SS Charlemagne

Chapter Three Withdrawal

The Charlemagne‘s 15th rail transport, under the command of Captain Bassompierre, arrived at Neustettin at noon on the 26th with several other officers, bringing with them some of the guns of the artillery group from Bohemia-Moravia, and Second-Lieutenant Fayard’s Flak Company from Bachrain.

Unloading was still in progress when Soviet aircraft attacked Neustettin railway station. Within 4 minutes the flak had set up its guns and set a biplane on fire, which discouraged the rest. The unloading of the artillery having been completed under the orders of Second-Lieutenant Daffas, the empty train was soon occupied by retreating German units. Then at 1800 hours, German Captain Roeming’s armoured train arrived at the station.

As a result of the events of the previous day, the Charlemagne was now re-allocated to General von Tettau’s corps on the 3rd Panzer Army’s eastern wing.

At about 0100 hours orders were given to embark all the artillery pieces on a train leaving for Belgard, where the Division was to regroup. The 15th SS-Latvian Division as rearguard had been forced back and an incursion by enemy tanks were feared. In fact, the alarm went off at 0300 hours and one could hear the roar of engines and tank tracks. Fortunately, under cover provided by the armoured train from behind the station, the guns were loaded on the available wagons and just as the enemy was launching his first attack at about 0700 hours, the armoured train hitched up the wagons and eventually reached Kolberg via Bublitz and Köslin.

At the same time, as planned, the first elements of the Charlemagne left the barracks, while the panic-stricken civilian population only began leaving just as the first Russian tanks started surrounding Neustettin from the north, cutting the railway line to Kolberg and threatening to turn the retreat into a disaster. The troops had less than an hour in which to winkle their way out. Fortunately, the enemy was none too keen from the beginning and failed to exploit the error of having two regiments concentrated into such a little area.

There was still no news of SS-Major-General Krukenberg, who had been cut off from the bulk of the Division since before Elsenau.

Towards 0800 hours the last units prepared to leave in their turn after the rest of the column, just as Colonel Kropp, the Fortress Commandant of Neustettin and charged with the defence of the town with elements of the Pommern Division of General von Tettau’s corps, came to ask Brigadier Puaud to provide him with a battalion to assist him control the town until evening so as to hold back the enemy to enable the civilian population and those units not engaged to retire. But his constituent battalions had already left, and Brigadier Puaud only had with him some of his headquarters staff, so he gave his liaison officer, Lieutenant Auphan, the task of quickly forming an emergency march battalion from the last units in the column to hold back the enemy and allow the Division to take the field.

In fact, during the early morning, the lights and sounds of fighting coming from northeast of the town could already be distinguished, giving the impression of a more daring approach by the enemy on the bulk of the Division.

Lieutenant Auphan’s improvised march battalion consisted of Second-Lieutenant Fayard’s Flak Company, which had been surprised by the Russian attack as it finished loading its guns on wagons at the station, and had since been employed as infantry, together with the 58th Regiment’s 9th (Tank-Hunting) Company under Sergeant-Major Girard, and Lieutenant Tardan’s 4th Company of the same regiment. These last two units were exhausted from the previous fighting, but there was no other solution. The battalion thus consisted of 3 officers and about 250 men.

Having assessed the situation regarding the Flak Company and established liaison to right and left with the two Wehrmacht battalions between which the French were to be inserted, and having reconnoitred the 1,200m sector assigned to him, Lieutenant Auphan decided that the position could be held by two companies, the Flak in the north and the 4th Company in the south, both companies being reinforced by two sections of tank-hunters armed with Panzerfausts. This deployment would enable him to keep a little reserve of about one-and-a-half sections.

Lieutenant Auphan then ordered the 4th Company, which was deployed near the barracks close to the town’s western exit, to withdraw to the Flak Company’s position on the flank, where it was engaged outside the artillery barracks. When Lieutenant Tardan rejoined Second-Lieutenant Fayard, the latter was having great trouble avoiding enemy fire with the last of his men. By this time the Flak Company had already lost 40 of its 130 effectives. The two companies then occupied the prescribed position in the centre of the deployment.

However, the Russian tanks, stopped about 400m from the town, were covering the anti-tank positions with their fire. It was not until about 2030 hours that aircraft bombed the town and the Russians attempted to infiltrate it. In spite of support from aircraft, artillery and mortars, the Russians were unable to make any progress. The Russian tanks were stopped by the barricades and their infantry infiltrating through the gardens came under murderous fire from riflemen posted on the roofs, in the windows and cellar exits, the whole day passing in extremely violent street fighting.

Finally abandoning the idea of a frontal attack, the enemy then attempted an encircling movement to envelop Neustettin. The French were deployed on the hill outside and enjoyed a relative calm until about 1600 hours, while to the north and south of them the German battalions were in direct contact with the enemy. A territorial battalion was holding the station area in the northern sector, but was fighting without ardour, and the officers had to intervene forcibly several times to make their men hold out. They could not give ground, even though directly menaced and having a line of retreat. In the southern sector, a Russian tank attack succeeded in reaching the barricade on the road from Tempelburg and a furious fight broke out. The Germans knocked out two tanks and the attack was repelled with heavy losses among the Russian infantry. But at 1700 hours the enemy succeeded in taking the bridge across the railway and occupying the station, while in the southern sector their cavalry came round the lake bordering the town on which the defence was anchored. The encirclement had been completed in an hour!

Colonel Kropp, the town commandant, then decided to withdraw his units, starting with the battalion defending the station sector on the left wing, with the battalion on the right wing acting as a rearguard and withdrawing by echelons to the fortified Pommern Stellung line at Barwalde, 10km west of the town, where they would await the withdrawal of other German units to this new line of resistance.

Of this engagement, Lieutenant Auphan later reported:

Both rejoined the Division at Körlin.

Lieutenant Tardan’s report on the same episode ran:

Between 1800 hours on 27 February and 1100 hours on 1 March, Lieutenant Auphan’s 4th Company of the 1st/58th Regiment had to march 63km to reach Bad Polzin, being obliged to make several detours to avoid the Russian vanguards. At Bad Polzin the 4th Company was fed and supplied with ammunition at the local command post and rested for 40 hours. Having been rejoined by Lieutenant Auphan, the company then left for Belgard at 0600 hours on 3 March, rejoining the Division at Körlin at 1600 hours that day.

Meanwhile, those elements of the Division that had left Neustettin directed by Captain de Perricot, the acting Chief-of-Staff, continued their retreat to Belgard via Bärwalde and Bad Polzin, a distance of 72km. On the way they discovered that the much-lauded fortified position known as the Pommern Stellung was, at least around Bärwalde, unmanned.

At about 1400 hours on 27 February they came under serious machine-gunning from enemy aircraft, but losses were minimal, despite the dropping of 10kg bombs, followed by a miscellany of missiles no doubt recovered from a Tsarist arsenal, that included boxes of glass grenades crammed with darts and incendiary devices. The Ruskoné section of Lieutenant Wagner’s 7th of the 58th, which was marching at the tail of the column, managed to shoot down one of the aircraft with an automatic rifle.

In the middle of the night of the 27th/28th an hour’s rest was taken in Bad Polzin in falling snow and a glacial wind. After marching for the rest of the night and having passed on the way several meagre armoured elements, towards 0600 hours the vanguard of the column reached an area several kilometres south of Belgard, where regrouping and reorganisation were to take place.

Various elements of the Charlemagne kept arriving all day on the 28th, including SS-Major-General Krukenberg, who had come from Elsenau via Flötenstein and Köslin.

It had originally been intended that the reorganisation of the Charlemagne would take place at Köslin, an important town on the edge of the Baltic, but this town was already being threatened by Marshal Rokossovsky’s tanks, which had been advancing along the axis Baldenburg–Bublitz–Köslin since the fighting at Hammerstein. Köslin was in fact taken by the Russians on the evening of 2 March, thus shutting off the immense pocket of Danzig-Gothenhafen held by the German 2nd Army. The Soviet tanks then turned off east along the Baltic coast via Stolp and Neustadt.

Marshal Zhukov had launched his attack to clear the western half of Pomerania on the morning of 1 March with elements of his 1st Byelorussian Front, taking the Germans by surprise as the 1st Guards Tank Army on his right flank headed straight for Kolberg on the Baltic Coast.

On 2 March, SS-Major-General Krukenberg tasked Major Emile Raybaud with forming a march regiment from the most dependable elements of the 57th and 58th Regiments, as the local situation was becoming more and more critical. This difficult task was achieved in 10 hours. The remainder were then formed into a Reserve Regiment under Captain de Bourmont, but the fighting value of this latter regiment was greatly reduced through the troops’ extreme state of fatigue.

At about 1000 hours, Brigadier Puaud, accompanied by his staff (Major de Vaugelas, Captain Renault and Lieutenant Delille) made a motor reconnaissance of the banks of the Persante, a little river flowing through the towns of Belgard and Körlin and on to the Baltic at Kolberg. The aim of the reconnaissance was to find the crossing points before deploying blocking units. That same evening the divisional headquarters were established in Schloss Kerstin, northeast of Körlin.

At about 1800 hours the Divisional Headquarters received the order to move immediately to the little town of Körlin to stop and hold the Russian advance, and specifically to protect the withdrawal to the port of Kolberg of the troops in Pomerania.

The move was undertaken at night in a certain amount of confusion, leading to abnormal delays in the deployment of the companies after their arrival at Körlin. The unexpected arrival from Greifenberg of the Division’s 500-strong Field Replacement Battalion led by Captain Michel Bisiau next day enabled the provision of a third company for each provisional battalion and brought their establishments up to 750 men each.

At dawn on 3 March the Charlemagne, now more than 4,000 strong, took up positions in the little town of Körlin and the surrounding villages in the worst of atmospheric conditions, an icy blizzard. The Division now came under Major-General Oskar Munzel’s corps, covering the sector Köslin–Belgard–Kolberg, with headquarters at Belgard.

During the move of the column through Belgard, General Krukenberg had briefed Major Raybaud that the Charlemagne was to adopt a defensive position along the Persante River facing east, presenting a barrier to the enemy on the main road from Köslin to Stettin. In fact Körlin formed a strong natural defensive position, being surrounded on three sides by the Persante and a tributary that restricted access to the town to a few bridges that could easily be defended.

At 0800 hours the order was given for the evacuation of the civilian population. Major Raybaud was appointed battle commandant of the town of Körlin, and set up his command post in a house on the main square. The March Regiment would have its centre of gravity here, while the Reserve Regiment covered the crossing points of the Persante north of the town with the 1st Battalion at Barlin, Mechentin and Peterfilz, and the 2nd Battalion deployed further out.

Hard fighting broke out at about 1500 hours. Some of this was in the Köslin sector, necessitating intervention by Stuka dive-bombers and tanks, some of the latter being captured on the Körlin–Köslin road. Danger was thus threatening from the northeast. Meanwhile, in the southeast, a powerful Russian column, subjected to counterattacks on its flank by German tanks, advanced more slowly from Bad Polzin to Belgard, coming up against a strong defence from the Wehrmacht, and drawing attention in this direction.

To counter the first danger, the 2nd Battalion of the March Regiment under Captain Bassompierre covered the town from the northeast, either side of the Köslin road, while Lieutenant Fenet’s 1st Battalion prepared to meet the other threat from the southeast astride the road leading from Körlin to Belgard.

Then at about 1800 hours Divisional Headquarters was advised of a strong mechanised Russian concentration reported in the Stolzenberg area, thus posing a third potential, if not immediate, threat. Then at about 2000 hours came the news that a strong armoured Soviet column of ninety tanks and about two motorised regiments of infantry (the 45 Guards Tank Brigade of the 11th Guards Tank Corps, 1st Guards Tank Army) was moving out of Stolzenberg towards Kolberg. The fall of this port would threaten the encirclement and annihilation of the Charlemagne, as well as the Munzel Corps and all the other diverse elements still to be found in the Kolberg–Köslin–Belgard area. Also moving out of Stolzenburg, the 1st Guards Tank Brigade was heading for Belgard and Körlin.

Divisional Headquarters moved to Körlin on the night of the 3rd/4th. The sounds of battle could be heard, and the lights seen, to the southeast, but also to the southwest, which was disquieting, as the defensive system had been organised along the right bank of the Persante.

The vanguard of tanks of the column coming from Stolzenberg took the village of Gross Jestin, 5km south of Kolberg and 15km northeast of Belgard at 0200 hours on the 4th, moving at such a speed that several elements of the Charlemagne, the motorised supply column and the pioneer section of the Greifenberg Battalion were almost caught there. They had not been alerted by their sentries, and only just managed to escape to the northwest towards Treptow-an-der-Rega. By 0500 hours, the leading tanks of this same column were in front of Kolberg, which they invested, forming a pocket incarcerating the Munzel Corps and a good part of the von Tettau Group.

During the course of the morning, some of these Soviet elements fell back towards the east and fell upon Körlin, attempting to reduce the Belgard–Körlin pocket in cooperation with the forces attacking Köslin from the northeast and those approaching Belgard from Bad Polzin in the southeast. The Pomeranian front had collapsed and the 3rd Panzer Army penetrated at several points. Further south, the remains of the Xth SS-Corps were encircled in another pocket.

The Charlemagne‘s Divisional Headquarters withdrew from Körlin, now directly threatened from three sides at once, and with the Division’s units already in contact with the enemy, to establish itself at Schloss Fritzow, several kilometres north of Körlin on the Kolberg road, where the command post of Captain de Bourmont’s Reserve Regiment was already located. The latter then moved to the Klaptow Domain.

Towards midday, with still no sign of enemy tanks on the outskirts of Körlin, none having been signalled, and with no alarm from the outposts to the west, Major Raybaud set off for the Persante Bridge on the outskirts of the town to remind the German engineers tasked with demolishing it not to take action without formal orders from him. This bridge was necessary to enable the withdrawal of the outposts, about a company’s worth, and also to enable expected reinforcements of German tanks coming from the west to enter the town.

Examining the terrain from horseback, Major Raybaud saw a tank hull-down about a kilometre away behind a hump in the road, but was unable to determine its nationality. At the same moment, the first shell exploded, severely wounding Major Raybaud in the right knee and fracturing his left tibia in two places. The Charlemagne was unfortunately lacking in medical facilities. Captain Durandy, the Divisional Medical Officer, decided to evacuate the two worst wounded, including Major Raybaud, to Kolberg in a liaison vehicle. Although the Russians had already intercepted traffic on that route several times that morning, by some lucky chance the liaison vehicle got through safely. The two wounded men were eventually evacuated by sea after being treated at a casualty collecting post in Kolberg, which was already under Russian attack.

At about 1230 hours the first Russian elements, estimated at about twenty-five tanks supported by two companies of infantry, deployed from the southwest along the west bank of the Persante and attacked Körlin at its southeast exit. The bridge was blown and three enemy tanks were destroyed in a few minutes by a Tiger tank which appeared there at an opportune moment. This brought the Soviet attack to a temporary halt.

Captain de Perricot, who had taken over the temporary command of the regiment while awaiting the arrival of Captain Bassompierre to succeed Major Raybaud, was also slightly wounded. The Russian tanks brought the whole of the southern part of Körlin under fire, stopping traffic on the road and bridge to Belgard, where refugees were fleeing back under fire from the machine guns of Soviet aircraft.

Meanwhile the Charlemagne‘s Divisional Headquarters had received orders from the Reichsführer-SS at Army Group Weichsel to hold Körlin at all costs, as the town was to form the pivot of withdrawal for all the German troops in the region. Lieutenant Defever’s 2nd Reserve Battalion came forward to reinforce the west front of Körlin, where the danger was the most pressing. The Greifenberg companies withdrew by their battalions and were engaged in the defence on the west side of the town. At about 1430 hours, enemy infantry crossed the Persante at several places and established footholds on the right bank, directly threatening the rear of Lieutenant Fenet’s 1st March Battalion and taking the southeastern defence of Körlin in the rear.

So, at about 1500 hours, Lieutenant Fenet’s battalion turned about, emerged from the village of Redlin, and counterattacked towards the western edges of Körlin, taking the enemy in the flank. This threw back the infiltrated Soviet infantry, despite their supporting fire, and thus allowed the withdrawal of the advance units behind the Persante that had been previously unable to move. Once the counterattack was over, Fenet’s battalion returned to its original positions in Redlin.

Towards 1600 hours, part of the supply column was sent off to Kolberg, a reconnaissance patrol from the artillery battalion having reported the road again free. The patrol had got as far as the city gates at about 1400 hours, and found the Russians few in number but well equipped and already occupying the mill and the bridge over the first arm of the Persante. Before the patrol returned via Fritzow, Sergeant-Major Ranc and Gunners Blaise and Hoinard destroyed a lone Russian tank with a Panzerfaust.

A meeting was held at Divisional Headquarters at 1800 hours at which were present General Krukenberg, Brigadier Puaud, Major Vaugelas, Captains Schlisler and de Perricot, and Lieutenants Huan and Tardan. It was decided to hold on at whatever the cost. But the news coming in was far from encouraging. In fact, Headquarters 3rd Panzer Army at Plathe, which had yet to be threatened by the enemy, had intended securing the von Tettau Group and reinforcing the Munzel Corps, while hardening the front from Stettin to Belgard with elements of the 10th SS-Panzer Division Frundsberg, but were unable to do so for lack of fuel.

Only a vanguard formed from the armoured reconnaissance group of the IIIrd SS-Panzer Corps, consisting of six light armoured vehicles, a radio vehicle, two vehicles with guns and another two with machine guns, managed to reach the Neuland crossroads, where the Köslin–Körlin–Plathe and Schivelbein– Stolzenberg–Kolberg roads met some 15km southeast of Körlin. Here it encountered an outpost of the Charlemagne, Second-Lieutenant Pignard-Berthet and eighty men of the 1st March Company from Greifenberg, whose link with the rear had just been cut off by the Russian advance. This little mixed unit tried to reach Körlin, but was soon repelled by the Russians and dispersed, only to be annihilated after destroying three tanks and killing ten men in an ambush.

Following a new radio contact with the Reichsführer-SS at Army Group Weichsel, General Krukenberg and Brigadier Puad decided to break through to the west in several echelons. The 3rd Panzer Army’s main withdrawal zone was approximately on the line Greifenberg–Plathe. However, one could neither leave Körlin by the northeast, the road appearing to be definitely cut, nor to the west, where Russian forces were in position. Belgard was still held by the Wehrmacht, so they would have to leave Körlin, heading southeast as far as Belgard, and then go obliquely westwards. As most of the roads in this region were already being crossed by enemy columns, the Charlemagne would have to follow side roads or go cross-country.

The proper execution of such an operation depended upon the cover of night, and it was decided to start evacuating Körlin at 2300 hours. Nevertheless, the Charlemagne‘s resistance on 4 March had enabled some elements of the 3rd Panzer Army to withdraw. A delayed order to regroup near Plathe eventually reached the Division, but it was doubtful whether it was possible to do so. The order of march was determined as follows:

– Vanguard: Divisional HQ with Lieutenant Fenet’s 1st March Battalion.

– Main Body: Captain de Bourmont’s Reserve Regiment with the Monneuse and Defever Battalions.

– Rearguard: Captain Bassompierre’s 2nd March Battalion.

At the conclusion of the meeting, SS-General Krukenberg, SS-Colonel Zimmermann, and SS-Captain Jauss joined Lieutenant Fenet’s battalion, which left its positions in Redlin at the designated time. Brigadier Puaud declined to join the vanguard, wanting to remain until the departure of the rearguard.

Then, at about 0100 hours next day, Brigadier Puaud changed his mind and decided to leave Körlin with Major de Vaugelas and Captain Renault to rejoin the vanguard, wrongly believing that this would be the most dangerous position. However, their vehicle broke down on the Belgard road and they were then obliged to march along with Captain de Bourmont’s main body.

The vanguard column arrived at Belgard at about 0200 hours, crossed the cemetery and circuited the burning town, the roads of which were choked with abandoned vehicles and where a furious battle was in progress between the Soviets and some Wehrmacht units. The Fenet Battalion then disappeared into the countryside.

The 3,000 or so men comprising the main body of the Charlemagne were now under the direct command of Brigadier Puaud, assisted by Major de Vaugelas, Captains de Perricot, de Bourmont, Schlisler, Renault and other officers. The head of this column arrived at Belgard in its turn, but because of the extent of the fighting going on in the town, made a half-turn and crossed the Persante downstream from the town.

At daybreak the column found itself in a wooded area south of Belgard where it had regrouped several days previously, and came under artillery fire. The troops dispersed and used the cover of dense fog to mask them from the enemy.

According to an eyewitness, Medical Lieutenant Dr Métais, with first light a thick wood, marsh, a stream and then a wide plain could be discerned. The edge of the woods was on either side 100m away. Brigadier Puaud was there on foot with his staff: ‘What’s happening. Its mad! Who’s leading?’

‘De Bourmont’.

Then turning towards Major de Vaugelas, the chief-of-staff, Brigadier Puaud said: ‘Take a horse. Tell him to find a wood free of the enemy straight away, to stay there and to organise the defence!’

As Major de Vaugelas left for the head of the column at the gallop, Brigadier Puaud shouted: ‘It’s mad! I already advised him to hide in woods during daylight. If this goes on, there will be a massacre!’

Soon afterwards, at about 0800 hours, the thick fog lifted within a few minutes just as the column headed for the surrounding woods. Immediately spotted by the Russians, it was taken under a violent fire from tanks that had taken up the chase with the support of heavy weapons. The panic and massacre foreseen by Brigadier Puaud then followed. The survivors tended to make their way to the nearby woods. Several succeeded, but the majority were shot down or captured.

The rearguard formed by the Reserve Regiment, some eighty to ninety men under Lieutenant Bartolomei, arrived at Belgard at about 0700 hours. Fighting was still in progress, and Lieutenant Bartolomei considered reinforcing or relieving those elements of the Charlemagne that he thought were trapped there. He then came under heavy mortar fire and became disorientated, heading back to Körlin, which he had left several hours earlier and where Captain Bassompierre’s 2nd March Battalion was now encircled. There too his company came under violent fire, for the Russians had completely invested Körlin. The detachment then withdrew along the Persante and crossed it by a footbridge. They were returning to Körlin along the left bank when, at about noon, they came across 3 officers and 150 men that had been scattered in that morning’s disaster. Together they then decided to head for the Stettin area by night marches, but all were to be captured several days later.

At about 1400 hours, several hours after the disaster in the Belgard woods, Brigadier Puaud was seen by some soldiers wounded on a horse. He told them to try and get through to the west. Brigadier Puaud was never seen again. It would seem that, wounded by a shot in the leg, he had succeeded with the help of a group of comrades in reaching Greifenberg, where he was left in an inn with other wounded that could not be moved. He disappeared there, probably eliminated by enemy soldiers.

At about 0500 hours on the 5th, another group of about 600 men led by Second-Lieutenant Leune and Medical Lieutenants Métais and Herpe, formed up and marched westwards by night for two days, managing to rejoin the Fenet Battalion at Schloss Meseritz on the morning of 7 March.

Another detachment under Lieutenant Fayard joined up with a company of Volkssturm and was captured by Russian tanks on the 7th. Several other small groups tried to regain the German lines in vain.

On the morning of the 5th, a group of about 150 isolated Frenchmen and Germans collected around three self-propelled guns at Fritzow and tried to get through to Kolberg. Caught halfway in a little village by Russian tanks, they succeeded in getting away and penetrating the enemy investment of the outskirts of Kolberg. There they were directed to the Casino, where they met up with Captain Havette and about 100 sick and wounded men from the Charlemagne.

The situation in Kolberg was dire. Colonel Fritz Fullriede, a former farmer in South-West Africa, had arrived on 1 March to take over command of the town, which Hitler had declared a fortress to be defended to the last man. Fullriede found a garrison of 3,300 combatants, including a fortress-engineer machine-gun battalion, a training battalion and a Volkssturm battalion, a flak battalion and a train carrying six immobile tanks awaiting repair. But the peacetime population of the town had expanded from 35,000 inhabitants to 85,000. Outside the town were parked twenty-two trains that had brought refugees from all over the province, some hoping to be conveyed on to Stettin and some hoping to be taken on by ship. However, the railway authorities in Stettin had blocked further traffic into the city as it was already crammed with refugees.

When Colonel Fullriede requested the local Nazi leader to organise the evacuation of civilians from the town, he was told that the provincial Gauleiter had not given his permission, nor would he, as the orders were for the town to be held. However, Colonel Fullriede could not see how he could defend a town clogged with refugees, and decided to go ahead with their evacuation regardless and instructed SS-Brigadier Bertlin of the local Party administration to organise it.

On 5 March the first Soviet artillery shells hit the town. A combat team ordered to clear the railway line out of the town to the west next day was stalled by Soviet tanks. However, the coastal road was still open and thousands of refugees set off on foot. It is estimated that some 15,000 refugees eventually managed to get through to Swinemünde this way. For the more fortunate ones, the Luftwaffe instituted a shuttle service with flying-boats operating between the Kamper See lake near the seaside resort of Deep and their base at Parow, 7km west of Stralsund, taking thirty to thirty-five passengers at a time.

In all some 600 members of the Charlemagne reached Kolberg before the town was finally cut off on 7 March, the day the OKH forbade any attempt to breakout to the west by Colonel Fullriede. Many of these were from the Divisional headquarters staff and support units, but there were also some members of the Honour Company and the March Regiment, and, importantly for the defence, the 105mm howitzer battery of Regiment 57, whose commander, Captain Havette, was the senior Charlemagne officer in the town.

The howitzers came as a valuable contribution to the defence, whose heavy armament consisted so far of only seven heavy and eight light anti-aircraft guns and those guns on the six tanks waiting repair, which had to be manhandled into position. However, that same day naval destroyers Z-34 and Z-43 arrived outside the port to assist with the firepower of their 150mm guns.

The Frenchmen were accommodated in the municipal casino. At first, those that were able were employed in preparing anti-tank defences, but then Colonel Fullriede requested the provision of a combat team. Some 200–300 men were mustered for this purpose and formed into three platoons under the command of SS-Lieutenant Ludwig. This combat team, or compagnie de marche, was then allocated to the support of Battalion Hempel, being deployed on the battalion’s left flank and was soon engaged in heavy street fighting. However, a considerable proportion of the remainder had been utterly demoralised by their experiences. These were disarmed and used for constructing defences and later assisting with the evacuation of the refugees.

Next day the 1st Polish Army took over the siege of the town with its 3rd and 6th Infantry Divisions from the 1st Guards Tank Army’s 45th Guards Tank Brigade and 272nd Rifle Division, and additional rocket-launchers and heavy mortars were brought up to swell the bombardment of the town by some 600 guns. The Poles were later further reinforced by their 4th Infantry Division and the 4th Polish Heavy Tank Regiment.

The evacuation by sea began on the night of 11/12 March, after some large freighters had arrived in the roadstead outside the port, with smaller boats and ferries conveying the wounded and refugees out to them. Artillery support was provided by the destroyers Z-34 and Z-43, now reinforced by heavy torpedo boat T-33. The naval vessels also joined in the evacuation, taking on refugees for transit to Swinemünde in overnight shuttles that enabled them to restock with ammunition before returning.

The Poles launched a major attack on the 13th, capturing the town gasworks upon which the fighting had been focused, and closing up to the harbour on both banks of the Persante River. Calls over the open radio by the Polish commander for the surrender of the town at 1530 and 1600 hours on the 14th were simply ignored.

On the 15th the defence received last-minute reinforcements in the form of two companies of Fortress-Regiment 5 brought in by sea against the wishes of Colonel Fullriede, who saw no need for them. These were immediately thrown into a counterattack in the area of the railway station, only to suffer heavy casualties.

The last of the civilian refugees were embarked on the night of 15/16 March. The following day the defence was reduced to an area 1,800m long by 400m deep on the east bank of the Persante, and Colonel Fullriede decided it was time to withdraw.

During the early hours of the 18 March the last troops withdrew to the ships under cover of a massive bombardment from both sides that prevented the Soviets from advancing any further. Colonel Fullriede was the last to leave of the 68,000 civilians, 1,223 wounded and 5,213 combatants evacuated by sea from Kolberg.

On 26 March Hitler personally decorated Colonel Fullriede with the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross for this outstanding achievement.

A matron from a hospital in Kolberg gave an account of her evacuation. The roads out of the town were blocked with traffic and Soviet tanks, so she and a nursing sister made their way along the coastline to the west. Some of the other sisters from her hospital had gone ahead with the walking wounded from a Luftwaffe hospital.