150 Landser were together in that one room of about seventy square metres. The ceiling was supported by only one column. More and more bombs whistled and exploded.

I was already considering whether I should get out into the open in one of the pauses between two waves of the bombing. Then a Feldgendarme from the Division spoke to me and suggested that I run across with him to the Felgendarmerie bunker. He had recognised me as being from the ‘Seventh’ by the white tabs on my epaulettes. We ran off straight away and we were both glad to have escaped the cage down there. The air-raid carried on until 1am, but claimed only a few victims. Above all, the direct hit on the cinema that we had feared did not happen.

On 23 May I had set off from Schweidnitz, and after two eventful days and nights had arrived with my company. I had travelled with the Feldpost vehicle from Jelnja to the Divisional command post at Alexandrino. The main dressing station was there and was working at full pressure. A battalion from ‘461’, our sister regiment, had the previous night carried out an assault operation in which half the battalion had been lost. The road forward continued past scented meadows and shining silver birch and over long, carefully laid ‘corduroy’ roads. In the evening I at last arrived at the front line where, compared with the adventures of the journey, peace reigned.

On 25 May I wrote to Father that my welcome to the regiment had been ‘cordial and very nice.’ I had already met many people I knew. The quiet in our positions was ‘doing me good.’ I was quite tense. Only now and then was there individual fire from artillery or mortars. But soon, I said, I would have ‘got used’ to life at the front, and the necessary calm would return. I thanked Father that he and Mother had taught me to make the right, true Christian faith part of my life, because its true value is best learned at the front. I said that I was really helped by the New Testament that Father had given to me. He had written the dedication to me from Psalm 90, verse 10: ‘A thousand shall fall beside thee, and ten thousand at thy right hand: but it shall not come nigh thee’. Therefore, I wrote, I was ‘completely confident.’ God would see that all was well.

Our company commander was Oberleutnant ‘Schorsch’ Hentschel, from Upper Silesia. Kompanietruppenführer was Oberfeldwebel Thalige from Troppau. Both were reservists and as early as 1942 had been awarded the German Cross in Gold. My comrades Walter Henschel and Ludwig Popovsky were platoon commanders in the 11th and 7th Companies, and I was platoon commander in the 10th.

The length of the trenches in the company sector was one kilometre. The right-hand edge was formed by the ‘post road’ in the village of Ivanowo. Only charred beams and remnants of walls were left of the few remaining houses. Two platoons of the company were in the trenches in the main line of resistance. The third was in front of them on outpost sentry duty. The distance of the enemy from our sector was 1,800 metres. The outpost sentries were 800 metres in front of our main line of resistance. That was how the notional line between the muzzles of the most forward rifles was defined. The Russians now and again fired a shell from their mortar, or a Ratschbum. Ratschbum was the name we gave to the light Russian infantry gun, an anti-tank gun that fired directly at its target, so that the sound of firing and that of impact followed in quick succession. It was a sound described by the word Ratschbum.

The mood of the men was excellent. Winter was past and they had survived the retreat. The awareness of a solid superiority was beginning to root itself once again. ‘We can hold out in a war like this for years’, they felt. Only the second battalion had participated in the Upolosy adventure, but not the third, in which I then was.

Frivolously I had taken my gold pocket watch with me into the field. I carried it in an aluminium container that had a cellophane pane on one side through which you could see the watch face. But every time it was difficult to get it out of the little pocket, sewn into the waistband on the right next the button. Since I could get a waterproof service wristwatch, with luminous figures on a black background, I ventured to send the pocket watch home. It actually arrived. That was by no means certain, for in spite of draconian punishments there were many instances of theft. Even the Feldpost was not proof against thieves. It was the watch that I got as a confirmation present from Rudolf Löhner. It has been for many years on the writing desk in Thussi’s ordination room.

One day the Divisional Commander, Generalleutnant Melzer, toured the positions. He was satisfied with the state they were in, but he reproved me since he believed I was not wearing a collar sash. Actually I did not have one, but instead had a beautiful purple silk scarf. However, in order not to be ‘bawled out’ for wearing it, I had pushed it under my collar. To wear such neckerchiefs in the garrison would have been unthinkable, but here in the field the superiors turned a blind eye. The fact that the General had caught me out irritated me for quite some time.

However, it was a peaceful day with glowing sunshine that prompted me to sunbathe on the grassy sloping back of the bunker. But soon that was too insecure, because I feared I might fall asleep. If a shell had struck, I would have been lying out in the open without cover. Another day the Russians, instead of disturbing us with shells, fired all their infantry weapons for a quarter of an hour, as if possessed, for no apparent reason. The fire could not hurt us in the cover of the bunker or in the trenches. But there was an uninterrupted chirping, buzzing and whistling and, because no shells were exploding, it was a particularly unique sound. When the firing began, the company commander’s Putzer, i.e. batman, was outside his bunker and was wounded in the foot just as he was having a pee.

In such trench warfare, which in itself was quiet, there was the institution of the Zugführer vom Dienst. When it was my turn at night, I had to inspect the entire company sector and the outpost sentries. I had to check the links between our company and the neighbouring companies. Those excursions out in front of the line were exciting and not without danger. At any moment you could bump into a Russian reconnaissance patrol. On dark nights, it was said to have happened that the Ivans captured Landser by throwing a blanket over their head. As far as possible you had to tread quietly, often stopping and listening.

An additional task was assigned to me. I had to develop lectures for ‘military moral support’ on the basis of material supplied to me. Then I had to go round lecturing from bunker to bunker. The subjects were:

Considering that in the other battalions of the regiment the lectures were considered to be the task of a Hauptmann, whereas I as a mere Leutnant had been selected to deliver them, I felt proud. ‘Only you would have to tear yourself apart’, I wrote on 3 July to my Mother.

Monotony and relative peace were a breeding ground of sometimes endless rumours. In the Ivanowo days the word went round persistently that the Division would be withdrawn and transferred to Greece. As always, the rumour came to the front from the baggage-train. The ‘sarge’ had bet the Kompanietruppenführer a barrel of Smolensk beer and of course had lost. Whether he ever settled his bet with the sceptical Palige, I never found out.

At that time an appeal was suddenly made to the troops to take part in the competition for the formation of a Frontkreuz. The front itself was to make recommendations for the order. It was to take the form of a cross. By small variations it would indicate whether the holder had served with the fighting troops, or in the lines of communication, and how many years he had served. Commander Palige and I industriously drew up our proposals, mostly inspired by a bottle of cognac that the Oberleutnant donated from his own Sunday afternoon supply.

There were many indications that the Russians were planning an offensive. They were firing ‘registration’ fire on our positions, using targeted fire with premature detonation. Such shells exploded while still in the air. In that way it was possible to assess the accuracy of the fire. From our side, a Focke-Wulf twin-fuselage aircraft was in action over the enemy frontlines. It was carrying out close reconnaissance by means of photography. The aircraft flew over in broad daylight and was only moderately troubled by enemy fire. The Russians were asleep at that time of day.

Over Whitsun I went with my platoon on outpost sentry duty. For the men, it meant crouching in the same small hole for ten days and nights. From the outpost sentry position, the ground extending over to the enemy looked like a tightly stretched, flat tarpaulin. To lift a head above the parapet by day would have been suicidal. The position was excellently camouflaged, but the enemy was supposed not to discover it until the last minute. Flat trenches, scarcely knee-deep, connected the individual machine-gun and foxholes of the Igel-Stellung. The movement of a man in the daytime, even if he ducked down, could not be camouflaged. To get to such a foxhole was only possible by creeping or crawling along on your belly. Of the 24 hour period only four or five gave sufficient darkness to be able to stretch our legs and move our limbs. During those hours the units bringing food came up to the lines with rations and post for the men on the line. There was no water for washing. Washing and shaving were impossible. We had to clean our teeth with coffee. In a 2 x 2 metre hole in the ground, as deep as a man’s height, was my command post. It was covered with a layer of beams. Over the entrance was fixed the end of a wire by means of which a T-Mine, twenty metres from the Igel-Stellung in the direction of the enemy, could be set off.

On Whit Sunday night it was as if the Holy Ghost was truly appearing to us. On the stroke of midnight a considerable barrage rumbled off, covering the lines of the 1st and 2nd battalions directly behind us and to the right of us. Multiple mortars, called ‘Stalin Organs’, also joined in. It was a fascinating sight every time the 24 or 42 shells hit, spraying fire. By then it was clear that an attack on the sentry outpost was imminent. Whether it would be my post, or that of the 3rd Battalion placed to one side was not yet clear.

Meanwhile, the sound of tanks was suddenly to be heard. That indicated the Russians intended to attack the neighbouring position. The next night we learned that, in fighting off the attack poor Popovsky got shot in the lung, but had been brought back to the rear in time and otherwise was well. It was said to have been a whole battalion. His platoon had borne itself bravely, but still had all kinds of casualties and lost one wounded man as a prisoner. When the Russians had got hold of him, they withdrew, together with the tanks.

After almost four weeks at the front, I at last got some post from home. But there was nothing from Father in France. Rudi was waiting to be called up, having been accepted into the Panzerkorps Hermann Göring, which made him really proud. Amusingly, he described the chaos in the school. No-one in his class wanted to learn any more, but only play truant and, with their school-leaving certificate in their pockets, go to join up. Something that he had not told me before was that in February some trains with remnants of the 6th Army had passed through Stockerau and had stopped. ‘But that was quite something, a battlefield taken all together, so to speak. Ruins, destroyed tanks, guns, horses and soldiers, and among them the straw everywhere which gave the whole thing even more of a sense of doom’.

One night the comforting petroleum lamp in my bunker could have caused a disaster. A platoon runner had inadvertently bumped into it and knocked it over. The overflowing petrol was soon caught by the flame, which spread out over the little table. We had trouble getting the boxes full of ammunition safely out of the bunker, including the box that served me as a pillow, while at the same time extinguishing the fire. Unfortunately my fountain pen, a confirmation present, fell victim to the flames.

On the night of 23/24 June the battalion was unexpectedly relieved by a battalion from 461 and moved into the Nemers sector. The Division was shifted a battalion width to the right, with us thus becoming the right-hand linking battalion. The march of only 10km did everyone good. To be moving, despite the pack and large amount of ammunition that had to be carried, was a refreshing change. The new sector was excellently constructed. The bunkers were deep in the ground and were covered with roofs of thick beams. There were many machine-gun and rifle positions, all correctly placed. The trench was as deep as a man’s height. Only the barbed wire obstacles were incomplete. A road, overgrown with grass, to the remnants of the village of Nemers passed through the main line of resistance in the middle of the company sector. In the middle of my platoon sector was a 50 metre wide area of woodland, with the trench at the forward edge. Tall spruce trees, together with lower undergrowth and patches of grass in between, made the landscape look more like an English park, than something you would have suspected to be in the heart of Russia.

The disadvantage of the sector was a right-angled field, beginning 50 metres in front of the trench. It then extended at that width some 200 metres towards the enemy. On the farther edge of the right angle there used to be sentry outposts, but they were withdrawn because at night they were too much at risk. Whole companies could have slipped into the brush. For that reason, every night, reconnaissance patrols had to go out to check the area.

One night, when I had once again gone round the field, I ascertained that the Russians had settled themselves in the foxholes of our earlier outposts. As we reached our barbed wire on the way back, the Russians mounted a machine-gun attack on the passage through the minefield and through the barbed wire. Evidently they had been observing us slipping through the wire, for the heavy machine-guns, which they must have fixed on the target during the daytime, fired with pinpoint accuracy. We were not able to press ourselves close enough to the ground until the attack was at last over. After calm had returned and we had taken a long jump into the trenches, the runner Grimmig said that it would have been the right time to get a Heimatschuss by raising your hand. He had missed the chance yet again! Grimmig was a Gerhard Hauptmann-type figure who actually did have a grim expression, but was full of native wit, goodness, loyalty and courage. The humorous talk of a Heimatschuss was a manifestation of the so-called innerer Schweinehund. The Prussian Army creation was so splendid because it had such insight into the character of even the simplest man.

My kind Aunt Lotte sent me a whole lot of literature in small Feldpost editions. Apparently, hovering in front of her eyes were pictures of the trench romanticism of the First World War, the ‘good fathers with their front-line beards’, giving themselves to edifying reading by the flicker of a Hindenburg lantern. So as not to upset her, I thanked her effusively, but sent the little books straight home. Certainly, I would have had time for reading, but I did not have the necessary calm. The impressions of life at the front were still too new and too various, and life in the trenches, even in trench warfare, were too exciting for me to be able to immerse myself in reading. Much time was taken up in writing. There was Mother who formed the central core of the family, and Father in France. Rudi it is true, was still at home, but I wrote separately to tell him things that I could not, nor would not, write to Mother, so as not to worry her. But there were also friends and finally the girl. My affection was then fixed upon the Skorpil-Mädi. However, she had soon turned her affections away from me, again, even though I still carried a candle for her.

I shall give a short account of the Skorpil family, with whose son Erhard I went to school. Erhard and his elder brother Hannibal were both killed in action with the Waffen-SS. The husband of the eldest daughter was an Oberleutnant in the Stockerau cavalry. In 1941, he was wounded and fell into the hands of the Russians and murdered in an atrocious way. It became known through his comrades and the whole town knew of it. All five Skorpil children were good-looking. Elfriede, the youngest, was blonde and blue-eyed like the others, and with her long, thick hair was the picture of feminine grace. She was artistic, wrote calligraphy, and played the violin. At that time she did not know whether she should go to the academy of music or the academy of art. She later became a painter.

During our nightly work on the barbed wire we suffered many casualties from mortar fire. We worked on setting up spanische Reiter and trip wires. Accelerated completion of the work had been ordered because of the expected enemy summer offensive. We also had to provide greater security against assault and the capture of troops. The word was that specially trained Russians had been recently creeping through the lines to capture prisoners alive. At least ten men had to work at the same time at any one place, it was said. If not the enemy would grab one or other of them as they were stretching the wire.

The roof of my bunker, with its three layers of beams 1.2 metres thick in total, gave enough protection to be able to sleep in peace. A cannon stove, a nailed-together little table and two birch-wood stools completed the ‘day room’. Behind a stretched piece of thin sacking were the bunks. The current state of trench technology was also displayed in the construction of the wooden beds. As well as the usual planks which had the advantage that you lay level, there was also the wire bed which bore some similarity to a hammock. Particularly nice was my bed of young birch trunks, which dipped way under my weight and feathered like a mattress. Sometimes, when I lay down to sleep after dawn had broken, I even allowed myself the luxury of taking my boots off in order to enjoy my feathery bed even more.

Trench culture also flowered in other ways. On the table in front of the bunker window, situated on the back wall of the bunker, one and a half metres underground, in front of a light shaft half a metre square, ‘Mädi’s’ picture was resplendent. A ‘specialist’ had coloured it by hand, mounted it in a birch frame and covered it with cellophane instead of glass. Nickel, the platoon medic, gave me a home-made watch-hanger. It consisted of a star shell cartridge, filed off flat on the floor, the edges of which had been made jagged and bent round the photograph.

But from time to time the quiet life in the bunker was interrupted. Once the Russians must have seen smoke. They fired exactly 75 shots from a Ratschbum on to the bunker. The shots were all on target. Two of them scored direct hits on the bunker, but luckily did not hurt us.

The Nemers position had the advantage that you could get from the rear up to the most forward trenches without being seen by the enemy. Thanks to that, a warm lunch was actually able to be brought forward at lunchtime. But the Russians must have got wind of the time when food was distributed. On two days in succession they ‘signalled’ with pinpoint accuracy with a mortar. The lunchtime had actually been put back an hour, from 12.30pm to 1.30pm. While the soup was pouring into the dishes, up above there was the ‘glug’ of the mortar firing: ‘Plop, plop, plup, gluck’. For the men who had brought the food, who had already had their portions, the interruption was doubly unpleasant, because with the full canteens in their hands they were additionally hindered in taking cover. If they had spilled any food, they would have had a rough welcome from their comrades.

Thus it seemed to be a fact that the Russians were listening in to our field telephone conversations by means of earth lines. The listening lines were nothing more than wires fixed into the earth by an iron rod. They were brought up as close as possible to the line to which they were to listen in, that is, as close as possible to our trenches. At the other end crouched a Russian, listening in on his listening set. Despite the fact that code names were constantly changed, for instance I was ‘Rucksack’ for the first week in July, the listener must have been able to learn enough from the conversations to which he listened. More than anything, the tone of military respect could not be hidden. It was true that you were supposed to leave out service ranks, but habit and drill often made you embarrassed when, instead of Jawohl Herr Major, you were supposed to answer with a straight civilian Ja or Nein. If the Russian could hear clearly and understood German well, he could soon draw his conclusions from the unabatedly obedient tone of the one participant in the conversation, and the commanding tone of the other.

One night I tripped over a wire in the area in front of the lines. Shocked, I thought at first that an S-mine laid by us had had a Russian line attached to it. It could have gone ‘sky-high’ together with me. But, thank God, that was not the case. It must obviously have been a listening wire. We reeled it gently in, which was not an easy job with a total length of 600 metres of wire. Particularly at the start, you could feel resistance. Perhaps a listener was sitting at the other end. As Grimmig said, ‘the eyes must have popped out of his head’ when his listening set began to move!

On the night of 5/6 July, a battalion from our neighbouring division attacked the ‘Ascension heights’ that lay in front of their sector. The attack took place after ten minutes’ preparatory fire. Nemers in particular was fully ‘covered’ with 80 Do-Geschosse, the mysterious devices I had seen from a distance a few days previously near to the battalion command post. They looked like angled wooden frames resembling easels, half the height of a man. The projectiles were ignited like rockets, and when they were fired gave a loud screaming sound. The success of the operation must in any event have been nil.

Through the regiment we heard that, of the total of eight men in the Russian outpost on the heights, only a single man had been captured. He was an eighteen years old Uzbek who could not speak Russian. The nearest interpreter for Uzbek was at Army HQ. The interpreter thought that the lad was feeble-minded, since he was not even able to say when he came into the position, nor did he say to which unit he belonged. Perhaps he decided not to say!

The one subordinate with whom I had problems was Unteroffizier Brinkmann, leader of the 8th section. He did not keep his trench in order. Sometimes a duck-board was not mended, or a piece of camouflage or cover was not put right, despite the fact that I had complained about it. Those were the ‘little things which made Prussia great’. Brinkmann was a ‘watersider’ with the walk and the look of a seaman, who used to smoke his pipe reflectively. I did not dislike him, but I had obviously not handled him properly. I had a good understanding with the Silesians and Sudeten Germans. However, I just did not have that understanding with Brinkmann. Perhaps I was too young for him.

In 1943 a lot was already being said about the new weapons that were supposed to decide the war. But they were taking a long time to come. The MG 42, which the Russians called the ‘electric’, and of which there were a few in the company, was only a modest foretaste. Certainly, compared to the MG 34 it was a considerable improvement. The rate of fire was markedly higher and it had hardly any recoil. So there were many sarcastic remarks and mischievous jokes when at that time we received a mitrailleuse, a French machine-gun from the First World War. The monster was several times heavier and also more complicated to operate than our own machine-guns. The only thing ‘fine’ about it was the shining golden brass handle. The machine-gun had cartridge packs of 20 rounds each. When you inserted them and pressed the trigger, it went tack-tack-tack and pounded away, in a leisurely fashion, out into the world.

On Sundays the food was better and there was even a small ration of schnapps. It was simple hooch, often sweetened with artificial honey. When the commander had been drinking, in the afternoon he ordered me to the company bunker. Part of the equipment of the company troops was a field wireless receiver, usually carried on the back. It was possible to listen on Sunday afternoons to the popular Volkskonzert. Requests from the front were featured on it. As I was missing music very much, on those visits to the company command post I felt myself to be on a higher cultural level.

Oberleutnant Hentschel enjoyed Sunday as much as he could by having his horse brought with the food vehicle. He rode to the baggage area, going into the sauna there and in that way ‘having a nice day’ on the lines of communication. Of course, it was quite right and proper if the commander went to the rear now and again. Except that things did not go too smoothly for the workmen and clerks. He had cognac sent up from the canteen stock for Patige and me, and that made us very merry.

One time, Patige and I had a bit of a binge together which led us to be giddy enough to walk up and down, with no cover, outside the trench along the parapet as if on an esplanade. It set a bad example to everyone and was against all orders. Obviously the Russians must have been drunk too, or at least asleep, because they let slip the chance of some competition shooting, with us as two targets. As the high point of the lark, towards evening we fired off red and green flares. Red usually meant ‘Defensive fire, enemy attack’, and green ‘Lift artillery fire’. Of course the flares had been noticed and we had a hard time pacifying the questioners on the other end of the line. To this day I am still amazed that we got away with it. A letter from Father at the beginning of July read:

5 Summer/Autumn 1943: Trench construction and positional warfare

When I had travelled to the front in May, I noticed in the train some gentlemen dressed in civilian clothes. It was said that they were members of an international commission who were going to Katyn to examine the traces of the massacre. Katyn lies twenty kilometres to the west of Smolensk. I quote now from Meyers Enzyklopädische Lexikon, 9th edition.

Significantly, the matter was not dealt with at the Nuremberg war crimes trial. However, at the time, in May 1943, we learned that the written notes found on the bodies ended precisely at a point in 1940 when the Poles were in Russian hands.

During the quiet period of trench warfare it was arranged that as many German soldiers as possible were to be taken to see the mass grave. Therefore, from our company too, a man was designated to visit it. After three days he returned and gave us his impressions. He still had ‘the smell of putrefaction in his nose’. That was how he closed his account.

At the end of July I suffered another deep disappointment. On regimental orders I had to leave my platoon and report to the regimental staff at the Führer-Reserve. The order came just at the moment when the offensive might start and the enemy open fire. I had my platoon under control. I had won the confidence of my men. The opportunity to prove myself as a front-line officer seemed to have arrived. It was no help at all to me that the commander said, consolingly, that ‘I should be pleased’. He said it was ‘a kind of honour’, that they wanted ‘to protect me’, because they believed me capable of more than commanding only a rifle platoon.

I spent the following days in anger and defiance. Still, I was pleased to a certain extent that, by way of compensation, I was assigned to the regimental adjutant. At least I did not have to just sit around on my backside. The activities in the regimental staff, and the people who worked there, were interesting. Oberst von Eisenhart-Rothe was tall and gaunt, but I did not see a lot of him, and thus could not get a proper picture of him. After the autumn offensive he was transferred to the Staff of Generalfeldmarschall von Weich in Belgrade. Some time later he shot himself because of a disagreement over a horse.

The regimental adjutant, Hauptmann Stockter, was an expatriate German from Mexico and was an actor by profession. Accordingly, he spoke faultless Hochdeutsch, was a lively mimic, and was always a bit over the top. However, he gave me a good introduction to my new job. I studied in detail the entire regimental sector and prepared all the paperwork. I drafted orders and birthday greetings. So I came, on paper, to address majors as ‘My dear so and so…’. If I imagined something would come of it I was, at the same time, angry at my foolishness. Had I left my platoon ‘for this’!

In the evenings I squatted in the bunker of the pioneer platoon commander, Leutnant Uxa. He was a Viennese from the Postgasse in the 1st District. I also found another Viennese soldier in the pioneer platoon who was studying piano at the Conservatory. Before his call-up he had been practising Beethoven’s C Minor Concerto. With Leutnant Franke, my companion in suffering from the Führer-Reserve, I often sang in the bunker. I remember his favourite song, the hit song Sag schön gute Nacht. Franke was a teacher and was getting on for 30. He had an unusually friendly nature and must have been a good man. He had only been married a short time, but was killed in action soon afterwards.

On a visit to the 2nd Battalion sector, the commander of the 7th Company, Oberleutnant Becker, offered me a cigarette from a great package of cigarettes of an unknown kind. To my surprised enquiry as to where they came from, he told me that the company had a Bulgarian ‘godmother-aunt’. She was a rich old lady from Sofia who had lived in Germany, and loved Germany, since her youth. He said she had selected the 7th Company of the 7th Regiment to be a benefactress to its members. She sent substantial ‘love-gifts’, and in that way combined her superstitious belief in her lucky number, with deeds friendly to the Germans.

In the trenches of the 5th Company and on the barbed wire in front of them lay six dead Russians. They had mounted an assault at dawn. Those who were still alive, were driven off by the platoon leader Leutnant Ast, after a short exchange of hand-grenades. Leutnant Ast, an old war-horse known throughout the regiment, was tall, had a prominent Adam’s apple and, as befitted his name, gave the impression of being knobbly. He said that it was ‘not worth burying those few, since anyway more would soon be coming’. He said a prisoner had told him that the attack was to begin the next day. A complete contrast to Ast was his company commander, Hain. Generally called Freund Hein, at 5ft in height, he was really small. From his round, friendly face and little eyes there showered wit and jollity. As I was accompanying Oberleutnant Rauprich from the 2nd Battalion of our artillery regiment, Hain gave us a large measure of schnapps, because, he said, we were his ‘last visitors before the attack’.

On the presumed last day before the expected attack, some aircraft were sent in to attack the enemy assembly areas. Some squadrons of Ju 88 and He 111 bombers flew in, in large numbers, and dropped their bombs on the Russians. The Russians had sent up a surprisingly large amount of flak, which maintained uninterrupted fire. One He 111 received a direct hit and disintegrated. We watched it with Oberleutnant Hain, in his sector of trenches. Our artillery had also put down fire over the Russians.

On the way back to the regimental command post we passed the firing position of the 8th Battery. The gunners were working stripped to the waist, a Leutnant helping them to load. At the regiment, too, they were working on the basis that the enemy would attack the next day. The army high command had given orders to withdraw the sentry outposts during the coming night. That order was as clear as the regimental orders drawn up by Hauptmann Stockter, which closed with the words: ‘And so, with all our trust in God, we shall do our duty!’

I woke in the night, roused from my sleep by the rumble of deafening thunder. At precisely 3.40am the bombardment began from 500 gun-barrels. There were howitzers, cannons, light and heavy mortars and rocket launchers. It was as if a supernatural drummer was vertiginously beating his drum. Right there, two kilometres behind the main frontline, you had the impression that the frontline trenches were being ploughed up. Our regimental command post was at the edge of the woodland, in the hollow behind the artillery firing positions and all were similarly under heavy-calibre fire. Whenever a 17.2 or 20cm shell exploded nearby, a shudder went through the ground and among the gigantic spruce trees where our bunkers were scattered. Massive splinters whizzed through the air, crashed into the wood of the trees and tore terrible gashes in the earth.

At 6.20am there was quiet. It would be seen if the two and a half hours of murderous bombardment had been effective, if the men in the trenches had survived and if they were still able to put up resistance. Perhaps the Russians would stroll through the woods unopposed. But only seconds after the barrage had finished, you could hear small arms fire. Through the clear sounds of the Russian machine-pistols came the chattering of machine-guns belonging to our lads. In the regimental bunker there was plenty to do. All the lines to the battalions, and the lines leading from the battalions to the companies, had been cut by shellfire. The first reports could only be obtained by wireless. Signallers were sent out to repair the telephone lines.

We learned that the main line of resistance had held in an outstanding manner. In the 10th Company, Schorsch Hentschel, only just promoted to Hauptmann, had thrown back the Russians in a counter-attack. Only on the post road had they penetrated into the remnants of the village of Ivanowo. There, the badly wounded Oberleutnant Mallwitz was encircled with only parts of the 6th Company. Behind the battalion command post of 2nd Battalion, the enemy had been brought to a halt. A counter-attack by 1st Battalion had a certain amount of success. From our Reserve bunker I had seen parts of the battalion that had been in reserve moving forwards. Oberleutnant Klaus Nikolai, commander of the 3rd, and Fahnenjunker-Unteroffizier Eberhard Kern were with them. Kern limped because his right big toe was missing since the winter of 1941. But he preferred to be there at the front rather than at home. Towards midday, after sending back many wounded, Leutnant Ast came back, shot through the shoulder. ‘The damned sods’, he swore. He said that, to be sure, the Russians had broken into his trench as they had the day before, but had been thrown out again by him and his men.

It was said that, during the two and a half hours’ heavy barrage of 6 August, the Russians fired 50,000 shells on the Division’s sector. They then attacked with nine infantry divisions and two armoured brigades. In front of the regiment’s main line of resistance, and in the places where they had broken through, 3,000 dead Russians were said to have been counted. Oberst von Eisenhart was proud of his regiment’s achievements. He drove to the front every day, standing in his Kübelwagen. My request, that he should take me with him one time, he declined. He said that I would get there ‘soon enough’.

In the meantime, Leutnant Franke had left, and I was the last of the Führer-Reserve to be with the regiment. Again I had a disappointment. I received an order to ride to a village ten kilometres behind the regimental command post. My task was to guide baggage-trains through a busy junction. They were to be moved further to the rear. It was the village in which, before the attack, the Division’s pioneer battalion and Panzejägerabteilung had been located. So, in a peevish mood, I rode overnight to the rear, accompanied only by a chap from the regimental riding platoon. When we reached the highway, a Soviet aircraft was already clattering over us. Expecting to be bombed, I was holding the horse on a very short rein, and managed to control it. But then a bomb fell very close by and the nag, terrified by the crash and the lightning flash of the impact, bolted with me so that I had great trouble bringing it under control again.

After I had guided the baggage-trains through the junction, as ordered, and before riding back, I looked for the commander of the self-propelled gun company. He was proud of his men’s successes. Of the almost one hundred tanks destroyed in front of the Division’s sector, a large number was down to them. However, the fact that the baggage was being moved to the rear was a sure sign that the front was soon to be pulled back. The surest sign was my new mission, to go as adjutant to the trench construction staff of the Division who had been hastily formed.

I learned from the Divisional history that, under the code name ‘Panther’, it was intended to withdraw, within two weeks and in two stages, from the Büffel position, to the Panther position. The new line ran approximately along the line Jelnja-Dorobusch-Spasdemensk. The final position ran approximately along the line Gomel and the course of the Pronja-Lenino east of Vitebsk. The Division’s Stellungsbaustab, i.e. trench construction staff, was under the command of Hauptmann Müller. Until then he had been commander of our 2nd Company.

Müller was a tall, good-looking man, with dark brown eyes and hair, and heavy eyebrows. Oberst von Eisenhart called him ‘glowing eyes’ or ‘Greyhound Müller’, and in actual fact his appearance could remind you of a noble greyhound. As a student at the Tharant Forestry College near Dresden he had got the daughter of a professor pregnant, and married her forthwith. At the time, that went without saying. You could well imagine that he was inclined to be extravagant, even though he had his batman write his letters to his wife. The batman was Obergefreiter Petzold. He had been brought along and used as the clerk.

The staff also included an officer from, respectively, the artillery, the Panzerjäger and the pioneers. The officer of artillery was the congenial Oberleutnant Rauprich whom I had got to know before the attack. Müller and I determined the course of the trenches in accordance with the infantry point of view that regarded the representatives of the other service arms as providing the supporting weapons, so to speak. In that scheme, Rauprich’s task was to fix the points for the ‘B’, i.e. the observation positions for the forward artillery observers. We had at our disposal an Adler-Trumpf Kübelwagen in which we drove around the terrain. The driver was Obergefreiter Moravietz, who had been detached from our 14th Company together with his vehicle. The actual work on constructing the trenches was carried out by the Division’s so-called Baubataillon, of which I will speak later. That battalion also included two horse-drawn mobile columns. One was commanded by the dark-skinned elderly Hauptmann Focke, a Sudeten German and an hotelier by profession. In the evening, when I was issuing orders on behalf of my Hauptmann, I felt like the proprietor of a small construction business, planning from day to day how best to use his foremen, his workers, and his materials.

My displeasure over the lost opportunity to prove myself in a large-scale action had vanished, and I was even then able to see good points in the ‘business’ of trench construction. It was not to be sneezed at that here, at the rear, you could sleep at night, take off your tunic and even your trousers. That was all the more the case since calm had returned to the front line. I had not had it so good for a long time. Our base was in the little village of Lyadi and we lived in a clean, two-roomed farm cottage. The man of the family had been with the Red Army since the beginning of the war. Since then his wife had heard nothing from him. She did not know whether he was still alive, but bore it with resignation and equanimity. In a corner of the room stood the icon. It had always been there, even under the Bolsheviks. The village commissar had made fun of it, but otherwise found no fault in it. But the villagers had not taken him seriously, said the woman.

In a frame without glass were stuck some photographs, including a picture of a dead person of a kind known in Russia. The relatives were crowded round the dead man, in an open coffin. The women were wearing headscarves and the men long, white wide smocks.

The woman lived alone with her child on the small estate. The girl, perhaps eleven years old, was called Schenia. Mother and child had brown eyes and brown hair. The child had an innocent angel’s face. We were touched to see how her face lit up when we gave her some of our scanty confectionery. She was amazed, as was her mother, at the pictures we showed her from home. The woman gave us a lot of the bread that she regularly baked. It was coarse, moist, heavy and full of spelt. We knew that in doing this she was treating us as her guests, and we gave the two of them what we could spare.

The attractions of our construction sector were the Vyazma-Jelnja railway line and a collective farm that lay in front of the future frontline. The extensive State property was administered by an agricultural Sonderführer. He had a couple of Landesschützen to provide military cover. For the rest he had obviously lived up till then ‘like a king’. The yield was poor, he said. There was a shortage of workforce and machines to work the land more intensively. In front of the farmhouse was a ravaged German military cemetery from 1941, which partisans had destroyed. I wondered why the Sonderführer had not had it restored.

On 22 August, Rudi’s eighteenth birthday, I got a concerned letter from Mother. She wrote that for about a week mention had been made every day in the Army news reports of ‘west and south-west of Vyazma’, and she suspected that they were talking about the district where I was. On top of this, she said, mention was made once of a ‘Silesian infantry division’: was this mine, she asked? She was obviously worrying about me more then she needed to, but how could I have said to her that her worries, at least for the moment, were unfounded?

A few days later there was great consternation among the inhabitants of the village. The starets, the village elder, had got news that the 18-year-olds, born in 1925, were to be rounded up and sent to forced labour in the Reich. Since all the young men were with the Red Army, only three girls were affected. No-one could respond to the village elder’s plea for help. It could not even be ascertained from which authority he had received the order.

The countryside around Lyadi could, in different circumstances, have been described as lovely. Woodland, bushes, marsh, meadow, and a small river in a deep gully offered a constantly changing picture. Seen with a soldier’s eye, the ‘terrain’ had disadvantages, and in places was even ‘shitty’. Several hundred square metres of undergrowth had to be rooted out to provide a field of fire. In another place the unavoidable change from the position on the upward slope to that on the downward slope presented a puzzle. The problem would only be able to be solved by the relevant sector commander deploying outpost sentries. He would not be envied. The comrades would not be edified over some irreparable corners that would involve close quarters combat.

In our walks over the terrain, stepping through some tall bulrushes, we came across parts of a human skeleton. The gnawed bones, shining and bleached by the sun, had evidently been scattered over a wide area by birds. The skeleton had to be that of a soldier killed in action in 1941 in the fighting in the Jelnja arc. But it was not a German but a Russian. A little further on we found the hollow skull, still covered with a Russian helmet and with the chinstrap under the chin. However, we had no time to reflect on the mythical image of a soldier’s death. In looking around for more bones, I noticed two half-overgrown, square plywood boxes in the form of oversized cigar boxes. They were more or less covered with moss and overgrown. They were Russian anti-tank mines. We had stumbled into an old minefield! Virtually on tiptoe we felt our way out of the field, using the open areas as if on a chessboard to get out of danger.

Those mines would make the trench construction work considerably more difficult. At any time, members of the work units could stumble across mines, and vehicles drive over them. Casualties were to be expected. In the absence of a precise map, danger loomed practically everywhere. In addition, we would not even be able to give a guarantee to the unit that would next move into the position that the area to their rear was free of mines. If it were only a matter of anti-tank mines requiring the imposition of a certain minimum weight before they exploded, the danger would have been less. But there was no reason to assume that that was the case.

As if to confirm our worry that there were also anti-personnel mines in the area, one day after the minefield was discovered a vehicle from the light column drove over a mine on a road and was blown to pieces. In another place a Russian civilian stepped on an anti-personnel mine. Afterwards the poor devil must have lain the whole night, far away from anyone, with his foot blown off, and so met his death. Inspection of the place where the horse-drawn vehicle had driven over the mine revealed that the tyre tracks of my Kübelwagen were only 10cm away from them. A special angel must surely have been holding his hand over Moravietz. I ordered him from then on only to use well-worn tracks.

Some days later, I was a guest of Hauptmann Kriegl, the ‘commander’ of the famous Baubataillon. He lived alone in a little house. He did not have a batman, but instead was served by a local woman. Vera was a nice and intelligent technical draughtswoman from Bialystok. She made no secret of her Bolshevik convictions and her belief that the Soviet Union would win the war. But this did not prevent her from living with Kriegl, who was in his mid-forties, in a relationship similar to marriage. Vera was chubby-faced, red-cheeked, had an ample bosom, and was always in a good mood. Even if those characteristics were not in her nature, she would have had every cause to be cheerful because the only work she was required to do was to look after Hauptmann Kriegl.

Not only I, but also the local commander was struck by the shameless outspokenness with which Kriegl defied our notions of clean living and marital fidelity. Moreover, it was the same with the men under his command. The civilians were all women and young people who were not particularly kept under watch, but merely supervised by members of the regimental band. I heard then that every one of these Feldwebeln and Unteroffiziere, active military musicians, was said to have had a ‘wife’ among the women workers. The sobering realisation for me was that even among us there was luxuriousness in the lines of communication, and that these Etappenschweine, who had left their mark so deeply in the literature about the First World War, had evidently still not been eliminated by the spirit of the new Germany.

Still, I also participated in the amenities of the lines of communication when Kriegl had cow’s liver prepared, and had roast goose served to the members of the trench construction staff. During the meal, Kriegl told of a man from the company whom he had had under his command at the beginning of the Russian campaign. That man, shot through his skull through both temples, had not only lived to tell the tale, but had been returned to the active list!

Around 10 September the trench system of the Hubertus position was practically completed, and there came the order to move the staff to the rear. Hauptmann Müller had to go up the line to take over command of a battalion of Regiment 461. With him went his batman, Obergefreiter Petzold, who looked like a middle-aged official, i.e. about 35. Petzold even wrote his boss’s letters to his Ehemädchen, as Müller called his young wife. While Müller and I were out in the field fixing positions, Petzold would write precise descriptions in clear script, like the company secretary of a building concern. In doing so, he always spoke of ‘us’ and wrote in the name of ‘we’ and Müller signed the letters after adding a short personal note. The young wife soon had to mourn for her husband, because Müller was killed in action the following November at Nevel. He was said to have been shot through the neck and thus to have bled to death.

For a few days Oberleutnant Gräbsch took over command of the staff. He was an extremely ambitious, impersonal and unfriendly man in his early thirties. By profession he was an optician from Beuthen. When he left, I took over command of the staff.

At that time an armoured train used to travel on the railway line near the State farm. It was said to have been captured from the Russians in the 1941 advance. Certainly, I had no idea how that train was adjusted to run on European gauge tracks. It was equipped with German anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, and it was interesting to inspect it. But it was no place to be for an infantryman. We did not feel at all happy in such a steel coffin. We preferred a trench in the womb of Mother Earth.

The front was on the move again. We knew that because the roads in our sector began to fill with baggage-trains. The baggage troops were supposed to carry in their vehicles only things that were important for the war effort, such as ammunition, food, and fodder. But I saw a lot of other things that the ‘high-ups’ were still bringing with them. There was upholstery on lorries with women sitting on top. Their ‘lordships’ could make themselves really comfortable again at their next location. They had everything you need, was man braucht, as the song goes.

For a long time there had been much air activity. Enemy bombers, fighters, and reconnaissance aircraft were hampered by a few aircraft of our Luftwaffe. It was said that Novotny, the fighter pilot, my fellow-countryman from Vienna, was in action in that area. If it was he, then on that day I saw three aircraft shot down by him. It was the day on which we left our cottage in Lyadi. Schenia and her mother, the warm-hearted, artless woman, had tears in their eyes when we said farewell.

The withdrawal of the front pushed my trench construction staff ahead of it. In the villages there began a fight for quarters. Sometimes I had trouble in claiming a room just for my staff activities. I could find no other way of doing it than to scatter maps over the entire floor of the room in order to distinguish the importance of our work from that of the various baggage units. Only when up against a main dressing station, the place where a regiment’s wounded were treated, did I, quite rightly, have to give way. But I was more than a match for other lines of communications units in asserting our importance to the fighting troops. The people from the bakery, workshop and other companies could sleep outside in the fine summer weather or, if it rained, put up tents. But I could not have my trench diagrams prepared in the rain.

Line by line, trench by trench, I laid them out. Our civilians had to almost double their daily output. One officer after the other was taken away from the trench construction staff and went back up the line. I was then the specialist for observation positions and artillery gun positions. Often I only had time, as I stood in the vehicle, to ‘draw’ the line of the trench, using the wheel tracks. The trench was then dug out following in my track. My ‘eye’ for the terrain had become so sharp that even with such provisional procedures there were never any ‘blind corners’.

The roads that I encountered on my journeys around the terrain were the routes of retreats, with all the signs of retreat. Abandoned vehicles, carts with broken wheels, destroyed equipment, bomb craters, shrapnel and many dead horses lined them. There were horses with bloated bellies and glassy eyes and their cadavers spreading a pestilential stench. In Russia, 2.7 million horses were deployed by the German Wehrmacht. Of those, 1.7 million fell victim to the war. They too we considered to be our comrades. Many of us were cut to the heart when a horse was wounded and, gripped with deadly fear, it faced the bullet that would put it out of its misery.

From then on, each day I expected an order dissolving the trench construction staff. Everything was, in a way, flowing to the rear. Land and people seemed to be on the move. The front, the lines of communication, and parts of the Russian civilian population were flooding back. Other civilians were setting off eastwards again. Evidently they wanted to walk through the lines, or take cover and let the retreat pass them by. When a couple of women from the Baubataillon wanted to stow away, the Musikfeldwebel fired a couple of times into the air, whereupon the Mankas hastily turned round and told their ‘guardians’ they were sorry.

6 Autumn/Winter 1943: Company commander, the Russian offensive, wounds

On 20 September the order finally came dissolving the Stellungsbaustab. What was left of it went back to their units, and the Baubataillon set off again westwards. On the way to the front, at the Division and at the regiment, I heard news. Losses had been heavy. Oberstleutnant Nowak had taken over command of a regiment in another sector. Ours was under the command of a newly arrived Oberstleutnant Dorn, a Rhinelander. Hauptmann Krause, previously commander of the 11th Company, had taken over command of 3rd Battalion. Nowak had called him and Hauptmann Hentschel, who both held the German Cross in Gold, the Korsettstangen des Bataillons, the battalion’s ‘corset stays’. I took over command of my 10th Company, in which in the summer I had been a platoon leader. But there were only a couple of men left from that time. Hauptmann Hentschel had been killed in action, Oberfeldwebel Palige and the grim Obergefreiter Grimmig had been wounded. Even my ‘glowing eyes’, Hauptmann Müller, was to meet a hero’s death in his ‘splendid Orlog’, as he put it. More than the other pieces of Job’s comfort, however, I was saddened by the news of the death of Walter Henschel, who was killed in action on 5 September.

How proud Walter was, when in summer 1942, after his probation at the front he was the only one of us to go back home with the Iron Cross! The EK had compensated him for a great deal of disadvantage and injustice. He had put up with much during his time as a recruit, by laughing and clenching his teeth. He was not a good looking chap, but was of small stature, and always held one shoulder and his head somewhat crooked. He had a round face with prominent cheekbones and acne. What most caused him to be made fun of, were his large sticking-out ears. ‘Walter, lay down your ears’, or ‘Henschel, just see that you keep your glider’s wings under your steel helmet’, joshed his comrades and instructors. From exaggerated ‘snappishness’ he spoke quickly and indistinctly. That way of speaking sometimes degenerated into mumbling, and that brought him further reproval.

With such physical characteristics he was bound to create a negative impression, which as a rule was bad news for any soldier. That was the case with Walter. He attracted the jokes of his comrades and the lightning bolts of the instructors. But at the same time he was the best lightning conductor in diverting them from us. The high point of the harassment, which he bore with apparent calm, happened one Sunday. Since his uniform had not been in order, from reveille onwards he had to report every quarter of an hour to the Unteroffizier vom Dienst, i.e. the duty NCO, alternately in marching kit, in walking-out uniform, and in sports kit. At the time we gave him all the support we could, helped him change and distracted him so that he did not burst into tears. Then, after lunch, the Leutnant relented and let him off the remaining parades. But Walter, even without our moral support, would certainly not have come to tears. He did not feel himself that he was being harassed, just as we others would not have felt harassed if it had happened to us. He bore unpleasant things because it was part of the job.

Anyone who wanted to become a Prussian officer knew that the way to that goal was no bed of roses. He knew that before it was his turn to be allowed to give orders, he had to learn to obey and would be drilled more than the others. Walter was the son of a blacksmith from Reichenbach in the Eulengebirge. For him, the career of an officer offered an unparalleled opportunity to rise in the world. For the inspiring prospect of being able to become an officer with his Field Marshal’s baton in his knapsack, he, whose father was serving as master blacksmith in a baggage-train, would have taken upon himself more than such trivial and short-lived moments of disapproval. For him it was true when he said, Wer auf die preussische Fahne schwört, hat nichts mehr, was ihm selber gehört, ‘Whoever swears on the Prussian colours no longer has anything he can call his own’.

At New Year 1941 he had had one over the eight in the officers’ mess in Mörchingen. A comrade, just as drunk as he was, smeared boot polish on his face. After reveille for the New Year parade, two hours later, he had trouble getting rid of the biggest smears. The half-hour march through Mörchingen with ‘dressed’ rifle had been a sobering experience for us all. On our return to the barracks, the commander of the Ersatz unit carried out the inspection of the New Year parade. But since the ‘old man’ was obviously ‘sozzled’ himself, he had not, luckily for Walter, discovered Walter’s face covered in boot polish. So, at least that time, Walter did not attract attention. But then, in September 1943, I realised he would never again rub his sleepy eyes and, as he once did, enthusiastic and happy, shout down from his bunk into the room, imitating the radio announcer: ‘Good morning, today is Tuesday, the 6 September 1943…’

It was about 20 September when I took over command of the 10th Company that I had left at the beginning of August as a platoon leader. The company had shrunk to less than the size of a platoon. I arrived in the middle of the withdrawal. At that moment the Russians were not pressing and the withdrawal movement could proceed by day. Reconnaissance patrols tentatively feeling their way forward could be seen through the binoculars. Since the type of terrain allowed it, we withdrew in broad formation just as we had advanced to attack in the opposite direction. A line of field grey, a kilometre wide, was striding over the steppe-like landscape. The men were holding their rifles over their cartridge cases, the gun barrels, like their faces, lowered. From time to time officers stopped, turned round, and looked through their binoculars. Like an unfolded fan, drawn along by an invisible hand, we left the silent land behind. We could not suppress a feeling of saying ‘farewell’.

Having been ordered to, I had to look around once more in order to scout out a village that was slightly to the side of our route. I had to see if it was occupied by the enemy. When I arrived within 300 metres of the village with my two volunteers, we came under rifle fire. Bullets whizzed into the damp grass. It was friendly of the Ivans not to let us come any nearer to the edge of the village. But because of that our task was quickly done. We had ascertained that the village was occupied by the enemy, and were able to withdraw, darting from side to side. It was not easy because the terrain offered no cover.

The Division’s route led southward past Smolensk. I could no longer hope to be able to visit the town a fourth time. I regretted my laziness that had prevented me from looking around properly on my previous visits. I would never again be able to wander up to the cathedral of the Assumption of Mary, and I would never again be able to sit down against the eastward-facing fortifications of Boris Godunov. That was something which I had always intended to do, inspired by Napoleon’s equerry Coulaincourt. Then I should have wanted to look down upon the burning city, just as a Wurttemberg artillery major had looked, in 1812, from the walls of the fortifications. He had seen and drawn it with the mighty towers and delicate battlements. Whoever holds Smolensk holds Russia, was how the saying had gone in those days. Then the city had been alternately Russian, Lithuanian, Polish, and Russian again. To draw lessons from history was not for me at my age. That the fortunes of war had changed was something that I would not have been able to judge.

On the night of 25 September we moved through Monastyrschtschina. Here and there a house was on fire and in the light of the fire could be seen a former church and many clean little wooden houses. On the western edge of the little town we stopped for a short while. There I took over command of the 3rd Company. It too was then only 28 men strong. The 1st Battalion, to which the company belonged, was under the command of Hauptmann Beyer who in summer 1942 had been my company commander.

Beyer was determined to let the exhausted men of his battalion sleep for the rest of that night. For weeks they had only had on average two to three hours of sleep. Even then all that could be expected was scarcely likely to be more than four hours. The next village, Worpajewo, was our destination. Each of the weak companies took a card, and the men, who were dead tired, immediately fell to the ground. The company commanders still had to go off for a meeting at the battalion. They were told that the withdrawal was continuing and they would be moving off again in the early morning.

The meeting was interrupted by a Feldwebel who had gone down a little way towards the village in order to ‘organise things’. God knows what the man had hoped to find. In any event he reported that out of the darkness he had been greeted with a shout of Stoj, whereupon he had withdrawn. This was obviously a damned nuisance to Hauptmann Beyer, because he said in his dry, Berlin way: ‘Oh, get away with you, man, they were volunteers whose nags had bolted, stop the bother’. None of those present could bring themselves to contradict him. They did not want to disturb the longed-for peace and quiet. I assigned the watches and lay down with my men on the flat tiled floor, my head in the hollow of my steel helmet.

At 3.30am, the time we were ordered, the battalion assembled on the village street, the companies in ranks, one behind another. We were not even out of the woods when shots whipped along the village street. Men were falling, others were crying out. Panic took hold of the mass of men, who were still drowsy with sleep. Everybody was running and no one was listening to my command. As I ran I snatched a machine-gun belt from the ground and hung it round my neck like a scarf. During the one kilometre flight I turned round several times and saw some cavalry and infantry, perhaps dismounted Cossacks. It was incredible that a handful of enemy had actually put us to flight. But still there was no stopping. Some swine of a machine-gunner had dropped the belt that I was then carrying round my neck. Another whom I overtook, I caught throwing away a box of ammunition. ‘You lousy sod’, I bawled at him and gave him a kick in his behind. When he picked the box up again, I kept him with me with the intention of getting hold of a machine-gun. But still the mass of men had not been brought to a halt. I saw the battalion medical officer, Dr Kolb, shot down as he was struggling to bring a machine-gun into position.

A quiet unheroic man had done what it was our job, the troop officers, to do. Violent rage seized me. Finally I managed to get hold of a machine-gun and the two gunners. I snapped at them, ‘We three are now staying here, even if we have to die here. Do you understand?’ Jawohl, Herr Leutnant, they answered, shocked. Behind a low rise in the ground we went into position. With a few spadefuls the machine-gun position was improved and a small amount of cover was produced. In the complete calm that then gripped them, the two machine-gunners carried out their well-drilled handling of the weapon. The Russians were leaving some time before they followed up. The last stragglers of the battalion passed, then the first gunner let fly with his first bursts of fire. The Ivans went to ground and disappeared behind undulations in the ground. Fifteen minutes later the formation of the battalion was re-established. Hauptmann Beyer had had a line drawn up. When at last the first machine-gun began to chatter behind us we three were able, alternately running and jumping, to withdraw to the battalion line.

A MG 42 and 15 men were all that was then left of my company. We crossed the highway from Smolensk, and the anti-tank ditches that ran to the west of it. In the next village my company and I had to remain behind another two hours, as a rearguard, until 2pm. On both sides of the village and the road along which we were withdrawing was open steppe. Whether and where there were rearguards was unknown. In front of the two houses right and left of the village street at the outskirts of the village I had a start made on digging foxholes. The comrades were not so keen on digging and said that we would have to weather out the two hours over midday. I gave way to them and we left it alone.

For an hour everything remained quiet and no enemy showed themselves. A man kept a look-out, while I sat with some others on the bench in front of the house. The sun was shining and the autumn sky was a cloudless blue. In that contemplative position I stretched out my legs in front of me, pushed my hands into my trouser pockets, and nodded off. Out of a deep sleep of only a few minutes, I was wakened by shots. The sentry ran up and made his report. From the hollow with the anti-tank ditches at the side of the highway, he said that cavalry had appeared. They had turned round when he fired on them and disappeared back into the trenches. The tense waiting and watching lasted about a quarter of an hour, until the cavalry once more came out of the hollow. They were wearing brown Russian uniforms, but with square caps on their heads. First there were 10, then 20, and then more and more, all forming up into a front, and at a gallop storming up to our village.

It must have been a squadron of about a hundred coming closer and closer. The anachronistic picture fascinated and hypnotised me. The last time that cavalry had attacked was the Polish cavalry in the Poland campaign. But in seconds I was awake and gave my order. It could only be to fire at will. They had already approached to within 300 metres of us when from the right flank, apparently from a neighbouring village, the flak of an unknown unit opened fire. While at first only individual horses reared and only a few cavalrymen fell, our rifle fire too was then beginning to hit. The remnants of the hundred or so drove down on us in a confused tangle. We had climbed out of the foxholes and were firing at will into the mass of them.

The attack collapsed, and soon riderless horses were chasing over the field. Some cavalrymen managed to turn round and to reach the hollow. Dismounted wounded Cossacks dragged themselves back. Injured horses were lying on the ground and thrashing about, whinnying. Because we had to save ammunition, we ceased fire, and fired no more after the stricken cavalrymen. The main responsibility for our success doubtless belonged to that flak unit. It certainly had rescued us from an uncertain fate. But the episode reminded me of those Cossacks, who with their skirmishing, wore down Napoleon’s Grande Armee on the retreat from Moscow.

Soon after we had evacuated the village as ordered, we passed a herd of cattle. While the animals were grazing on unsuspectingly, the machine-gunner let fly some bullets into the herd. It followed the order that nothing that could sustain life was allowed to fall into enemy hands. Anywhere that could be used for accommodation was to be burnt. Food, weapons, and equipment were to be destroyed, under the name of ‘scorched earth’. That followed the example set by the enemy in 1941.

I was back once again with the unit. After a fortnight during which I had my boots on day and night, my feet were so swollen that I was not able to get the boots off. I had ordered that the Kuchenbulle should bring me a pair of rubber boots and footcloths with the food vehicle. When he brought what I had asked for, the operation could begin. I had feared that the boots would have to be cut off, but things went well. Four men got hold of me, two of them pulled at a boot each and two of them held me by my shoulders and arms. As if they had wanted to pull me into four, they pulled me apart in opposite directions. But it worked, and my swollen filthy limbs were free.

Meanwhile, the autumn had begun. The so-called mud period was imminent. If it was not raining, the days were still hot, but during the night the temperature fell by 20 degrees. We were freezing, and the ‘oldies’ were no longer so easily dried. To warm ourselves we hoped for burning villages. Units operating in the rear saw that the villages to be evacuated were burnt to the ground. Night after night was bright. From the glare of burning settlements we would have been able to recognise our direction of march, even if we had not ourselves possessed maps and compasses. It seemed remarkable that the earth on the road along which we were retreating was burnt. It was not as if we had burned our bridges behind us.

I remember stopping one night in a burning village. While we waited in front of the fire, we dried our feet in the warmth of the glow, and rubbed our hands as a kind of recuperation. It seemed as if a watch fire of Prinz Eugen was warming us and illuminating the scene. For a short time we behaved as if the enemy were not already close behind us. We fancied ourselves in peace and security. All that remained of the entire battalion, officers and men, stood around the burning beams. We stared into the glowing element, smoked, drank schnapps or tea from our field flasks, chatted, or reflected on our forthcoming departure. Wood and straw crackled and the horses of other units snorted uneasily. In the warm air from the fire you breathed in the musty smell of old wood and rotten straw. Only the lime oven with the chimney resisted the fire.

It did not yet rain for days and nights on end, but in fits and starts, and for only hours at a time. But that was enough to swell the streams. Where otherwise the water might have reached to our ankles, we had to wade through fords up to our knees, or up to our bellies. In the twilight I observed a battery crossing. The path led steeply down to the water and just as steeply back up again on the other side. It was time for the gunners to get their horses to give it all they had. With Karacho, as we said at the time, the team of six stormed up the stony path. ‘Gallop!’ was the command. The gunners in the saddle hit at the horses, and those who were sitting on the gun-carriage clung to each other. While the rain spattered on the water of the swollen stream, the dauntless animals dragged the teams with the howitzers through it and up the slope on the other side. It was a kaleidoscope of power and movement that an artist might have been able to fix on paper.

A new platoon leader joined our company for 48 hours. Leutnant Bertram, who was about 40 years old, was a ‘12-ender’, recognisable by the two blue bands. He had only recently been caught by the Heldenklau. That was what the commissions were called who were combing through the home front troops to find men who were capable of serving at the front. He had served in General Meltzer’s company when Meltzer was still a Hauptmann in the 100,000-man Army. But then that was no use to him. His parade-ground snappishness, his dreadful Saxon and his clear air of anxiety cheered us up. As suddenly as he had come he disappeared again for no apparent reason. At that time it was said that the life expectancy of an infantry lieutenant, that is, the time in which he could expect to remain with his unit without being wounded, amounted to 13 days. Leutnant Bertram’s life expectancy had therefore been significantly shorter.

On the evening of 30 September we crossed the Dnieper, which in its upper reaches was a modest river. I climbed down the bank, thirsty. I scooped some up with the hollow of my hand. I had drunk water that tasted of the earth. On the western steeply climbing bank we found a position ready constructed. It proved to be a considerable disadvantage that the trenches ran at a point half way up the incline. There it had been hoped to stabilise the front. The trenches had been drawn in such a way, that blind corners were avoided in the field of fire in front of the position. When we evacuated it in the afternoon the disadvantage of the position became apparent. The enemy had already occupied the opposite bank and had brought some Ratschbums into position. With them they could fire almost directly down into our trench, which we would immediately have to evacuate again. It was a strenuous and exciting operation, to rush uphill in the trench accompanied by the impacts of that unsavoury weapon.

After we reached the top the reason for the sudden order to evacuate became apparent. On the left, to our rear, there were already Russians whom we could see advancing to a bridge. That bridge led over a tributary stream and also had to be crossed by us. As we realised the situation, we ran at the same time as the enemy, racing to see who could reach the bridge first. If the Russians had simply opened fire on us, we would have not reached the bridge alive. But since the enemy did not fire I did not take the trouble to bring the men to a halt. After the experiences of Woropajewo, I thought that to construct the security position on the other side of the bridge would be hard enough in itself. In the event I succeeded, but only with difficulty. My voice was hoarse from shouting commands, and cursing those running away. A portly Obergefreiter claimed he had a bad heart and had to go back. I answered him that he should not be running and had all the more reason to stay where he was, rather than go into the position. Then, when the pursuing Russians received our first aimed rifle fire, they gave up their pursuit and we had quiet until the evening.

During the night we retreated further. The company had loaded its goods on to a horse-drawn vehicle. Machine-guns, ammunition, blankets, and a couple of men with bad feet were loaded on one wagon as they had on previous nights. The little animal, in itself tough and more efficient than our thoroughbred army horses, was nevertheless at the end of its strength. Through deep mud and over bumpy ‘corduroy’ roads it pulled with its last ounce of exertion, urged on by cries, and beaten on by blows from sticks. Then it stopped with quivering flanks and collapsed on its knees. But the Landser, whose load he was helping to carry, did not give up. While one of them spoke to the animal lovingly and kindly in German and Russian, the other was already holding a stick ready to drive it on again. They continued until the horse once again moved forward with the courage and the power of desperation.

Then the nag collapsed again, for good, out of sheer exhaustion. The men began to curse and it took a long time until weapons and equipment were unloaded. When, years later, I read Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’, when I was reading of Raskolnikov’s dream I had to think of that image. The devastated Nikolka with blood-rimmed eyes swings the jemmy over his horse, breaking out into the cry of ‘It is my property, it is my property’.

My voice had become so hoarse that it was hard to make myself understood. It was the result of continually shouting out orders. For the longer my voice lasted the less the runners needed to run. Marches went on throughout the night, often as much as 30 kilometres. That meant even further for the runners, for in addition to the march that the unit had to make they had to cover even more ground in carrying messages. At the start of a march people still carried on conversations, but gradually the men fell silent, silent as the night.

At that time I was proud of the state of my feet. They showed no blisters or bruising and had nowhere been rubbed raw. To a certain extent I was an infantryman from the top of my head to the soles of my feet. In fact the soles of my feet were even more important than the top of my head. To the difficulties of the marches was added hunger. At one time it happened that for two days and two nights the field kitchen had not come forward. The baggage-trains lay too far to the rear so that in the heat of the day, and as a result of the long transport distances the food became sour. The bread and the Schmiere, proper margarine, had run out. The ‘iron rations’, a small tin of fatty meat and a little pack of hard tack, were not allowed to be touched. That would only have been allowed in difficult situations. In the villages, in so far as they were not already on fire or had already burnt down, there was nothing to find. The poor inhabitants had nothing to leave. One morning, one bright spark found some beehives. The company, that is we 20 men, licked and slurped with our bare hands at the sticky sweet mass. The powerful bitterness penetrated into your teeth and at first made your empty stomach want to throw up. At other times I can recall myself beside fences on which tomato plants were hanging. The tomatoes were green showing no red at all. We ate gherkins and kohlrabi raw, and hardly cleaned of earth, without ever the dreaded ‘shits’ setting in.

One day the men had sorted out for me a ‘beast of burden’. The ‘beast’ had a string as reins, but neither halter, bridle nor saddle. At first it quite docilely let me get on to it and with one jump I was up. At that time the battalion was marching in ranks through the night. To sit comfortably on the smooth horse’s back and to be carried by it was an almost uncanny feeling. But my satisfaction only lasted until we reached the next village. As I was riding past one of the burning houses, a glowing beam fell down and sparks flew up. My horse took fright, gave a jerk and bolted with me. It charged off at a gallop. I passed other fires and passed the long ranks of the battalion, marching slowly one behind the other. I was not able to subdue the nag and losing my balance came off its back. Slipping to the left I was simply unable to let go of the string that served as reins. With my right foot I hung over the crupper and held myself under the horse’s neck as it raced through the village with me. Then it calmed down or else the load on its neck had become too heavy. Snorting, it finally stopped, was calm again and let me remount as if nothing had happened. But the involuntary and dangerous comedy of my situation had a cheering effect, and the good-natured ribbing that I received did not upset me.

On 4 October, word came that we were reaching the final line and the withdrawal was completed. That news gave new life to our tired bodies and spirits. The battalion commander announced that the new position was well constructed and that the field kitchens were waiting with masses of food. Front-line combat packs and fresh lice-free underwear were to be issued. There were also additional rations and a few sweets. Still more important were the announcements that there were replacements for the company. We would once again be topped up to full company strength.

Two kilometres from the new main line of resistance there lay in our sector the little village of Puply. Because it could offer accommodation to the enemy and could affect our line of sight and field of fire, military necessity required that it should be destroyed. Such unchivalrous business had not, until then, been part of our war. But where was there room for chivalry in that war? My company was ordered to set fire to the houses on the right-hand side of the street. There, in the vicinity of Smolensk and the Bolschaja, the highway, the little wooden houses showed more signs of civilisation then we had seen until then. It was evident that we were close to the city, as indicated by a brass bedstead that I saw in one house.

Apart from a few old people, the inhabitants had left the village. Tears were running over the lined faces of those who had stayed behind. An absolutely ancient man, who had recognised me as an officer, raised his hands. He moaned, and asked me to spare the house in which he had lived all his life and where he wanted to die. The old man moved me. It was strange that intensive propaganda, and the manifold impressions of the ruthlessness of that campaign, had not been able completely to suppress sheer human sensitivity. I struggled with my feelings of duty, and was relieved that my men sympathised with me when I ordered them to spare the house of the old man.

My company went forward and set fire to the next wooden house with a bundle of straw. The old man tried to kiss my hands, and wished me a long life. Waving away his thanks, I stressed to him that he should take care that the flames did not spring from the neighbouring house on to his. If among the men there had been a ‘bigwig’ or a ‘fanatic’ I would have risked a court martial on account of that old Russian. But there were none of that kind among us. Once a man was among frontline soldiers, he soon relearned his true values.

In the evening we moved in to the new position. The company sector was well located. The position, on a low slope, had a good field of fire and line of sight over a depression in the ground. On the other side the terrain climbed again, flat, towards the smouldering village. Whether the old man’s house had remained intact could not be seen because of the smoke and the trees that were still in leaf. To a certain extent the trenches were reasonably well constructed, but in numerous places really flat. There had not been enough time to construct bunkers such as we had been accustomed to in our trench warfare. Nevertheless we found some quite large holes in the ground, about the length of a man and 150 centimetres deep. Many had been covered with a thin layer of wooden beams. I set up my command post in such a ‘hole’. In it there was room for three men. A couple of arms full of hay saw to it that there was a bit of warmth in the early autumn nights that were becoming chilly.

The field kitchen had actually arrived. There were gigantic portions of warm Leberwurst with Stampfkartoffeln. Since the amount of rations in combat did not match the current complement of the unit, the portions for dead and wounded comrades were given to the living. That had less of an effect in the case of food, as in any case you could not eat more then your fill. But in the case of schnapps, tobacco, and frontline combat packs those who remained enjoyed the extra. Not a few fathers of families sent home their surplus food. I sent a parcel of it to my nine years old sister Liesl.

It was a special blessing that the field post was then distributed. During the withdrawal it had not reached us. Within three days I received 25 letters. On 8 October I was able to reply to five letters from my Mother. In that letter I wrote that the physical exertions were soon likely to be at an end. But we were still living without any extras. For four weeks I had not been able to wash, shave, or clean my teeth.

Replacements had also arrived. To my surprise, among them there were men from Lorraine and Luxembourg. Their homeland was then part of the Reich and they had become eligible for military service. They did not seem too enthusiastic. Most of them seemed anxious and were obviously badly trained. A tall blond man from Düdeling made an optimistic impression and found his feet straight away. On the other hand it seemed that during the night another Unteroffizier had disappeared. No one had seen him go and nowhere had he given any hint of leaving. Kaczmarek, an Upper Silesian who was about 40 years old, spoke Polish and Russian well and had only been a few weeks at the front. Otherwise he had always been with the baggage-trains. It was painful for me to realise that the man must have gone over to the enemy.

In the early morning of 5 October, I was wakened by the rattle of our MG 42s and the clear sound of Russian machine-pistols. With my two runners I jumped up to the main trench. A Fahnenjunker came running to meet me with the words ‘the Ivans are here’! I took him by his lapels, said that he should come with me, and hurried on. In the trench there lay a dead Russian. With my machine-pistol drawn I felt my way around the corners of the trench, the runners behind me. One of the runners shouted ‘there they go’! We had come a little too late to repulse the assault unit. Our reliable Feldwebel Geissel had been there before us.

The last two Ivans fled, then collapsed under our rifle fire in the area between the lines. Two gave themselves up. Three lay dead in the trench, among them the leader, a junior lieutenant. We examined his papers. The newcomers to my unit, who had not yet seen any dead Russians, approached the bodies with curiosity. They were surprised at the primitive nature of the Russians’ equipment. We ‘oldies’ were surprised by the oversized officers’ epaulettes that the junior lieutenant was wearing. The previous year they had not had those historic Russian insignia of rank. But by then the ‘Great Patriotic War’ declared by Stalin had begun. By then it was no longer the workers’ Fatherland, but Mother Russia who was in danger, and who had called her sons.

In the meantime, Oberstleutnant Dorn had relieved Nowak in 3rd Battalion, and had taken over command of the regiment. In the evening he inspected the sector and received reports about the morning visit of the enemy. It is true that he did not call me Bubi, as Nowak had done in the summer, but like Nowak he was really paternal. On his belt buckle he had a field flask dangling from which he offered us drinks. It was good warming cognac.

The hope for a period of rest in the Puply sector had proved impossible. On the night of 12 October we had been relieved and had moved into the baggage-train village some 10 kilometres away. Until midday we had been able to sleep without the disturbing influence of the enemy. Transport, on lorries northwards to the ‘taxiway’, was planned for the afternoon. There, one of the combat actions was underway. In the history of the war in Russia, they were called the ‘Smolensk highway battles’. The Russians had continued to attack and had made critical breakthroughs.

We spent the night of 13 October in the village of Lenino. The company had been topped up to 70 men and I had found them quarters in two rooms of a Russian house. The conditions were dreadfully cramped. The only way get some sleep was side by side, all huddled in one direction. It was impossible to turn over, because the whole chain would have become tangled up. The stench, the cramped conditions, and the lice saw to it that our rest did not develop into a recuperative sleep. Again and again a man would start up, tormented by lice. Then, in addition, there was an ‘owl’ in the night. It was a Soviet biplane, well-known to us from our trench warfare. Since my night ride in Jelnja I was sensitive to that aircraft, so there was to be no hope of falling asleep. In actual fact the ‘owl’ did drop some shrapnel bombs. One of them, a dud, stuck in the thick thatch of our house. There would have been a bloodbath if that bomb had exploded.

During that day Leutnant Rauprich, my acquaintance from the trench construction staff, came past with his battery. I stopped him and asked how the situation was going. He said that the artillery commander had ordered his regiment to take up preventative firing positions. Rauprich also had some other bits of news. He said the third Smolensk highway battle was underway. Not far from there the Polish Division Thaddeusz Sikorsky had been sent into action, and also Soviet female units. He said that he himself had seen female prisoners of war. Rauprich was not surprised that the Russians were able to stand the tempo of their advance, but at the same time were carrying out offensive battles. He also told me that, as the result of a shortage of transport, the enemy was having containers of petrol rolled westwards, on the highways, by women, children, and old men.

As dusk fell, I moved forward as ordered with my company. It was necessary to form a kind of second line behind the point where a breakthrough had been made. We dug our foxholes and the men fetched hay and straw so that the foxholes could be made warmer and softer. Though at that season the sun could still shine strongly by day, the nights were already getting cold. In the meantime, from the baggage-train we had received overcoats. We could not take off our overcoats during the day. Where could we infantrymen have put them! Therefore we were exposed, in the same clothing, to a difference in temperature of 20 degrees.

It must have been three kilometres to the main line of resistance. From the front line there rang out now and again the sound of artillery fire and the impact of shells as well as the sound of some infantry fire. Knee to knee I crouched with my runner in our two-man hole. We were freezing and could not get to sleep. At 10pm a battalion runner took me to the command post of the local unit, where our staff was already located. Freezing and swearing, I followed him.

Hauptmann Beyer had taken over command of a battalion of our sister regiment 461. So I was received by the new commander, Major Brauer. He had just come from Norway. He had taken part in the First World War, had no experience of the Eastern Front, and seemed anxious and awkward. In actual fact, the battalion was being run by the Adjutant, Leutnant Buksch. I was ordered to bring the company forward immediately in order to clean up the breakthrough area. It was about 220 metres wide and 100 metres deep, at the centre of which was a cemetery. With my company, and supported by three assault guns, I had to mount a frontal attack. From right and left assault troops of the 1st and 2nd companies were to move up the main trench. From 10.35pm to 10.40pm the artillery was to lay destructive fire on the area of the breakthrough. Then my company, with the assault guns, had to work its way forward as close as possible.

With a Leutnant of the unit in whose sector the breakthrough had taken place, I gave notice of my departure. The Leutnant went ahead in order to brief us. In ranks separated by intervals of five paces the company moved forward. I wanted to attack in two wedges. One was to be led by me, and the other by Geissler. That arrangement was necessary because in the darkness of the night I would not had been able to view the entire sector and so I relied on Geissler. Meanwhile, time had moved on, and from behind us the dull roaring of the assault guns could be heard. 300 metres separated us from the place where the breakthrough had taken place. It was the target of our attack. The Leutnant from the other company set off, after another handshake. He pointed me in the direction of the cemetery of Asowowo.

It was time to brief the section leaders. With lowered voices, as if the enemy were already in earshot, they passed on the orders. Then the barrage began. ‘Section by section’, that is, salvo by salvo, our heavy and light artillery struck where the cemetery must be. The assault guns rolled up with the grinding sound of their engines. We pulled in our heads and ducked under the trajectory of the howling shells. Then we pushed up to the place where the breakthrough had occurred. During the five minutes of our own barrage we had approached to within 100 metres. At the end of that time the enemy barrage began. We then lay in the hail of shells from their artillery, the Ratschbums and above all the mortars. The Russians fired one flare after the other.

The terrain, which until then had been in dull moonlight, was bathed in the distorting glare of magnesium. The men had already clustered like grapes around the assault guns. They believed that behind them they were safe from shrapnel and shot. But then it was a matter of taking cover and working our way forward, metre by metre, and from crater to crater. During the preparatory barrage by our heavy weapons we had got to within 100 metres. It seemed an eternity since the assault guns had stopped. The enemy defensive fire continued undiminished. The earth seemed to be being ploughed up by it. In the light of the flares could be seen the crosses, and the mounds of graves. Among them were figures like ghosts, who fired their machine-pistols upon us. They were the attackers. The high ‘barking’ of their fire again and again broke through the thunder of the heavy impacts.

In this inferno I was compelled to come to a decision. 50 metres still separated me from the cemetery. Our attack was still under way and the men were on the move. I did not know how many men there still were. My orders were to clean out the area of breakthrough. Only one last decisive leap separated me from my goal. Should I, this close to the goal, give the order to withdraw? That order would cost just as many sacrifices as the attack. I decided to carry on. It only needed one more dash forwards. I jumped up and cried ‘Hurrah’! Still shouting ‘Hurrah’! I sprang forwards without knowing how many of my comrades would follow my lead.

A stabbing pain in my body caused me to fall in the crater. 20 metres in front of me I had seen an enemy aiming at me with a machine-pistol. If his shot had not stopped me, I would certainly have run on like a madman. Then the Russian threw a hand-grenade after me. It exploded on the edge of the crater in which I was crouching. Earth crumbled down upon me. I had to go back, twisting and rolling. Then I raced and limped, bent and ducking, from crater to crater. I heard a piece of shrapnel whizz up. It tore my cheek open. It was already flying too slowly to be able to hurt me seriously. My right eye could have copped it, but the splinter penetrated the flesh a little bit below.

The attack had been repulsed and the enemy were firing no more flares. In the pale moonlight while I jumped from crater to crater I kept my eyes open for the remnants of my company. As well as dead men I saw wounded men curled up in craters or crawling back. In twos and threes some of them crouched under cover and joined together. ‘Herr Leutnant’, one of them called to me. I pressed my hand on my burning stomach and decided that I must only be slightly wounded. ‘Herr Leutnant, over here!’ I was called again. While I was listening for the voice and moving in its direction, I was brought down by another bullet. I slid into the nearest crater. Wailing voices were calling for the medics. The enemy was still maintaining barrage fire. I had no time to check on my third wound. I only felt relieved that it too could not be serious.

As I pressed myself against the edge of the crater, a mortar shell burst very close to my cover. A man dived into the crater howling with pain. His voice I recognised as that of the man who was crying out earlier, an old Obergefreiter. ‘I’ve lost my hand’, he groaned. I saw it dangling in his glove. Groaning, he asked me to open his belt buckle. My hand felt over his body. As I was groping for the buckle, I was seized with horror. I felt the warm soft flesh of his intestines. My hand went into his belly. It was torn open across the width of his body. ‘I’ll go and fetch the medic’, I said to him, knowing he was beyond help. But I could not just go and leave him to die alone. After all, he had followed my orders.

Minutes passed. It seemed like an eternity, although it was not long after midnight. The seriously wounded Obergefreiter had become still and his breath was coming in gasps. I saw the white of his eyes glistening and felt his sound hand feeling for mine. Then a sigh was wrung out of the dying man. ‘Ah, Herr Leutnant’, he said. His head fell to one side. Again, I was shaken by a feeling of horror. Finally, I made off from crater to crater.

At the unit dressing station I found half of my company. Only 15 men out of 70 had remained unwounded. 20 must have been killed. I myself had been incredibly lucky. The first shot had clipped the surface of my stomach in two places. The second had neatly gone between two ribs over the spleen. I just about managed to walk unaided, with my upper-body bent forward. The wounded were driven back on the assault guns. I was lifted on, with Feldwebel Geissler, whose forearm had been lacerated by an explosive shell. At the regiment we were unloaded into Sankas, the medical motor vehicles that took us to the railway at Gorky. There a hospital train was standing ready. I had found time to report to the commander over the failed operation. I learned that the 1st and 2nd companies had not reached the trenches of the main line of resistance. Oberstleutnant Dorn shook his head sadly over the badly prepared and precipitate adventure. It had been taken out of his hands as a commander. The battalion had been put under the command of the second unit.

I can still remember the feeling of indescribable relief as I lay in the moving hospital train. The train’s destination was Vilna, and was reached via Minsk. During the journey I looked out through the porthole of the wagon, a converted cattle truck. I saw an unforgettable picture. From the West shone the setting sun. In its reddish light lay a broad land, with no houses, no trees, no bushes. On the northern horizon there was the wall of a thunderstorm, blackish violet. In front of it, lonely and distant, there rested a whitewashed stone church.

I wrote home about my two shots in the stomach and that I did not expect a lengthy stay in hospital. But after 10 days, the wound made by the shot in my stomach had become inflamed and had to be operated on. The surgeon was a staff medical officer of about middle age, red-haired, small and compact. He made fun of my officer’s ‘snappishness’, as I woke from the effects of the ether. Still under its influence, I rambled on about how nice it had been to pass, fully conscious, into unconsciousness. All responsibility was taken from me, and all thoughts of duty and compulsion fell away. The sceptical expression on the surgeon’s face told me that he did not know what I was talking about. He probably had no idea of the burden of responsibility placed on the shoulders of a 19 years old company commander. After leaving the operating table, I said ‘thank you, sir’, as was appropriate. But he was none the wiser. ‘Don’t mention it, my boy’, was his answer in reply to the thanks which I had meant so seriously.

The military hospital was in a convent hospital, an old building with thick walls. I have a fleeting recollection of Halina, a Polish medical student, who was on duty during the day. On the other hand I can still clearly picture the night sister with whom I had conversations every evening. She was a 70 years old nun, who ‘belonged to the House’. She was a cultured lady from the Polish nobility, and a widow of 44 years. In fluent German she told me, her interested listener, of her short youth, long ago. She had lived in Warsaw and had stayed in Paris and London. For years she had done only night duty. Perhaps, in that way, she felt closer to the ‘eternal night’. Every day an eleven years old girl came into the hospital selling newspapers. The child was obviously undernourished. Somehow she affected all the comrades in the room. We joined ourselves together into a ‘benevolent society’ for her family by always paying ten or twenty times too much for her 10-pfennig newspapers. Her eyes shone with thanks. On 3 November when we were loaded up into Sankas and driven to the station, ‘our’ little girl waved after us for a long time.

To my delight, the hospital train travelled to Wernigerode in the Harz, a lovely spa town. In its situation, and because of the Harz landscape, it reminded me of Sonneberg and the Thuringian Forrest. On the way, some of the wounded were unloaded in Halberstadt. I have no recollection of the town, but I certainly do recollect that a Gigant flew over it. That was the Wehrmacht’s new large transport aircraft. A tank or a whole company of soldiers could be transported in it. The gigantic plane with its six engines, three on each wing, made a lasting impression on us wounded men, particularly because of the noise it made. It seemed to us to be a sign that the power of the Reich was anything but broken.

Wernigerode was the earlier residence of Prinz Stolberg-Wernigerode. His great castle was situated above the town and towered over it. Noble hotels and old half-timbered houses were characteristic of the town. It was a home to a series of sanatoria, into one of which I was sent. It was the house called ‘Dr Kaienburg’. Evidently it was named after a doctor, but was run by his widow. In it 20 officers were accommodated whose wounds were not particularly serious and who were all capable of walking. The doctor came every day on his rounds from a military hospital. A full sanatorium regime prevailed. To me it was an unaccustomed ‘feudal’ environment. There was a radio in the room, a balcony with a view on to the Brocken, and billiards in the billiard hall. The food was good, but there were ‘only a few cigarettes’, I complained in a letter to Father.

Of my officer comrades, of all ages, I still remember three. My room-mate was an Augsburg clergyman’s son Leutnant Uttmann. After me he was the youngest. A cavalry Oberleutnant of the Bamberg cavalry was Herr Langen from Munich. He was from the publishing family ‘Langen and Müller’, and very cultivated. A friendly man was the reserve Oberleutnant Dr Wutzl. He was a German scholar and an art historian. He was from the 45th Infantry Division, the Linz Division. He later received the Knight’s Cross and after the war was a Hofrat in the office of the Austrian provincial government.

To get from the sanatorium into the town, we travelled one stop on the Brocken railway, a narrow-gauge railway. It travelled from the Wernigerode main station to the Brocken, the highest mountain in the Harz. We often went to the café in the afternoon or evening. Once we even went up the Brocken thinking, as we did so, of Goethe’s Faust and the witches on the Blocksberg. In a letter of 5 December, from Wernigerode to Father, I note that I had been at home in Stockerau on a short special leave. I told him of a fine performance of La Traviata in the State Opera. However, I added that the only problem was that the tenor had been rotten, ‘as is almost always the case in Vienna’.

But I did not like at all what was going on around my family at home. I liked it so little that I often said ‘you would really like to punch them’. It was the moaners on the home front that I cursed in a Christmas letter to Rudi. ‘Their ‘lordships’ do not deserve the sacrifices made at the front’, I wrote. ‘It has the effect of throwing me into a screaming rage! Then I begin to mock them. So I get dreadfully on the nerves of many people, especially girls!’

I told Rudi that I had been together a lot with two of his classmates, Egon Papritz, nicknamed Kitty, but who was later killed. The other was Ernst Vogl, nicknamed Avis. After the war he became a factory owner and a well-known contemporary composer. With those two friends I joined in one evening in a poker game. But I was a beginner! In fact I gambled so badly that at the end of the evening I had lost an entire month’s salary. The main complaint of my letter was about the fact that my girl was ‘not there for me’. I closed the letter asking when we would see each other again, ‘because I had the feeling that the war would only last another year at most – God willing’.

In Wernigerode I had another letter from the company clerk, Unteroffizier Wolf. In it he told me about what had happened to my company after I left. Wolf wrote that, in accordance with my letter, the recommendations had been made for decorations for the men, namely the two medics. In the barrage fire in front of the cemetery at Asorowo they had heroically done their duty. It was the chaplain, Unteroffizier Jaschek, whom I had put in for the Iron Cross First Class, and Obergefreiter Beuleke whom I had recommended for the Iron Cross Second Class. Wolf continued: