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

by Karl Heinz Schlesier

  I wondered. Hüls, a major chemical factory devoted to the German war effort in producing chemical weapons, was left alone by the Allies. So was Eggebek airfield from which V-1 attacks were unleashed against England. In addition, the fighter wing operating from the same airfield was an obstacle to the Allied air war, and thus a target. Why were places such as these spared when crippled population centers on the Ruhr, the Rhine, and elsewhere, hit dozens and dozens of times and reduced to almost nothing, were still under attack? I called on my Flakhelfer experience from Reisholz and Hüls, where I had seen cities burn around us almost night after night. None of this made any sense.

  Late on the morning of October 17 the battalion was again on the shooting range. We were used to the frequent taking off and landing of fighter planes, but suddenly we heard a different sound, the growling of aircraft engines of lots of planes flying low and close together. We stood and listened. The light Flak around the airfield opened up. And then we saw them. They hugged the flat countryside, aiming at the airfield or targets there, flying perhaps 200 meters (600 feet) above ground. Fighter planes in gaudy colors with strange markings rapidly closed in. I recognized them from our study sessions on aircraft in Hüls. Spitfires! English! Their cannons let loose. For a few seconds, guns from the ground and the towers combined to make a tremendous noise. Then the Spitfires streaked by the airfield command post, barely missing it, and disappeared. Smoke billowed from a number of places on the airfield. Something had been hit. Someone pointed to the northwest. A number of farm buildings were aflame in the direction from which the Spitfires had approached. Our Flak had missed and had hit farms behind them. We never learned what damage the attack had done to German aircraft on the airfield and in hangars. We were told two of the raiders were shot down, both crashing on the runway.

  It was the only raid on the Eggebek airfield during the weeks I was there.

  Waiting. The RAD dress uniforms we had received upon arrival represented an empty promise. We wore them once when a high-ranking Bonze came for an inspection, and the time the battalion was marched through mud as punishment for an infraction most of us knew nothing about. We were never allowed to leave the camp, but then, where could we have gone except to visit the Holstein milk cows that grazed on pastures all around us.

  Training went on relentlessly although Allied ground forces had reached the German border in the west and the Russians were approaching East Prussia. The ancient city of Aachen had fallen in late October. From Aachen to Cologne and the Rhine River was only 60 kilometers, to Düsseldorf, 75. How long would it take the Americans to cover that distance? What were we doing in Eggebek? Perhaps this would be over soon?

  What little we knew came from the letters parents sent us. My parents, who wrote regularly, tried to be positive and didn’t mention the disasters that were befalling us everywhere. But I knew how to read between the lines and I understood how they felt. The Bonzen kept us in the dark, responding to the flow of bad news they alone had access to with stiffer and stiffer training, as if we alone would be the answer to all problems. Of course, the demise of the Third Reich would be their own demise, too. But what about us boys? The “wonder weapons” that Hitler had promised turned out to be the V-1 and V-2 rockets, but these had not changed anything. We watched the V-1 go Huckepack (piggy- back) on the He 111s in the dark of night – not a sign of confidence.

  We were afraid, distressed. Only the Hitler Youth wings of true believers still expected a German “final victory.” The rest of us got a brief respite in our condition when the top Bonze from our camp, the commandant, a sinister hard-liner, was arrested by what we thought were Gestapo and was taken away. We learned he was accused of corruption, selling food from our camp supplies on the black market for personal gain.

  Such wartime transgressions were punished in the Nazi state with the death sentence. The Hitler Youth wing remained silent about the incident. Not the rest of us. The hypocrite! He had been in a cushy job far from danger, training us to fight for the “Führer” and the Fatherland to the last, and then used his position to enrich himself. Many of us felt he would get what he deserved.

  In a letter dated November 8, my parents told me that Düsseldorf had been bombed again during the night of November 2-3. I was sure they mentioned it only to calm my fears for them in case I had heard about it. They could not know that in Eggebek we knew nothing of the continuing air war because we were deprived of all information. Gerresheim, at least, had been spared again.

  Because we got modest rations of cigarettes as RAD men, I had become a smoker. As kids earlier, we had sometimes puffed in the woods or other secluded spots. They were cigarettes we had taken from our homes without our parents’ knowledge. Those pranks had been fun, although we didn’t enjoy smoking; at that time we usually threw up or felt dizzy. In Eggebek we got past that and joined the ranks of the adults.

  Time passed and we all got more and more restless. We knew what was ahead for us. We were finally informed that on December 14 our battalion would be disbanded. We would await our draft notices for the Heer at home. The morning of December 14 came. For a last time we stood in formation on the square and watched the flag with the swastika being lowered. Returning our RAD uniforms and gear took some time. Singly and in groups we walked to the Eggebek railway station, leaving the RAD experience behind us forever.

  Train to Düsseldorf. The trip home turned out to be a nightmare. Four hundred boys tried to get home, most to distant places like me. Why had we been sent halfway across Germany to Eggebek when there were RAD camps closer to home? From Schleswig, a city southeast of Eggebek, half of us went to Kiel and Lübeck and other places on the Baltic Sea coast. The other half went south to Hamburg. It was not easy. We had to wait for trains, and when they finally came they were already crowded.

  Arriving in Hamburg late, those of us who planned to go south through Hannover and beyond got a nasty surprise. We were told the railway line through Hannover had been closed for the time being. A heavy air raid had hit the city once more, just an hour before we got to Hamburg. Damage to the rail system was said to be severe. The only route for those of us who needed to go to the Ruhr cities or the Rhineland was through Bremen, and from there through Osnabrück and Münster to Dortmund. Many of us went to Bremen, getting there in the dark. No train left for the south that night. Those that had to continue went to shelters that existed in or near every major railway station.

  In the morning we saw some soldiers and civilians standing around a radio. I and a few others of our bunch went to listen. We heard that this very morning a major operation called the Ardennes Offensive had started in the west. German armored divisions were advancing into Belgium on a broad front. The announcer’s voice was cautiously optimistic. He reported early successes. We stood with mixed feelings, in silence. We looked at each other. Faces were calm, thoughtful. They seemed to say: “All right, our soldiers are on the attack again. If they give the Amis a beating, what will that do? In the end we cannot win. They, on the other side, have everything. We have almost nothing left.” No one said it aloud but it seemed to me that everyone was thinking it.

  The group of listeners slowly broke up. We ex-RAD guys went to the information desk to ask about a train connection south to Osnabrück and Dortmund. We were told there would be none that day. The official shrugged and said that the military had ordered the rail line closed to civilian travel. Perhaps, he said, tomorrow traffic might resume.

  We spent the day and another night in Bremen. We never left the station. Bremen was as badly hit by the bombings as were the Ruhr cities. We had seen enough destruction. Outside, dark clouds and heavy rain. A grim day and night. We worried. In the morning the rail line was reopened and there actually was a train, hastily put together with cars worn from use and misuse. The train actually got away without incident toward Osnabrück. Overcrowded, it rolled on through Osnabrück and Münster and reached Dortmund. We almost felt we had made it home. The day was rainy and dark, dark clouds hanging
low, hardly moving, closing the sky on the Viermots and their little brothers, Mustangs and Lightnings and Thunderbolts. We felt lucky. The train ended in Dortmund and the last seven of us from Düsseldorf and Neuss had to wait a couple of hours for a slow train to get us to our hometowns on Sunday evening. I barely made the last streetcar to Gerresheim. It began to snow as we pulled away from the railway station. The snow became heavy when I reached my parents and home.

  1 The RAD (Reisarbeitsdienst – Reich Labor Service) was an invention of the Nazis after they came to power in 1933. Their system of militarizing German males was set up as a sequence of four stages: First stage was the Jungvolk (“Young People,” the first branch of the Hitler Youth), composed of the ten to fourteen year olds. The second stage was the Hitlerjugend proper (the second branch of the Hitler Youth), the fourteen to eighteen year olds. The third stage was the RAD, the eighteen year olds. Following the RAD, young men were transferred into the Armed Forces. The Jungvolk wore black and brown uniforms. Hitlerjugend the same. RAD men wore brown uniforms.

  Boys were first drafted into the Jungvolk and passed through successive stages. Nothing in the process was voluntary; passing through the stages was an obligation, considered a duty to the State. Only when transferred into the Armed Forces did inductees have a choice: they could volunteer for the Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine and, after 1939, for the Waffen-SS (the military arm of the SS). All girls were inducted into an equivalent all-female organization of ten to fourteen year olds (BDM, Bund Deutscher Mädchen, League of German Girls), a girls’ Jungvolk.

  The RAD, from its inception, was a semi-military organization where men were housed in labor camps for a period of nine months preceding transfer into the Armed Forces. The task of the RAD was to provide physical labor for the “public good,” such as building roads and bridges, drying swamps, clearing land for cultivation, constructing canals, etc. Pay was minimal. By 1944 the nine-month period of service had been reduced to twelve weeks of basic military training because the Armed Forces had begun to draft not only the eighteen year olds, but the seventeen year olds as well. The RAD had run out of men who could serve longer.

  5

  Interlude

  December 17 1944-January 5 1945

  Home. My mother embraced me wordlessly. Even my father, who rarely allowed himself to show emotion, gave me a handshake and a half embrace. We looked at each other. They both appeared worn and sad, but their eyes were alive. I didn’t know how they saw me. We only had a short time to talk. If bad weather had kept the American bombers away during the day, it did nothing to deter the RAF. Their Lancasters and Halifaxes could be relied upon to come at night during any weather, as long as they could take off in England. And that night was no different. We spent two hours in the basement shelter until near midnight when the all-clear signals howled.

  I already felt odd in the basement. At first I thought it might be because the neighbors stared at me. I could understand their curiosity, but this was too much. I was not used to civilians anymore, having spent so much time in the company of uniformed men and boys. I quickly became hostile. But I also felt a burning agitation in my body, a sudden surge of heat. There was a pain in my throat and it became painful to swallow. I looked at the floor below me, trying to adjust. My mother noticed that something was wrong. I could see the worry in her eyes as she put a hand on my shoulder. Then she placed both hands on my temples. “You have a fever,” she said. I started to get up but my father said, “wait a little, this will be over soon.” I held out, but when the sirens screamed and we could leave I fell into bed.

  Because of the fever my mother sat by me and applied an old folk medicine technique, the only treatment at hand. She wrapped my calves with wet, cold compresses, “to draw the fever out.” I wasn’t sure it would help but I was in no condition to argue. When the compresses warmed up my father went and freshened them with cold water. I was shaking badly. Lymph nodes under my lower jaw were swollen. My throat was raw. My parents agreed, “It’s tonsillitis.” I had had it once before when I was younger.

  When I woke up in the morning, Dr. Strunk stood at my bed. He was our family physician who had his practice in his big house two blocks away. My mother had rushed to bring him. He checked me out, looked at my red, swollen tonsils and confirmed the diagnosis, “Tonsillitis.” Not a serious disease. The only medication he was able to prescribe was a foul smelling bluish liquid I had to gargle with about twice every hour. My mother got it from a pharmacy and I went to work with it. I spent four days in bed, but recovered from the dead on December 21.

  I felt a little weak but in good spirits. Perhaps the tonsillitis had been the product and aftermath of the turmoil in Eggebek. Dr. Strunk did one wonderful thing for us. He took my draft notice and he mailed it to the WBK, the Wehrbezirks-Kommando, in Düsseldorf, with a medical report stating that I was not capable of military service due to a severe illness. My parents knew the doctor as a man opposed to the regime. We thought he had exaggerated my condition. My parents were relieved because I would be safe and at home for a while.

  The air raid on the night of my arrival had been on Duisburg, 25 kilometers north of us. On the night of December 21-22 it was Köln again. It could have been us. It seemed that I was back in the old rut after a brief respite in Eggebek. There was no point in brooding about it. Instead we concentrated on Christmas, a few days away. There were Christmas trees available in a nursery in lower Gerresheim, and on Friday, December 22, my father and I went to get one. It was a beautiful fir, about six feet tall. I carried it home through the snow, handling it like a baby. My mother stood it in a bucket of water in our empty garage for the night. The following morning I brought it upstairs and into the living room. My father and I put it up and decorated it. We put on the electric lights and the old, fragile glass ornaments that had been in our family from great-grandmother’s time in colors of gold and silver and red and green. While doing so we each smoked a cigarette and had a small glass of brandy. It wasn’t like old times but it was pretty good.

  Ah, Christmas. On Saturday, December 23, the day before Christmas Eve, I sat by the kitchen table watching my mother prepare Spekulatius cookies. Originally the dough required butter and almonds, but there were no butter and almonds. She had margarine, flower, some hazelnuts, and the necessary spices from years past. When all the ingredients were included, the dough was kneaded and compacted into a ball. I got to test a piece before she put the ball on a covered plate and placed it on the windowsill outside in the cold. It had to rest a few hours before baking could begin. Next to the Spekulatius ball hung the naked corpse of a rabbit, ready for the pot. My father had gotten it from one of his men at the machine shop.

  I stayed while my mother prepared the Christmas cake. It could not be Stollen. It would be a simple cake with dried fruit from our trees. I watched an experienced baker at work and ate some of her dried apple slices. When she put the finished mixture in its tin mold into the oven, I showed her my appreciation and then walked over to join my father in the living room.

  We had a good day together. We talked about past times we wanted to remember. We didn’t talk about the war. We knew my time with them was limited. The three of us hoped I would not be sent for Heer training in the east. Then I would go to the Russian Front. If I reported to some place west or nearby, I might get sent to the Western Front. Of two bad choices the latter seemed by far the best. But, perhaps, the war might be over before my training was finished. These thoughts hung over us like weights, regardless of how hard we tried to push them away. We sat by the lit tree while outside snowflakes danced against the windows. We were together but we felt alone. There was no alarm during the night. Perhaps the RAF also needed to celebrate the ancient message of peace.

  The Christmas Eve Mass on December 24 was again held during the late afternoon. My parents and I walked to St. Margaretha in deep snow. The inside of the basilica was as I remembered it from last year. The nativity scene was in place. Musicians played a jubilant J.S.
Bach Oratorio, a message from another world. I listened to the sounds and voices that seemed to open a crack into heaven beyond the present, something eternal. The crowd around us was like last year’s. Women, children, old people, a few soldiers, some with crutches. But it was Bach who reigned, his music something to turn to in desperate times. The sermon was short. The reading of the list of the recently fallen a perversion: “Für Führer, Volk und Vaterland.” We took the meaning and the power of the oratory with us when we went home. There was nothing to say.

  But at home we went again into the presence of the lights on the tree. One more Christmas together. There were no presents. To be there, the three of us together, was the gift.

  Miss Jonen. Dr. Strunk’s letter to the WBK delivered a surprising result. On December 27, I received a formal statement from that office in the mail. It said that my draft order had been “canceled until further notice.” I was granted a bit more time.

  After I read the letter I went to visit the city library Unter den Eichen and the librarian, Miss Jonen. She was in her early sixties now, grey-haired, a little bent, but the eyes behind the glasses were as sharp and probing as ever. We greeted each other with a fond handshake. She had been my guide into the wondrous world of books from the time I had learned to read. Through my mother she had supplied me with books in Reisholz and Hüls, and broken more than a few rules doing so. But she kept me reading, and reading worthwhile and stimulating books. We talked for a while about personal matters. She and another elderly lady had been restacking books. On top of the pile in front of her was a thick, large-format volume. I looked at it and she said with a smile, “Egyptian history, art, and religion.” She nodded. “Perhaps you should look at it. Take it home. Your mother can return it.” She knew how to tempt me.

  I took the book with me and never regretted it. This was a marvelous book, perhaps what I needed. I immersed myself in the wonders that had been Old Egypt. This book began with the Pre-Dynastic Period and carried through to the Ptolemaic Period and the Roman Conquest. Most fascinating to me, because of the great quality of the works in art and architecture, was the time from the Old Kingdom to the New Kingdom, a period lasting eleven hundred years. Eleven hundred years out of over three thousand years of Egyptian history!