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

by Karl Heinz Schlesier

  Some bombs had fallen close to 1st Battery in the field of rye, but no damage was done. We stood in the rain, watching helplessly. Civilian fire-fighting trucks and Red Cross units rushed up on the road to the west of us, speeding toward the impact zone. Now they would be coming from all of the neighboring towns and cities, an effective cooperation established among the hard-hit centers of the Ruhr and the Rhineland.

  In the morning the Geschütz-Staffel personnel and all the Hiwis worked to remove empty shell cases and refill the ammo bunkers in the revetments. School was suspended. Our teachers could not get to us. In the afternoon Thei took me aside.

  He was with gun Dora and had been on furlough in Gerresheim over the weekend. On Sunday he had met a girl who lived in his neighborhood. Her name was Edith. He had known her for years but never spoken to her. She went to Augusta Victoria Gymnasium and had taken the same tram at the same time and station Thei took it to Rethel. That was so in the past. When he saw her on Sunday, he approached her. They talked. They agreed to meet on the Saturday of his next furlough, September 4. She said she would bring a girl friend and asked whether he had a friend he could bring, too. He told her he would. Then he told me, “You must come with me on that Saturday. I need you. She won’t see me without her girl friend. And the girl friend expects me to bring a friend. That’s you.”

  I was surprised. I didn’t know what to say. Finally I said, “My furlough is a weekend before that.”

  “Yes,” Thei said. “Just take it a week later.” He looked hopeful. I didn’t know Edith. Perhaps I had seen her on the tram also. I had no idea what she looked like. I liked Marika Röck from the movies, an exciting woman, but I was a boy. KLV had not been helpful to us for understanding girls, nor had Reisholz. We had been left out. I told him that I would write a letter to tell my parents that I would come a week later. At Bertha I had to switch with one of the boys. So it was decided. The meeting with the girls was to be on the designated day, September 4.

  We had only one shooting affair before that, on the night of August 30- 31. The English attacked Mönchen-Gladbach, a city eighteen kilometers straight west of Düsseldorf without important industry. Much of the city was laid low, nevertheless. We got some of the bombers before they swung around for home.

  Elinor. She was sixteen also, two months older than I. She was slender with straight legs and small breasts under her dress. An oval face framed by brown hair, brown eyes. Her eyes were inquisitive, observing, questioning. She was quite shy, not more so than I. She lived on Keldenichstrasse about two blocks down from Thei’s parents’ place.

  On that early Saturday evening I walked the one kilometer from my parents’ house to meet Thei on Keldenichstrasse. Edith was already waiting there with him. A dark-haired girl almost seventeen, she was outgoing, with an easy laugh. She was well-built, with dark, bemused eyes. She and Elinor attended the same school, the same class.

  They were good friends. After I was introduced we set out for Elinor. We walked the two blocks to her house and Edith went to the door to ring the bell. That seemed to be the agreed-upon sign. But Elinor, on the second floor, probably had watched us through the window, perhaps with her parents. I don’t remember how I felt. I don’t think excited. Curious, perhaps, and a little awkward, like a conspirator. After all, this arrangement had been made without any involvement on my part. It did not take long before Elinor came through the door.

  It seemed she felt awkward too. That was something we had in common, although it would not help us much. Extroverted Edith took charge of the situation, and after introducing us to each other, suggested we walk together in the direction of the Germania movie theater. We walked in a row, Edith doing the talking. I cast self-conscious looks sideways at Elinor. She was aware of my glances but didn’t look back. It was the first time I ever walked with a girl. I didn’t know what to say and neither did she. We were both uncomfortable. Edith kept talking, with Thei sometimes getting in too. He was more comfortable in this situation than I, easier in the presence of girls. He appeared pretty smooth while I felt like a clod. He must have had some experiences in this field that I didn’t. So it went for a while. I didn’t like small talk and did not try to join in. I thought that it was getting worse for me by the minute. Here was a pretty, healthy girl beside me and I didn’t know what to do. Finally she asked me a question. That broke the ice a little.

  It was a question about school, and what I was reading. There I had something to say, and we began a conversation. When we got to the movie theater the show had already started. So we continued walking, Thei and Edith going ahead, Elinor and I following a dozen steps behind.

  This became pretty much the rule for the next few months when Thei and I had furloughs together. We did a lot of walking with the girls in the evenings, in the dark. Because the English came later at night, we were pretty safe. There was nothing else to do, no place we could have gone. We were too young for visiting bars. Cafés and shops were closed at that time. We went to the movies a few times. We rarely talked about our duties at Reisholz and never about the war. Thei had an older brother in the Heer, serving in Russia. Sometimes Thei and I wore our dress uniforms to our rendezvous, but without the swastika armbands. I never met Elinor’s parents and she never met mine. We never considered it. Our relationship never became intimate. I kissed her twice, our lips touching briefly. It felt good, but led to nothing more. We did write letters to each other. She wrote on pale blue, silky paper that smelled of perfume. It smelled good. We wrote a little about love in a clumsy, searching way.

  Her father was too old for military service. He owned a small factory that produced tins with a special chocolate mixture as energy food for the Luftwaffe. Her parents must have been strict because Elinor could never slip me a precious tin. It didn’t matter.

  She was the first girl I felt somewhat close to. After three months, in December 1943, she and her mother were resettled by her father in a small town in the Taunus Mountains. It was for their safety because of continuing air raids in our area. For a few weeks we continued exchanging letters, then she stopped. She probably saw no future in our timid relationship. I guessed she was right. I did not blame her, although I still felt a degree of loss. Perhaps, I thought, she had found someone older and more mature than me. I hurt, though. I was competent enough in working the big gun, but not in dealing with a pretty girl.

  The Sunday after that first meeting with Elinor I spent with my parents. Twice during the night the air raid alarm sounded. The first came at about 2400 hours. I got up and dressed quickly. I took a book with me. When I stepped into the corridor I did not have to wait for my parents. It had become routine for everyone under the threat of nightly raids to get ready fast. I grabbed my mother’s little black leather suitcase and followed my parents down the stairs into the cellar. Our neighbors from the first floor came in at the same time, a husband and wife and their young daughter. We sat on benches and chairs in the narrow room set aside as a shelter. Faces looked tired and weary, listless, yet attentive, listening for portentous sounds from outside. We sat in silence. I turned to my book and read. After 45 minutes the sirens screamed the all-clear signal. The RAF had passed us by and gone elsewhere deeper into Germany. We slowly left with a few friendly words, a load lifted.

  The second alarm came at 0130. Again we went to the bomb shelter in the cellar. Nothing happened for about 20 minutes. Then we heard the rumble of distant Flak fire from the south, the direction of Köln. It lasted for a little while and then the guns fell silent. The all-clear signal once again filled the air.

  Next morning, when Thei and I arrived in Reisholz, we learned last night’s English raids had visited the cities of Ludwigshafen and Mannheim, both on the upper Rhine, and had come close to the Bonn and Köln anti-aircraft guns on the way back.

  A Sky full with Vapor Trails. On a sunny, cloudless day, September 6, as we readied for lunch, alarm bells called us to the guns. Pedi, our Latin teacher, had already arrived but it didn’t look good for s
chool. We stood around the gun, waiting for information. The time of the alarm was suspicious. A daytime raid meant that American bombers were on the way. Sirens to alarm the civilian population remained silent. The men on our gun, as usual, smoked cigarettes. The corporal wore headphones and microphone. When the command post called he reported the message to us. “Leading enemy formations over Calais, proceeding southeast.” They would have to be Americans. The course could be a faint. If they continued on the same course they would pass perhaps 300 kilometers to the south of us. We had to wait to find out. No new information came for 35 minutes. Then, “Leading enemy formations north of Reims. Reims?” Tylia drily offered, “Perhaps it’s München.”

  We stood or sat idle for nearly two hours, making small talk. Why were we still kept in readiness when the target was in southern Germany? No one asked the question aloud. Lunch and our Latin class had gone away. Did the command know what it was doing? Finally Tylia’s headphones crackled, “Leading formations over the Rhine near Karlsruhe, continuing direction 4.” Ten minutes later, “Heavy air raid on Stuttgart.”

  So. Another city. This was a large one, now a shadow of its former size like so many cities, our city included. The RAF had hit Stuttgart a dozen times or more already. Now a daytime raid? I could imagine what was going on there, but I didn’t want to think about it. We had become numb to disasters, apathetic, locking our feelings away. On the guns, we did what was expected of us and did it well, not with enthusiasm, but with a degree of purpose and urgency.

  Next we heard, “Bomber stream has turned north, direction 11.” “They are coming down the Rhine,” Tylia said. Forty-four minutes later we heard distant Flak fire to the south. “Leading formations west of Bonn.” We waited another fifteen minutes and then we saw to the southwest, inexorably coming north parallel to us at a distance of fifteen kilometers, the first vapor trails of the American bomber boxes streaking the blue sky. One Pulk followed another, leaving ballooning white clouds behind. There were narrower vapor trails crisscrossing around the bombers, German fighter planes harassing and attacking the boxes. We stood and watched. It was like watching a movie. The bomber stream was on its way home but did not have an easy going. It had probably been under fighter attack off and on from the moment it crossed the French coast, and these might continue until it left the mainland. During one of the first deep penetrations of American Viermots, the Schweinfurt and Regensburg raids, August 17, 60 Viermots were shot down, mostly by Me 109 and Fw 190 fighters. The Stuttgart raid could have a similar ending. We saw two Viermots break formation and lose attitude, eventually disappearing from our sight.

  The column of bomber boxes was about 100 kilometers long and took 30 minutes to pass. They left behind a sky filled with slowly dissolving vapor trails, and left us impressed with the power of these aircraft. Nazi leadership had said at the beginning of the war no enemy bomb would fall on German soil. Now it was obvious to everyone that the night over Germany belonged to the English, the day to the Americans. Nothing would change that. How did we feel watching from our gun revetment? Useless against these odds. But another night or day, we would shoot if we had the chance.

  During the next two weeks the English bombed München once but did not come into our neck of the woods. The Americans didn’t show either. Perhaps they needed a break too. We certainly did. In September we latecomers from Bad Einsiedel were summoned to 2nd Battery Headquarters where the lieutenant, our battery chief, handed each of us the Flakkampfabzeichen with a handshake and a brief smile. For the time we had served since our arrival, Reisholz Grosskampfbatterie had been credited with eight Abschüsse, kills of enemy aircraft. More than anything we were surprised. We stood in rank, fingering the unexpected medals, until the lieutenant discharged us with a nod. Ours was not a saluting outfit concerned about ceremony. We served in a combat battery.

  I kept looking forward to my next furlough on the weekend of September 18-19. Elinor was on my mind.

  Paul. We sat in the living room, my parents’ faces sad and strained. “Paul has been killed in Italy,” my father said. “Where?” I asked. He shrugged. “Somewhere south of Naples. Anna got the news two days ago.” Anna was my father’s sister. She and her husband, Konrad, had two sons, Willi and Paul, and a daughter, Annie. Willi had died in action in Russia. Now Paul was gone too.

  I remembered my cousins fondly. Willi had been the introverted one, a tall, good- looking young man with a dry humor. Paul was the extrovert, a year older than Willi, a happy, fun-loving guy full of life, mischievous, bright. He was a lieutenant in a Gebirgsjäger Division when he married. It was before I went to Bad Einsiedel. My parents and I had attended the wedding in Gerresheim. His pretty young bride came from Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps, where her parents owned a hotel. A nice, attractive couple. We had a very good time at the wedding. The war and Willi’s absence, for at least that day, not forgotten but set aside, given over to a simple joyous event.

  We sat in dark silence. There was more bad news. My father briefly related, what I, in our little, closed, tense world in Reisholz, was not aware of and not eager to learn. Italy had collapsed. A new Italian government had signed an armistice with the Western Allies. Our forces disarmed the Italian army, Mussolini’s own people imprisoned him. German troops were withdrawing across Italy to a line north of Naples, Allied armies following on their heels.

  We sat. What to say? Finally my mother ended the unease. “Let’s go into the garden,” she said. Among the trees and flowers we felt better. Another world still existed. The beauty we saw around us was a reflection of it.

  In the evening I met with Thei and the girls. We tried to see a movie in the Germania theater but the box office cashier refused us tickets because we were under eighteen. The movie might have had a nude or near nude scene, too dangerous for us to see. We spent the evening walking.

  In the morning I went again to church with my parents for the high mass. This time the list of those fallen in combat from the St. Margaretha congregation included a new place name, Salerno. There were also two or three from Russia. The war wasn’t over there, either. After lunch, as on my preceding Sunday furlough, I worked in the garden harvesting fruits and vegetables. I generally disliked this work but felt it necessary for me to do. My father could no longer do much physical labor. I could not leave it to my mother alone.

  Bitter Autumn. According to my diary, the following three weeks, September 20 to October 8, were hard. The RAF once again stepped up its bombing campaign. Of these nineteen nights, only five (September 20, 21, 25, 26, October 6) didn’t require us to stand-by or go into action. On these nights the following cities were bombed: Hannover, Mannheim, Ludwigshafen, Darmstadt, Braunschweig, Bochum, Hagen, München, Kassel, Frankfurt and Stuttgart. In addition, American daylight raids struck Frankfurt, Wiesbaden and Saarbrücken on October 4. This time we saw nothing of B 17 Fortresses or B 24 Liberators. We did a great deal of shooting during the raids on Bochum (September 23-24), and Hagen (October 1-2) and got into action when the English got close on their return from Mannheim and Darmstadt (September 23-24), München (October 2-3) and Frankfurt (October 4-5).

  Because of the intensity of the English campaign and the probability of another attack on our city, furloughs were canceled for the weekend of October 2-3. Because of the many nights we spent by the guns we became physically and mentally exhausted. We kept asking the question why, to the RAF, civilian populations seemed appropriate targets as much as industrial and military installations. “Terror bombing,” as it was called, confirmed to many that the Nazis were right at least in one claim. The Allies intended not only to win the war, but to destroy everything German. As we watched the cities burn around us it felt that way. When we kids worked the guns, we did not shoot for an ideology or a government. We shot for something immediate, direct and close by. We tried to protect, as best as we could, the civilians, including our parents, women, children, old people, crouching in bomb shelters and bunkers behind us.

  Ferdi, Wenne
r, Hannes and I of our little group, and a number of other Flakhelfer, were granted furlough for the weekend of October 9-10. The battery chief must have thought that we needed it. Since Thei had not been allowed out, I could not see Elinor on that Saturday. Ferdi and I went in the afternoon to a movie in a downtown theater that stood among ruins and rubble but still functioned. We watched a heroic tale from the Seven Year’s War. After the movie we went to one of the remaining cafés and had a cup of chicken broth before we took the tram home. Ferdi was worried about his brother, Otto, two years older than us, who served in a paratrooper division in Italy and was perhaps in the midst of fighting there.

  I spent the evening with my parents. I returned the books from the Volksbücherei to my mother and collected four new ones she had gotten for me during the week. I mentioned that, on the information board in battery headquarters, we had seen an announcement by Military Command recommending Flakhelfer should apply for officer’s careers in the armed services. Because the German officer corps was recruited mostly from graduates of secondary schools, the ad made sense. My parents felt that if I applied, and was accepted as a reserve officer candidate, I would be safe from the grasp of the Waffen-SS. They hounded boys like us to volunteer for the Waffen-SS, the military arm of the SS organization. This fear was common and justified. I agreed to apply.

  Next day I worked again in the garden but took some time off to visit the green thickets around the Ruine. I took the .22 but saw no rabbits. No regrets. I didn’t feel like killing anything. The wood of the rifle stock felt good in my hands, something sturdy, reliable, that I could handle comfortably. There was no alarm on these two nights.