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

by Karl Heinz Schlesier

  At the End, a Lightning. Back in Hüls the four of us buddies were transferred to 3. Zug for a week, then to the Vierlings-Zug. The battery had already been a skeleton unit when we arrived back on January 18 1944. Now it seemed the battery was coming apart. We did the routine things expected of us but we were biding our time. We knew our enlistment orders for the RAD could arrive any time. We realized our time in Hüls was over but we also dreaded the consequences. We didn’t know where we would go from here; each would go on his own. We would not be together any longer. Perhaps we might never see each other again.

  The air war continued unabated. The RAF flew nine night attacks, including two on Königsberg. Königsberg in East Prussia? The ancient city of the German Teutonic Knights, built after their order removed from the Kingdom of Jerusalem during the Crusades. What was there to destroy? American Viermots flew no less than 32 sorties during the same period of nearly four weeks. They hit Düsseldorf again on September 9, a Saturday. We wondered once again what was left in our hometown that justified another attack. And what about our parents? We had no way to know if they were all right or even still alive. The uncertainty was torturous. We had one more class meeting on September 4, Monday. It was to be the last time. This episode in our lives was over, too.

  The only significant event to directly affect us happened on September 17. There was considerable air activity. American fighter planes, Mustangs and Lightnings, filled the sky engaging German fighters, Me 109s and Fw 190s, in furious combat. We had manned the Vierlings. I sat in the gunner’s seat, Wenner in the K 3 position on the gun to my left, Thei as K 4 on the right. We were ready if someone strayed into our range. The guns were aimed in the 9 o’clock position, covering the Hüls factory. We sat, watching the combat, the net of vapor trails across the sky. Nothing happened for a while. Then we heard the sound of aircraft at 3 o’clock. Swarms of Me 109s, with drop tanks under their bellies for long distance flight, hurried to the northwest, flying low and hugging features in the land. Lightnings and Mustangs swooped down on them. The Messerschmitts didn’t give battle, but continued on their flights. We saw two shot down, bursting into flames as they hit the ground. As we watched we suddenly heard the Fähnrich’s call from the command post between the revetments, “Enemy aircraft at 3 o’clock!”

  I whirled the gun in that direction and then saw it. A single Lightning coming straight toward our position at a height of perhaps 500 meters (1500 feet). The pilot’s attention must have focused on the distant engagement and not noticed the deadly danger in front of him. I had the plane in my sight as it came on, my feet on the fire pedals. The closer it came, the more eagerly we awaited permission to fire. But it didn’t come. So the pretty, deadly bird flew over, unscathed. I followed it and swung the gun around as it went over us, covering it as it flew away. Only then did the section chief give the okay to shoot. I fired a burst with all four barrels but I undershot the plane. So did the others. I should have held lower. It wasn’t our fault. It would have been a sure kill if we had been allowed to shoot as it was coming in. Either the Fähnrich was a coward or he didn’t trust us to shoot straight, or both. Or he was afraid the plane would crash on our heads. In any case, this one got away and, maybe, that was best for all concerned. We learned later that an English Airborne Division had been dropped at Arnhem. That explained why the Messerschmitts had kept going in spite of being attacked. They were needed elsewhere.

  This, it turned out, had been my last action as a Flakhelfer. Two days later a letter arrived from my parents with my enlistment order for the RAD. A few others received them the same day, the rest a day or two later. Each of us was ordered to different places. I was to report to a RAD camp in Eggebek in Schleswig-Holstein, near the border with Denmark. Thus, our Rethel Gymnasium group was broken up forever. We did not know who would replace us. The next crews were probably boys from secondary schools born in 1928. We turned our gear in, received our discharge papers and the rest of the pay due us, and set out for Recklinghausen and a train to Düsseldorf. One more phase of our lives had ended.

  Before I left, I sneaked into one of the ammo bunkers and took three shells out: one armor-piercing (black top), one high explosive (yellow top), one incendiary (red tip on yellow top). This was the sequence with which they were rotated in magazines. I took them home with me and put them on the bookshelves in my room, as souvenirs, I guess. I can’t tell you why. I don’t know what I was thinking.

  4

  RAD Man

  September 27-December 15 1944

  Train to Hamburg. I spent three nights and two full days with my parents. During the first night, September 23-24, we went to the basement for two hours when the RAF bombed Dortmund and, closer, Neuss, southwest across the Rhine from us. There was no alarm the next two nights. My paren ts were glad my days in Hüls were over because of the constant threat of a major attack. They hoped my time with the RAD would be safe. After fifteen months as a Flakhelfer a mere twelve weeks in the RAD should not be too challenging.1

  What they were worried about was what inevitably followed the RAD: the Heer. I didn’t want to think that far.

  The fact that I had to report to Eggebek was considered a blessing – because the camp was located in a rural area far away from population centers and other targets of the air war. But getting there was difficult and dangerous. I had to travel through the ruins of the Ruhr cities still under the threat of bombing as, for instance, Dortmund, hit again only nights before. And I must pass through other haunted places such as Paderborn, Hannover, and Hamburg.

  We spent two good days together. In the early morning of September 26, I left my parents for the streetcar to the city and the Düsseldorf main railway station. It was still functioning, though surrounded by mountains of debris and twisted rails. I had taken a raincoat and a satchel filled with some personal items including a few books. I also took with me the memory of my parents’ pale, distressed faces, their huge eyes.

  I had to wait, but eventually boarded a train that would go as far as Hannover. From there I had to look for a train to take me to Hamburg. Train travel in our part of Germany had become hazardous and erratic. Schedules were irregular, depending on the exigencies of wartime. That trains still ran at all, in spite of the heavy bombing, was a near miracle. The effort to make it happen was gargantuan but it was done and it worked.

  Again, I traveled through the apocalyptic, desolated landscape that was the Ruhr. Near the little town of Herdecke, twelve kilometers south of Dortmund, the trains suddenly halted and all passengers were ordered out. Sirens screamed everywhere. An American air raid was striking Osnabrück a hundred kilometers to the northeast. And additional bomber formations were closing in from the northwest, their target unknown. The train was emptied and passengers hurried to bomb shelters, simple cellars in buildings near the railroad. They were already filled. We sat crammed together, all civilians, nearly all old people and women with children on their knees. We sat quietly, listening. I didn’t think this place was in real danger, but what about Dortmund? When we heard the sound of heavy bombing from far away we knew it was too far to be Dortmund. Still we had to wait until sirens gave the all-clear signal. Then we crowded the train again. We were informed that the city of Hamm had been struck, 35 kilometers to the northeast.

  This time the recent Dortmund attack had not affected the rail system. In the western part of the city fires still smoldered; we saw and smelled the smoke. We went slow through the badly damaged city, but we went. In Düsseldorf I had noted that Vierlings had been added to the front and rear of our train. I would have felt more comfortable if I had been given a chance to man one of them. I didn’t know who the gunners were, Flakhelfer or soldiers. It seemed that low-level attacks by Allied fighter planes were becoming a real threat.

  Nothing happened to us, though, and the train made Hannover in the early evening. Along the way, little towns and villages appeared untouched. Paderborn showed plenty of ruins, but Hannover, attacked so many times, was devastated. I
n the station I found out that the train to Hamburg would leave in the morning. I spent the night on a cot in a shelter, a collection place for traveling soldiers and persons like me. I was admitted after my papers were checked by Feldpolizei. On the four cots next to me were soldiers going on furlough to Hamburg and towns nearby. They had come all the way from Greece. They had little leather bags among their gear with leaf tobacco grown there, and they treated them like treasures. They were in high spirits and passed a bottle of ouzo, offering me a drink and a cigarette. I gladly accepted. Our happy hour time came to an end when a military policeman told us to quit.

  The train arrived before 7 A.M. and left quickly, as if trying to get away from the city. We covered the 140 kilometers to Hamburg in about three hours, gratefully, without incident. The Viermots must have been busy elsewhere.

  Hamburg was a frightful sight. Blocks on end with fire-blackened façades and the empty holes of windows behind which interiors had been converted to mounds of rubble. The Alster was an oily, dark swamp. The Old Testament’s Gomorrah had truly found a modern match. There still was a railway station, though, and three hours later I got a train north to Flensburg, on the border with Denmark. South of Flensburg I left the train at Eggebek, nothing more than a hamlet on the railroad. I walked to the RAD camp a few kilometers away. It was late afternoon. I showed my enlistment order and was directed to headquarters. There I presented both my enlistment order and Flakhelfer discharge papers and was supplied with the accoutrements of a RAD man, including fatigues and dress uniform. Both were in brown color, “the color of shit,” as my old friends in the Gerresheim blue-collar neighborhood used to say.

  Eggebek. The camp was an arrangement of wooden barracks around an open square with a swastika flag on the pole in the center. Perhaps 400 boys were garrisoned here along with perhaps a dozen RAD “leaders.” In principle the RAD was an extension of the Hitler Youth, and the terms for its office-holders were copied from that organization. So they were called Führer (“leaders”).

  The leaders at Eggebek saw themselves as “Hitlermen.” Without exception they were fanatical Nazis, uncompromising, acting tough. These were the men who trained us in weapons’ use, infantry tactics and long distance marches with weapons and the usual infantry gear. We didn’t think any one of them had combat experience. There were only a few German machine-guns, but we fired them regularly on the shooting range. We were basically a rifle battalion. Our rifles were Krag rifles, captured Norwegian Army rifles of a different caliber that used a loading gate instead of a clip. Their performance was as good as that of the Mauser 98 model used by our Heer.

  Discipline was excessive and ruthlessly enforced. The slightest infraction perceived by a leader was punished with a hundred push-ups or a latrine-cleaning, or both. From Flakhelfer, I had stepped into another world. Never in the batteries had an officer or non-commissioned officer even considered treating us the way these RAD Bonzen (bigwigs) did. I wondered what their military experience had been, if any. As a consequence of their attitude and our treatment, morale among the troops was low. We were listless and lethargic. We did what we were ordered but without interest. The Bonzen were despised by most of us except for a small segment of dedicated Hitler Youth. We had to be careful of them. There were a few ex-Flakhelfer, including Micha (his nickname), one of the Rethel boys who had been with me in Bad Einsiedel, Reisholz and Hüls. In Reisholz he had served in the Mess-Staffel. He stayed aloof in Eggebek, keeping to himself and to buddies in his barrack, some of whom belonged to the Hitler Youth wing. He traded with me, however, his cigarette ration for bread from my food ration.

  Eggebek was located in the northern part of Germany’s most northern province, Schleswig-Holstein. The province was framed in the west by the North Sea and in the east by the Baltic Sea. The camp was 24 kilometers south of the Danish border, 30 kilometers east of the Wattenmeer of the North Sea and 41 kilometers west of the Baltic Sea. Flat farming country surrounded us. It seemed like we were in the no-mans’ land of the war, but we weren’t. Close to the west side of the camp was a large Luftwaffe airfield with a military role we quickly came to understand. The airfield was the base of a fighter wing of Me 109s placed there to intercept American Viermots on raids against cities such as Kiel and Lübeck on the Baltic coast.

  The airfield was also a base for He 111 two-engined bombers that had outlived their original use because of inadequate speed and their high vulnerability. A new purpose had been found for them. I don’t know how many were stationed there, but every night a few were fitted with V-1 rockets. They took off for the dark sky over the North Sea where they released the rockets toward targets in England. The whole operation was cloaked in secrecy but we couldn’t help seeing what went on. We never saw how the V-1s were loaded on the He 111s frames in the hangars, but we saw the old birds roar across the runway before they lifted off and disappeared into the night. The V-1 sitting atop an He 111 was a strange sight. Later in the night the planes returned, one after another.

  After I had seen this spectacle a few times it dawned on me why the RAD camp might have been situated where it was. Were we considered a force emplaced to protect the airfield in case of a commando raid by enemy forces or some other threat? Was this why we trained so hard infantry tactics? I never found an answer to this question, and the Bonzen never talked about it.

  There was a lot of activity at the airfield. Me 109s often took off and returned during daylight, sometimes shot up. No nightfighters were stationed there. The airfield was surrounded by wooden towers and revetments with light Flak, 2cm and 3.7cm guns. There were no heavies, 8.8cm, 10.5cm, or 12.8cm guns. We never got close to one of the Züge but I was sure that Flakhelfer were involved. Perhaps all the guns were manned by them the way we had done in Hüls.

  Once a few of us were able to sneak to the edge of the airfield where a single Messerschmitt fighter plane sat in cover. There was no one around. Perhaps the plane was not in combat readiness. We walked around it and admired the sleek bird. It was painted light blue underneath, sides and upper part of the fuselage were camouflaged with grey bands and dots. A scoreboard on the rudder showed nine rectangular markings indicating nine victories. Under each wing a cannon of a caliber a bit larger than 2cm was fitted inside a gondola.

  One after another, we climbed into the pilot’s seat. When I sat in the cabin I was shocked by how narrow and confined it was. From within this tight space a pilot would fly his machine straight into the guns of a bomber box, gauge the distance, fire a burst, and pull up over a Fortresses nose? I gained a deep respect for all the fighter pilots who had to fight in such cramped quarters.

  One memorable event occurred a week after my arrival. For a reason I don’t remember, the whole battalion was punished. We were ordered to wear our dress uniforms and assemble on the square. It had rained most of the day and deep puddles of water were everywhere. The top Bonze ordered us to form up in column and marched us through the worst puddles, and back, and again. Every time we got to a puddle he gave the command “Stechschritt” (goose-step). It was the first and only time I was ordered to do this. The exercise lasted for over half an hour and ended when we were covered with watery mud from boots to upper torsos. When we were dirtied enough, we were dismissed and ordered to assemble 45 minutes later for inspection. Our soiled uniforms had to be thoroughly cleaned first, and they were.

  Had a commando raid come then, and had we been called into combat, the Bonzen might have survived the enemy, but perhaps not a couple of Krags.

  The Raid. Life became routine. Wake-up was at 7 A.M. Cross-country running, rain or shine. Cleaning up in washrooms. Dressing and readying our bed and locker for possible inspection. Flag-raising. Marching to the mess hall for breakfast. Weapons instruction. Political indoctrination. Exercises. Shooting on the range with machine-gun and rifle. Or a longer march with weapons and gear. Lunch in the mess hall. Weapon cleaning. A break. More instruction. Supper. Finally an end. Light out at 9 P.M.

  I got along with my n
ew comrades though I missed the buddies I had been with as Flakhelfer for so long. Some of the guys around me were all right. Some were not. Most were in military training for the first time. Some were sissies. Others were uninformed, uneducated, and the victims of years of propaganda. In many ways we were all victims. We all tried to learn how to survive in the war. The Bonzen were trying to teach us, but what did they really know? Did they think that Nazi ideology would protect us?

  Some of us, the handful of Flakhelfer, had already learned something the rest didn’t know. It made no difference. We were in the same boat. Our experience did not count. We were regarded with suspicion because we were considered different, students of secondary schools. Most of the others only had an elementary school education. That didn’t matter to me. But it was important to them; they were wary of us few. It should not have been that way, but it was. We had already served the guns in hard times, but that was beyond their personal experience.

  I often felt lonely. I found solace in the books I had brought with me. For a time they let me slip into a different world.

  Sometimes we shot at targets from foxholes as part of our training. But there were no foxholes around the barracks, no bomb shelters. I wondered about that. In Hüls, foxholes had been our last resort when the possibility of a major raid threatened. Here, there was nothing for our safety. Why?