Of the three, Ilya spoke a little German, the other two only a few words or phrases. Ilya was a handsome, slender man who liked to laugh. Vassiliy was a strong, quiet man, with a broad face that showed features of the physical make-up of ethnic groups in his Siberian homeland. Piotr was a little shorter than the others, agile, with a sharp face and quick eyes.
We Flakhelfer had a good relationship with the three, I perhaps more than the other boys. I was curious about them, their backgrounds, where they came from. I was especially interested in Vassiliy. I was fascinated by Siberia. I had read some books about that vast, beautiful land and the original people there, hunters and reindeer herders. I had read about tigers and leopards and the Nanay people on the Amur River. I had read about gatherers of ginseng in the deep forests of Sichota Alin, who made gifts to the snow tiger, the Master of the taiga. And I had read a little about Koryak and the Evenks. I was eager to learn from Vassiliy. Ilya tried to translate. But Vassiliy did not understand what I was curious about, didn’t know himself, or didn’t want to speak about it. Perhaps I touched something that made him even more homesick. I gave up after a while. I didn’t hold it against him.
There were both visible and invisible dividing lines between us that we could not breach. After all, we boys were German. They were Russian prisoners of war. At times we were able to forget. For instance, on many nights, when nothing happened, we stood by the revetment wall together and talked, or tried to talk. The three were friendly, but reserved. They were clearly homesick and worried about their future. They wondered if they ever would go home again. If Germany lost the war, which they thought likely then, they expected no mercy from Stalin for having served in the German war effort. If Germany should win, their future was still uncertain. In either case they would lose.
I talked with them about their fears out of earshot of the others at Bertha. They came to trust me, but there was nothing I could do. I was not the master of my own life, nor were any of us, German or not. In a way we were in the same boat. They understood this, and I let them know that I felt the same about it.
The best we could do for them was to share our food. We got more of it than we boys needed, and we passed it to them. Later, when we Reisholz Flakhelfer were transferred to another site and another battery (in January, see below), I remembered our three Russians more vividly and with more sympathy than the insensitive, heavy-set German loader, the K 3 of the Bertha gun. I often wondered what happened to our Russian friends, whether they perished in the scalding cauldron of war or, despite everything, lived to see their homes again.
Christmas Furlough. On Monday, December 13, winter came to us at last, first with wet snow, then frost, then with a whirling, wind-driven curtain of large flakes that slowly built up on surfaces. The guns were covered with tarps, and the Russians kept shoveling the revetment floor clean. During the following two weeks, the call to man the guns came only three times. The bad weather seemed to hamper the RAF campaign. Still, they hit Berlin during the nights of December 16-17 and 23-24, and Frankfurt, December 20-21. We were on standby but the bombers flew in and out around us. We sat tightly squeezed on benches in the narrow bunker, wrapped in overcoats. A wood fire burned in a little metal stove in one corner, its surfaces and the pipe penetrating through the roof gave us some warmth. Next to and across from the stove sat Tylia and the loader, then us Flakhelfer and our Russians toward the door. We mostly sat in silence. Only Tylia and the loader made small talk occasionally. We seemed immersed in our own thoughts.
I wondered if the Russians might be thinking of times of snow and cold in their country. Did they recall the happiness of being with their families in the warmth of their homes when outside the wind shrieked across a world that seemed to have turned to ice? Especially, I wondered about Vassiliy from Lake Baikal. Could he tell me what winter was like in Siberia and how he used to cope with it? I remembered snow time from years ago, when we sledded until we were stiff with cold. I went home and my mother prepared a hot salt bath for my feet and a cup of steaming hot chocolate I could barely hold in my hands. Or Bad Einsiedel winter days. Pine forests bending under the weight of snow. The quiet, peaceful, untainted white world, with its pure air and red deer hoof prints in secretive and mysterious designs. But here, I sat in a dark hollow of a bunker sparsely lit from the fire that flickered through the half open hatch of the stove. Wasted time, hours of nothingness, snippets of memory of happier times.
The good news for me was that Tylia let me go on Christmas furlough on the weekend of December 25 to 26. It was fortunate that Christmas Day that year 1943, fell on a Saturday. Werner from our gun crew got to go, too. We were replaced, as always, by the extra boys beyond the required number of three Flakhelfer per gun, boys kept for the purpose of taking over gun positions for those on furlough.
Ah, Christmas, my mother’s favorite time. The Christ Child coming, the day glowed like a light in the darkness of winter’s snow and icy rain. For weeks she had been baking cookies, Zimtsterne, Spekulatius, Honigkuchen, Spitzkuchen. Preparinq the Stollen, the traditional Christmas cake, was not baking. It was a ritual, a cult come alive. She handled the ingredients with utmost care, measuring and kneading, with an attention usually reserved for the sacred. Before the Stollen was placed in the oven the heat was brought to the precise desired degree. Then the waiting began. When the time came for a quick check, I am sure silent prayers were said. When the Stollen was removed, as carefully as a baby in a Caesarian section, it was inspected anxiously and with awe. Did it have the right color, the proper height, was it firm? If all these requirements were met, there was jubilation.
Our Christmas tree, when I was little, was brought in on Christmas Eve and decorated while I was in bed. The gifts had been placed under the tree and covered. I was awakened early in the morning, but prevented from looking into the living room. We dressed, and, without breakfast, walked in the dark, often snowy or raining night, to St. Margaretha Basilica. Our Christmas Mass celebration took place at 4 A.M. J.S. Bach on the organ, solemn Baroque songs, candles, candles, the large nativity scene set up in the aisle near the altar, the festive atmosphere, the solid crowd of worshippers dressed in their Sunday coats. Every bench was filled, the aisle, too, with people standing. I always stood with my father. The long, never-ending sermon, the organ again and again. With most of the crowd my mother always went for Holy Communion. Sometimes my father and I did too. Finally, near dawn, the mass ended and we walked through the cold streets to our home. The electric candles of the tree were lit while I waited outside the room. My mother rang a little silver bell and I stormed into the room, into the presence of the lights, the beautiful tree with its ornaments, the gifts, into a miracle.
My mother never wanted to part with the tree. She kept it and lit it every evening until the end of Christmas time in February. Before then the branches had sagged and most of the needles were gone. One last evening of light, of gratitude and sadness. Next morning the skeletal tree was stripped of candles and ornaments and lifted through the window into the dead flower garden.
The Christmas tree was up when I arrived at noon that Saturday. It was a fir eight feet high, and a marvel that my parents had gotten it. We admired it together. There was no Stollen for Christmas this time because the necessary ingredients were not available. But my mother had been able to bake Zimtsterne and Spekulatius and a cake with fruit from our garden. My father had purchased another rabbit, but before we could sit down for dinner we went to St. Margaretha for Christmas Mass. It was held in late afternoon instead of the early morning hours because of the danger of an air raid.
The church was nearly filled as in my memory. The organ played J. S. Bach again, the nativity scene was set up. It looked like it had of old but it wasn’t the same. The people were haggard, strained, poorly clothed. There were soldiers in the crowd, on furlough, two of them on crutches and one with his arm in a cast. The sermon was brief, the reading of the names of the recently killed in action short but emotional. So many missing,
gone or merely somewhere else. The traditional songs were sung strongly, but almost with despair. We didn’t say much on the way home. But then the tree was lit and flooded the room with light. It was Christmas after all. We were alive and together. There were no impressive gifts but we had much we were grateful for. It was a beautiful Christmas. Outside the blanket of snow lay silent and pristine, a marvelous contrast to the candle light inside. The sense of peace extended and there was no alarm during those two nights.
January 4 1944. With an east wind the cold lingered but the days and nights were cloudless, clear. Two nights we were called to the guns when the English attacked Berlin, December 29-30, and January 1-2 1944. We spent time in the bunker but the bombers took a route back far from us. New Year’s Eve was a sad experience but New Year’s Day was no better. We had all had better New Year’s in our lives, the two soldiers next to us, we three Flakhelfer and our three Russians. There was no reason to celebrate the past year or the new one. We were depressed. There was nothing to look forward to. All we expected was more of the same. Once we were called to stand-by when American Viermots hit Ludwigshafen again, on December 30. But we never got to see them.
Our time came on January 4. American aircraft flew in over Zeeland, southern Holland, and aimed straight east. First it was suspected that this might be a diversion and they would change course. But this time they didn’t. When the leading formations passed north of Antwerp, sirens throughout the Ruhr and, the Rhineland howled to drive the civilian population into shelters. When the Flak around Mönchen-Gladbach let loose and kept firing without being drowned out by the rumble of carpet bombing we thought we were in for it. Far to the west we saw the sky fill with vapor trails and tiny specks of approaching aircraft. Tylia reported us ready, the windows in front of the K 1, K 2 and K 6 positions came alive. I sat in the K 6 chair, Vassiliy the K 4, stood next to me. He had placed two shells into the cups of the fuse-setting apparatus and held another shell in his arm, cradling it like a baby. One remembers these little details. For a moment our eyes met.
The growing growl of approaching aircraft. Flak to the west of the city started and then our turn came. Gruppe after Gruppe left the Bertha barrel. Between shots we heard the roar of the Viermots almost above us, mixed with other sounds as heavy bombs whistled on the way down. They detonated close by and the earth, even in the walled-in gun emplacement, seemed to shake. And it continued. There were no Christbäume, of course. The bombardier of the lead Fortress targeted visually, as did our command post. The bombers flew over the city from west to east, starting the bomb carpet on the city quarters along the Rhine, laying it across the already largely demolished downtown toward the eastern edge. Fifteen minutes and it was over. The Düsseldorf Flak, our battery included, had done as well as could be expected. A couple of Fortresses were brought down, others had been damaged and left their formations. Their fate would probably be sealed by our fighter planes.
Over the city, smoke and dust clouds arose. Someone pointed to the southwest. There we also saw black smoke flags, the results of bombing Neuss, the neighboring city across the river. Both cities had been struck at the same time. The closest the bombs had come to us was two kilometers to the north. We in the battery had been spared again. If the bombers had started their run from the south, we would probably have been in the target zone. We looked on in silence. The vapor trails in the sky slowly disappeared.
A day after the raid a rumor went around that shook us up. It was said that our battery was to be transferred somewhere without Flakhelfer. If it were true, that meant the battery would be sent outside the country, perhaps to the coast of France where massive fortifications were being built in preparation for an Allied invasion expected to come in summer or even spring. What about us Flakhelfer? We wondered what would happen to us. We were sure that they would not let us go – but where would they send us? I asked Tylia as Ferdi and Thei asked their gun chiefs. They shrugged. They said they didn’t know anything yet. But they agreed that there might be something to the rumor.
Before lunch in the mess hall on January 6, all Flakhelfer of the battery were gathered. The battery chief told us that 4. Schwere Flakabteilung 177/0 would cease operations on January 17 and be removed after that date. Flakhelfer from Hilden Gymnasium were to do duty in a 10.5cm battery at Scholven Hydrier Werk, a hydrogenation synthetic oil plant near Gelsenkirchen. Flakhelfer from Rethel Gymnasium were transferred to Chemische Werke Hüls, a chemical and synthetic rubber plant near Recklinghausen, where they would do duty in a 2cm light flak Battery. Hüls, that was us. So we were all sent into the Ruhr, the most heavily bombed region in all of Germany. Why us? Why shift us from heavy Flak to light Flak? Why not use us close by? Why send the Hilden Flakhelfer to Scholven?
No questions were raised. There would be no answers. The military made decisions based on things recommended at higher levels. They might be questionable to us, but we had no say in it.
I was granted a last furlough for the weekend of January 8 to 9 when I could tell my parents. There was an incident before that, on January 7. We were at lunch in the mess hall when we heard a plane approaching, flying low. The door of the mess hall was thrown open and someone barked, “Out! Out!” We ran toward the guns. The plane was above us, perhaps 400 meters high, a Fortress with one smoking engine, two engines dead, holes in hull and fuselage. We stopped and looked. The great bird in its death throws slowly flew on and, less than a kilometer away, was hit by a 2cm Vierling (four-barreled gun) section on the Rhine. They tore it apart in the air. Fragments plunged into the river. Someone in that plane had doggedly kept on against all odds. Some courage!
I told my parents about our Hüls assignment over the weekend. I would not be able to see them twice a month. My mother tried not to, but she cried. My father sat with a hard, stony face. I promised to write often and visit as soon as I could. It was a sad weekend. When I left on Monday morning my mother saw me off as if I were going to the frontline.
3
Flakhelfer, Hüls
January 18-September 22 1944
Journey through the Ruhr. For the next nine days, January 10-16, we worked with the Geschütz-Staffel personnel and additional Russians to empty the reserve ammo bunkers along the railroad track and loaded shell boxes on lorries. There were only two alarms, a daytime raid by American bombers on Halberstadt, Osnabrück and Braunschweig, January 11, and a night raid by the RAF on Braunschweig once again, January 14-15. For us, both were false alarms. On January 18, before the removal of the battery began, we Flakhelfer from Rethel Gymnasium were loaded with our gear on two trucks and started on the road north. We were 31 boys who had served in the Mess-Staffel and Geschütz-Staffel.
The night before, on the last day of the Reisholz battery’s readiness for action, we said good-bye to the men we had been with for months. Together, we spent many hard nights and easy nights, endless hours of waiting for what eventually came, or didn’t, lonely nights when nothing could be done but leave one to one’s thoughts. Tylia patted me on the shoulder. He came close to embracing Paulchen but didn’t. Perhaps he thought soldiers didn’t do that. He was quite emotional, though, and wished me well. I did the same. When I left I climbed the revetment wall and looked at Bertha for a last time. We had spent many nights with her. The gun was the one solid presence we held on to as all around us inferno threatened. Working the instruments kept us from giving in to our fear.
My good-bye to the Russians was emotional. Ilya, Piotr, even reserved Vassiliy who kept so much locked up within himself, kissed me on both cheeks the Russian way to say farewell.
On Monday, January 17, our loyal teachers, Pedi and Wallerich, arrived as expected. We had had no chance to tell them earlier that we were being sent elsewhere. We told them then. They were not relieved that their commitment had ended. They were disheartened, saddened. They had tried hard to make us learn under terrible circumstances. They knew that we would need it one day, if we survived. When they were gone I became aware that another phase of my
life had ended.
At battery headquarters we got our papers to pass on to the battery in Hüls. In those papers it was duly recorded that we of the Bad Einsiedel contingent had been participants in the destruction of sixteen aircraft, mostly English, with which the Reisholz battery had been credited for the period of June 11 1943, to January 17 1944. How this record was established remained a mystery to me, since we were not the only battery shooting at the invaders. An evaluation by higher command. Perhaps they knew something we didn’t. We did not question the results, but I must say we were not impressed. We knew that we had missed a lot more often than we actually hit a target.
The journey took us into the Ruhr area. The trucks avoided our wrecked city and skirted its eastern fringe by going up into the hill country of the Bergische Land to Mettmann. From there, we followed narrow roads through small, still largely intact towns like Velbert, toward Essen. In Hattingen on the Ruhr River, on the edge of Essen, we entered an apocalyptic landscape. We knew what Düsseldorf was like after so many raids, but Essen looked worse. We passed through ruins, countless charred skeletons of façades, remnants of factories and steel mills, devastated neighborhoods. The trucks went on to Bochum and the nightmare continued. The English had waged the “First Battle of the Ruhr” in spring and summer of 1943, leveling the major industrial centers of western Germany. From Reisholz we did our part to stop it but had little success. We had seen the Ruhr cities burn from a distance. Now we saw the extent of destruction from up close. We sat in silence as the trucks rumbled on. Past Bochum we let Gelsenkirchen lie to the west. Even from a distance we recognized that the city was in a similar condition to the ones we had seen. Twelve kilometers farther to the northeast, we got to Recklinghausen. It lay largely buried in rubble like the others.
Flakhelfer to Grenadier: Memoir of a Boy Soldier, 1943-1945 Page 10
