Flakhelfer to Grenadier: Memoir of a Boy Soldier, 1943-1945

by Karl Heinz Schlesier

  Some time later the searchlights around Düsseldorf picked up from those of Duisburg, a ring of lights reaching from the ground to the clouds. Fifteen more minutes. In the dark city before us the air raid sirens screamed and howled. Corporal Tylia called to me “Stand under the barrel if we get to fire.”

  More time passed and the command pointers of the K 1, K 2 and K 6 positions lit up. The Russians formed a line, cradling shells in their arms. The K 4 embedded two in the cups of the fuse setting machine. “Abgedeckt,” covered, shouted K 1, K2 and K 6.

  The K 3, a heavy leather glove on his right arm, stood next to the fuse setter, ready to pull a shell out and lift it into the breechblock of the cannon. “Covered,” the gun chief said into the microphone. “Direction 12,” he called to the K 2.

  Suddenly, around the northern part of the city, heavy Flak opened up, first 12.8cm and 10.5cm guns, then 8.8. Now, over the anti-aircraft fire, we heard the dull rumble of the approaching bomber fleet. All of a sudden, cascades of red light appeared in the Leichentuch above the city, descending very slowly. “Gruppenfeuer,” the chief shouted. “Gruppe!”

  I hurried obediently to a position under the barrel. The explosion hit me like a tumbling wall. I thought my eardrums had burst. I staggered and moved quickly away. “Gruppe” followed “Gruppe.” Over the crashing of the gun I heard another sound, the terrible roar of many explosions that seemed to make the earth shake. These added to the explosions in the air over the city from many heavy antiaircraft guns to make a constant deafening thunder. I stood helplessly pressed against the embankment, the helmet slipped over my eyes. I shoved it back and, frightened as never before, stared shaken at the action before me. The K 3 lifted the heavy shells out of the fuse setting cups, thrust them in to the breechblock and pulled the fire lever. Empty shell cases littered the ground. With each round another was thrown from the breech and 1anded with a clanking sound. The gun fired and bucked but the crew seemed oblivious of what was going on elsewhere.

  The bombing continued and, slowly at first, then broadening, cones of fire emerged from the city, growing into a wide field of flames that threw a red cast into the clouds. I saw black smoke and saw Christbäume in green replace the red ones as the bombing went on. The gun chief called to me and pointed to the K 1. “Stand behind him, watch!” he shouted over the din. I did, eager not to be a useless observer. I stood behind Walter who manipulated the wheel in covering the command pointer. I tried to focus on his chore so I would not hear the continuing explosions from the city and might ignore the roar of the bombers flying over us after they had dropped their loads. Sometimes I glanced into the sky where the fire of our battery, and that of other batteries around the city, was concentrated. I couldn’t see much because of the thick clouds that had turned red from the burning city.

  And then it was over. The bombers were gone but a large part of the city was aflame. The fires continued to spread. Columns of black smoke rose into the sky. We stood by the parapet and looked toward the city in silence. The adults smoked cigarettes, the boys stood without. I suppose I was in shock. Our parents were on our minds. The Reisholz 4. Schwere Flakabteilung 177/0 alone fired 156 Gruppen. Other batteries had done their best, too, but we had not prevented the destruction before our eyes. The air raid had taken perhaps forty-five minutes. We stood and watched. There was nothing we could do. Before we dispersed the gun chief called me over. “Sorry, Paulchen,” he said. “I had to do this.” Although it had been a cruel joke, I learned that it was considered a baptism of fire to put a novice under the barrel. Now I had become a member of the crew, sort of.

  I plodded to our shack, my path lit by the burning city. Two of my buddies were already there, the others came one by one. We did not say much. We had shared the same experience. The homes of five of us, Ferdi, Thei, Bergittimus, Wenner and I were in Gerresheim. Because the raid seemed to have concentrated on the center of the city we convinced ourselves that our families were safe. But Hannes’ parents lived in Flingern, a suburb about two kilometers east of the main Düsseldorf railroad station. How were they? Hannes stared glumly at the floor between his feet. We tried a few words to cheer him. There were more Flakhelfer in Hannes’ shoes. For the soldiers and Russian Hiwis it was different. They were not from this city. Home was at some other place. They would not suffer a personal tragedy here, although they would worry about what could happen to their own homes somewhere else. A lot of quiet worrying went on.

  None of the Flakhelfer was given even a brief leave to check on their families. We were regarded as indispensable for the operation of the battery. Direct phone connections with the Flakhelfer homes did not exist. Very few civilian households were allowed a phone. Because communication systems in the city had been greatly disrupted, it took two days for parents to find ways to call the battery from somewhere outside and let their sons know how they were. My father phoned the battery from the factory. Headquarters informed me that Gerresheim had been spared.

  The first three weeks, June 12-July 2. The bell rang wake-up at 0800. We dressed and did our morning chores in the shack before Bergittimus and I visited the kitchen for our breakfast rations. Smoke flags to the north indicated that parts of the city were still burning. After breakfast we went to the gun revetments. All of the Geschütz-Staffel personnel worked through the morning and part of the afternoon. Empty shell cases were gathered and stacked at the railroad track and, from supply bunkers there, the ammo bunkers in the gun revetments were refilled. We would need another ammo train soon. Later in the afternoon the gun barrel was cleaned. Routine tasks left little time to ponder the events of the past hours.

  But after work, we finally had time to think. Watching the smoke drifting east with a western wind, I imagined pictures I had seen before: rubble-filled streets, fire- blackened façades of collapsed houses with empty window holes, wrecked vehicles and streetcars, twisted steel tracks, people tearing at wreckage to get to those buried underneath. People sitting dazed, the elderly, women and children, with what little they saved, others moving away from the ruins while firefighters, Red Cross and emergency teams were still moving in. And still fires burned, burning themselves out slowly. Bodies carried away by rescue squads. First aid posts. Wuppertal-Barmen had been a reminder to us after months of seclusion in Bad Einsiedel, but the wounds of that city were nine days old when we passed through. Our city was hit only hours ago; the wounds were fresh.

  Slowly the horror of it seeped into our minds. We spoke little that evening. Each of us lived in his own thoughts. We went to bed early. We were tired, physically and emotionally.

  The alarm bell woke us after 0100.

  We jumped from our bunks, dressed quickly and ran from the shack. The night sky was not as dark as on the night before. Thin clouds drifted by slowly, leaving openings through which one could see a clear sky, even a glimmer of stars. This time I arrived before the Russians. Around the gun the situation was the same as on the previous night. The adults smoked cigarettes and we Flakhelfer stood quietly without smoking. Corporal Tylia wore headphones and microphone but no report was coming in yet. The fires from the city had diminished but we still could smell smoke.

  We waited. When the first report came it sounded like a repetition of the night before. “Bomber formations approaching the Dutch coast,” the gun chief said. “This time they are farther south, direction Rotterdam. “

  Rotterdam was 140 kilometers northwest of Düsseldorf. What we had learned in geography in school proved worthwhile. As last night, there was no telling what direction the English would take after passing over Rotterdam. I wondered aloud if they would come for us again. “Probably not,” Walter said. “They usually don’t attack the same city twice in two nights.” He paused. “It has happened, though.”

  I was not convinced. Fear gripped me again as it had last night. I tried to shake it off but could not.

  Time passed and the next report, repeated by the gun chief to us, said, “Leading formations approaching Nijmegen.” The bombers
were closing in on the German border but still continuing east. They were, however, 50 kilometers away from the western edge of the Ruhr, the heart of the German industrial complex. Again, as last night, the air raid alarm would be given from Gelsenkirchen to Bottrop, Recklinghaunsen, Oberhausen, Mülheim, Duisburg, Essen, Bochum, Dortmund. If they attacked somewhere in the Ruhr, any of these cities could be a target. Each of them had been attacked dozens of times before.

  And then, to the north, we saw the ghostly fingers of hundreds of searchlights reach into the sky.

  The next report said, “Leading formations over Emmerich, turning south.” Tylia shouted, “Get ready!” We put on helmets. The Russians opened the ammo bunkers and stood by. The crew took up positions. “Direction 12,” the gun chief called. “Paulchen! Stand behind K 1!”

  “They are using the Rhine to guide them,” someone said. Seen from the bombers, the river was probably a silvery band below, easy to follow. Where would they go? I felt the tension of the crew. Minutes ticked away.

  “Southeast of Wesel, lading formations have turned southeast,” repeated Tylia the information passed on by the command post.

  A sigh of relief. It would be one of the Ruhr cities again. Which one? Suddenly the sirens of Düsseldorf filled the air with their screams, sending the population into the air raid shelters. It seemed Luftschutz officials would take no chances. But searchlights around the city were not yet on.

  Waiting. Time passed slowly. “Christbäume,” the gun chief said. “Northeast.” Information came in from the command post. “Heavy air raid on Bochum,” Tylia repeated. We left our positions for a moment and looked over the revetment wall. Despite the distance, red lights could be clearly be seen, hanging low in the sky and drifting down ever so slowly. Bochum was about 40 kilometers northeast of Düsseldorf. We heard the faint rumble of massed explosions and, where we thought Bochum was, the sky lit up as it might during a violent thunderstorm.

  “Back to the gun,” the Corporal snar1ed. When we got back to our positions, he said, “They might come our way as they go back. Get ready. “

  He was right. It did not take long for the command post to relay that the first enemy formations had turned southwest after the bomb run and would pass to the north of us. At that moment the searchlights around Düsseldorf flooded the sky, lighting slim clouds and revealing vast spaces beyond. The command pointers appeared on the illuminated dials in front of the K 1, K 2 and K 6. Shells were lifted into the cups of the fuse setting machine. The three gunners shouted, “Abgedeckt!” and the chief called “Covered!” into the mic “Direction 2.” The gun whirled to the new direction.

  We heard the faint sound of approaching air planes, growing louder, swelling into a steady growl. Looking up, I saw that the searchlights had found three Viermots, it seemed Lancasters. Although they twisted and rolled to escape the blinding light, the glowing tentacles stayed with them. Heavy guns north of Düsseldorf opened up and surrounded the planes with bursting shells. One was hit and fell, flaming wreckage, to the ground.

  The bombers were too far away for our battery to join the action. New Pulks of planes were picked up by the searchlights and were exposed to massive Flak fire. With short intervals this went on for nearly 30 minutes. At last the Corporal called, “Direction 3! Report!” “Abgedeckt!” the gunners shouted. It seemed that stragglers from the bomber stream had come into our range. “Gruppenfeuer! Gruppe!” The gun crashed and bucked. I held on to Walter, following his work closely. After six Gruppen, Tylia called, “Paulchen, take the K 1.” Walter stepped aside and I grabbed the wheel. He looked over my shoulder. It did not seem hard to follow the command pointer with the position pointer, but it was – not physically so much but mentally. I had to focus my mind and my hands completely on overlaying one pointer with the other, and keeping them together regardless if one tried to budge from the other. I tried desperately to do it right, although I was aware that I slipped briefly a few times.

  While Bochum was burning, lighting the horizon to the clouds, we fired a total of 31 Gruppen that night, and I served as K 1 on 25. Walter was reassuring when it was over. Tylia measured me gravely, then his face relaxed. I think he thought Paulchen had done all right.

  This was the night of June 12-13. I took a clue from Werner and kept a diary that included air raids on the Ruhr and Rhineland, and our activities during the raids. I started the diary with the Whit Saturday raid on Düsseldorf, June 11-12. What happened to other cities and targets elsewhere in Germany was not my immediate concern.

  At around 0300 the gun crews were released. In the shack we were too tired to talk and took to the cots immediately. When the wake-up call came at 0800 we were barely able to get up. We dressed and did the usual chores around our place like sleepwalkers. We munched breakfast listlessly. When I went to the Bertha gun later I found the Russians cleaning the revetment, removing shell cases and refilling the ammo bunkers. Beside cleaning the gun barrel there was not much to do. Corporal Tylia was reasonable enough not to submit us to senseless labor just to kill time. But I learned quickly that one of the major snags in the life of a Flakhelfer, or an adult soldier, was boredom.

  Of the soldiers, some sought diversion through sexual escapades with local girls or lonely women during late hours in the nearby birch forest. We Flakhelfer were too young, too innocent and inexperienced to attempt to join in. There was a recognizable undercurrent of sexuality in the batteries. It was the result of healthy Flak soldiers placed amidst a civilian population traumatized by constant danger, with husbands and sons away on military service in distant places. The Russians were involved too. The Sergeant in charge of their camp let some slip out at night to meet Ukrainian women from a nearby camp of forced laborers who toiled in the Henkel factory during daytime.

  The six of us, when we were together, talked little about our new experiences. Each of us dealt with them individually. I turned to books I had brought with me. I had known for many years that reading good books could help me escape from where I was and slip into a world opened by the passages and pages before me.

  The day passed. There was no night alarm.

  But a day later the alarm bell threw us out of bed at 2350. What came turned out to be nearly identical to the events of two nights earlier. Again the English bomber stream flew in over the Dutch coast, sought the Rhine and followed it southeast on another night with broken clouds. We stood by the gun and waited. Most of our time during an air raid alarm was spent waiting. When action came, it usually came quickly and violently.

  This time the target was Oberhausen, a city next to Essen, both cities, along with Bochum and Gelsenkirchen, the heart of the Kohlenpott, the Ruhr industrial center. Oberhausen was a mere 30 kilometers away and almost straight north of us. Sirens in Düsseldorf gave the general alarm. Toward the north, over a wide area, we saw massed searchlights reach into the sky. The distant rumble of heavy Flak fire. And again, low over the horizon, we saw red Christbäume dropped by Mosquitoes, Christmas trees of death. The sound of the Flak fire mixed with the dull sounds of explosions on the ground. We stood and watched. Blood-red mushrooms of fires sprang up from the earth. They grew and expanded and colored the bottoms of clouds passing overhead.

  We were told to man our positions. I was again to be the K 1. On their way out the bombers might come into our range. The searchlights around Düsseldorf got into action, penetrating the thin cast of drifting clouds, reaching far into the sky. Batteries well north of our city opened up. Once again I saw airplanes caught by white beams, riding the cones of concentrated lights, encircled by puffs of exploding shells. While this went on we stood idle. Most of the Viermots turned west to the north of us. Finally one formation came close enough. All the batteries around the city leapt into action. Our battery fired eighteen Gruppen. Then the Pulk had passed. No visible kill of a Viermot over or near Düsseldorf was reported. It seemed to me that these planes were close to invulnerable. We could not stop them. Once more I had served as K 1. I was beginning to get used
to it. This was the night of June 14-15.

  On Whitsun Monday, June 13, a legal holiday, no newspaper was published in the city. But on the following day we learned from the newspaper that the night raid on Whit Saturday had largely destroyed the central part of Düsseldorf, plowing a ragged swath roughly two and a half kilometers long and one and a half kilometers wide. The area of impact extended from Derendorf in the north to the main railroad station in the south. The raid had taken the lives of 1,298 identified civilians, left thousands missing or injured, and 140,000 people homeless. The bomb carpet dropped by the Viermots had ended about three kilometers north of our battery.

  This is from my diary. I did not chronicle the casualty numbers of the Bochum and Oberhausen raids.

  On Tuesday, June 14 and on Wednesday, June 15, we should have had school in the battery but it was canceled. Due to the devastation, traffic in much of the city had been paralyzed. Neither of our two teachers, if they were alive, had a chance to get to us. It turned out that school was resumed only on Monday, July 5.

  Over the following two weeks of June, within a radius of 50 kilometers, we saw more cities burn around us: Köln the night of 16-17, Krefeld on the night of 21-22, Mülheim on the night of 22-23, Wuppertal, again, on the night of 24-25, Gelsenkirchen and Solingen on the night of 25-26, and Köln, again, on the night of 28-29. This last raid was most severe. I recorded the information as: 4,377 identified civilians dead, thousands missing or injured, 250,000 homes lost to bombs and a firestorm.

  Düsseldorf was attacked again during this period, on the night of 25-26, the same night as Gelsenkirchen and Solingen. This time the Old Town area was hit once more, crumbling more parts of this ancient, beautiful quarter by the Rhine.

  During these attacks I alternately served in all three Flakhelfer positions, K 1, K 2, and K 6. During the Düsseldorf raid our battery fired around 110 Gruppen. During the raids on Krefeld, Mülheim, Gelsenkirchen and Köln our battery remained on the periphery. Only during the Solingen and Wuppertal affairs did the Lancasters and Halifaxes come close enough to our guns, and we gave them as good as we could.