Our company on the move sometime during 1943.
Standing next to my bunker near Narva, Estonia in 1944 as a newlyminted Leutnant.
Below: Petting my horse Thea during a peaceful moment in the Düna region of Lativa in the late summer of 1944.
Below: Awarding decorations to several men in my company during our retreat through Latvia in 1944.
A studio portrait taken while on leave in early 1944.
Below: One of our 150-millimeter howitzers during the retreat through the Baltic region.
Below: With several men at Narva, Estonia in May 1944, just after becoming company commander following my return to the Eastern Front.
Getting a haircut in the field. This was slightly less painful than the dental work, performed under similar circumstances.
One of the more important tasks for a soldier in the East: dealing with the ubiquitous lice.
Just after my marriage to Anneliese at a ceremony in Hamburg on December 22, 1945.
A studio portrait of Anneliese and I from 1946. Though it was a difficult year for all of Germany, we managed to maintain our hopes for a better future.
Above: Outside our home in Cleveland, Ohio in 1967, Anneliese and I are pictured with our oldest son, Harold, our daughter, Marion, and our youngest son, Ralph.
Right: Anneliese and I at a northern Ohio Oktoberfest in 1980.
Below: At the Aberdeen Proving Ground museum in Maryland in 2003, I am standing behind one of our 75-millimeter pieces.
Under this labor program, the local authorities provided my family with a Polish POW named Sigmund, a factory worker from the Polish city of Lodz. Treating him as they would any German farmhand, my family worked beside him in the fields and never encountered any problems. Though government regulations stipulated that POWs should eat separately from German families, my mother ignored them and regularly set a place for Sigmund at our dining room table.
Eventually the authorities permitted the POWs to live out on the farms, if there was a space where they could be safely confined. Obtaining special permission, my family gave Sigmund a room in the Altenteil (my grandparents’ former home). This positive experience with Sigmund was repeated later in the war with two Belgian POWs whom the government supplied to my family as farm labor. Despite such changes, life in Püggen still appeared almost normal and the war seemed far away for those not engaged in the fighting.
In the middle of my two-week visit with my family, I departed Püggen on August 21 to see Anneliese in Hamburg. Despite the passage of two years since we had last spent any significant time together, our increasingly frequent exchange of letters had brought us closer, though she still remained engaged to the florist’s son.
Arriving in Hamburg, I met Anneliese not far from the florist shop in the Arkade across the Alster River from city hall, where she had been working since leaving her position at the shop in the city’s main train station earlier that spring. In the half a day that followed, we quickly recaptured the intimacy of our early relationship as we talked and strolled around the city. Our time together was everything that I had imagined while I had been frozen in the snow at Uritsk and mired in the mud at the Volkhov.
From the moment I saw Anneliese again, I began to think seriously for the first time that she would make a wonderful wife, even if she was engaged to someone else. Unable to conceal my sentiments, I told her, “I am sorry. I do not want to interfere. But I still love you.” What she chose to do was her decision, but it was important to me that she understood my feelings for her.
Just before I boarded the train to return to Püggen for the remaining week of my leave, Anneliese handed me a gold cloverleaf talisman, promising it would bring me good luck. Placing the gift in the breast pocket of my tunic, I felt confident that it was only a matter of time before we would get back together.
Yet, we both now recognized that a soldier’s fate on the battlefield was very uncertain. Even with the widespread optimism over the German advances toward the Volga and the Caucasus that summer, it was clear that many soldiers would not be coming home to their loved ones.
Chapter 10
THE DEMYANSK CORRIDOR
September 1942–March 1943
NOVGOROD: September–November 1942
By the time of my return from my three-week furlough at the beginning of September, part of the 58th Division had been transferred about 70 miles south of Leningrad to a position on the north shore of Lake Ilmen, located only about 15 or 20 miles south of the Volkhov battlefield. When I reached my company, it had taken up quarters in deserted Russian homes on the southern outskirts of the ancient Russian city of Novgorod.
Our mission to help guard the far northern coast of Lake Ilmen against any potential amphibious operations from the Soviet-held eastern shore was a relatively easy assignment. Even if the Russians somehow managed to conduct a surprise amphibious landing in company or battalion strength, the natural defensive advantages of our position made us confident we could easily push them back into the water before they were able to establish a secure foothold. We remained vigilant, but there was little genuine concern about an attack.
On October 15, the 154th Infantry Regiment was redesignated the 154th Grenadier Regiment. This change nominally reflected the augmentation of its overall firepower through an increase in heavy weapons such as machine guns and large mortars. In reality, any increase in firepower could not fully compensate for the regiment’s attrition of manpower that had reduced our overall strength by at least a battalion. Retaining a strong sense of pride in our unit, we saw little significance in the redesignation.
Despite our continued regular training exercises, our assignment to a quiet sector permitted us more time to relax. While the weather remained warm enough, some of us laid beside the shore of Lake Ilmen. It almost felt like an extension of my leave, as I sat in the sun reading letters from home.
Following my visit to Hamburg, the pace of my exchange of correspondence with Anneliese had increased. Within weeks, I received the news that I had been hoping for—Anneliese had decided to break off her engagement and build a relationship with me. Ironically, having just won back her heart, I proceeded to lose the gold cloverleaf charm she had given me for luck.
Though Novgorod was just a fifteen-minute walk from our position, I only once ventured into the city to wander its deserted streets. Typical of most Soviet communities, it was mainly filled with small wooden shacks and plain concrete buildings. Only the large bronze sculptures located in the central plaza near the town’s city hall made a favorable impression on me.
My visit to one of the city’s onion-domed churches so characteristic of Russia presented a mixed picture. While its exterior remained relatively intact, the church’s dilapidated interior had been used to store grain or beets. This sacrilegious vandalism reinforced my view of the Communists as barbaric atheists who posed a grave danger to Europe’s Christian civilization.
Meanwhile, other soldiers from my regiment took advantage of our location on the lake to go fishing. Instead of using rods or nets, they would toss standard kilo-sized blocks of explosives into the water, causing stunned or dead fish to rise to the surface for easy retrieval. In a tragic incident, four soldiers fishing this way were killed when they accidentally blew up their own boat. Even during the quietest moments in Russia, death never seemed far away.
DEMYANSK: November 1942–February 1943
As part of its general counteroffensive in the winter of 1941–1942, the Red Army had staged an assault against German lines south of Lake Ilmen. By early February, the enemy had succeeded in isolating our units holding the areas around Demyansk, forcing the troops there to be supplied by air.
In late April, the Wehrmacht counterattacked and forced through an overland route to the isolated troops, but the roughly four-milewide and seven-and-a-half-mile-long supply corridor remained precarious. At the end of November 1942, the 58th Infantry Division joined other German divisions transferring south of Lake Ilmen to help prot
ect this vital, but still vulnerable land bridge to the Demyansk pocket.
With another Russian winter already upon us, our division moved into an area just above the Pola River along the north side of the Schlauch in the hilly terrain known as the Valdai Heights. However, as was usually the case, most of us lacked any knowledge of our geographic location and were only aware of our immediate tactical situation.
The fighting at Demyansk remained fairly constant, though in our area it lacked the intensity of what we had endured at the Volkhov. In resisting several large assaults and frequent smaller raids against our lines by the Red Army, we sometimes yielded or seized ground in tactical retreats or advances, but the frontlines remained relatively stable. While these operations were of much greater consequence, it was the small, personal encounters that most stood out for me.
Reaching our newly assigned post on a low ridge along this corridor, my communications specialist and I joined a group of other soldiers in a large bunker near the front that served as the living quarters. Because it was impossible to dig out an underground bunker or trenches in the frozen, rock-hard earth, it had been constructed above ground with snow camouflaging the log walls. A snow wall facing the Russian lines offered additional protection. Nearby, there was also a small observation tower.
In spite of our efforts to create a secure position, we soon began to be plagued by sniper fire from a Soviet sharpshooter. Fearful of getting hit, we were forced to remain inside the confined space of the bunker during the daylight hours. After this situation had persisted for several days, I finally grew frustrated and decided to do something about it.
Grabbing a Mauser rifle, I made my way from our bunker to the snow rampart. Crouching down on my knees, I carved out a small aperture through the wall with my hands. Scrutinizing the winter landscape, there was nothing that gave away the location of the enemy sharpshooter.
Suddenly, a shot burst through the snow wall, passing just over the top of my helmet. Accepting my defeat in our brief duel, I pulled my rifle from the hole and quickly ducked back into our bunker. As far as I was concerned, we would have to learn to live with the threat of the sniper.
Soon afterward, I was surveying the enemy lines from the observation tower when I observed a Russian soldier walking out in the open through the snow about 500 yards away from our position. As I shouted down a fire mission, an infantryman aimed a small 50-millimeter mortar and dropped a round into the tube.
When the shell impacted about 50 feet from the Russian, he appeared to be startled. Suddenly realizing his perilous situation, he took off running through the deep snow and never stopped. Despite the gauntlet of fire created by the half-dozen mortar rounds falling around him, he somehow escaped unharmed. Sometimes war seemed more like a harmless game rather than the deadly struggle it really was.
My turn as the quarry would come a few weeks later at another frontline bunker, located perhaps a mile from our previous position.
The morning after my arrival there, I awoke to discover an overnight snowfall had built upon previous accumulations to leave a powdery cushion a foot deep. Leaving the bunker with a field telephone, I trudged a short distance through the picturesque winter landscape until I reached a good observation point. Concealed by my white camouflage, I remained standing in order to better survey the surrounding terrain.
Without even lifting my binoculars, a quick scan of the enemy position immediately revealed a couple of Red Army bunkers. Protruding six feet above ground, the structures were plainly visible from my position less than 100 yards away. Though fresh snow now partially covered the layer of protective earth piled onto the bunkers, they appeared to be of recent construction and clearly posed a direct challenge to our control of the area.
Selecting the closer and larger of the two, I called back firing coordinates to one of our 150-millimeter howitzers, requesting a single round on the roughly 30-square-foot target. In a couple of minutes, an explosion threw up a cloud of snow about 20 yards to the left of the bunker. After adjusting the distance and direction, the second round landed 10 yards to the right. Advancing a little closer to better observe the target, I made a further correction and requested a delayed fuse.
This round found its mark. Just after it smashed through the roof of the bunker, there was a loud whoosh of air as the shell with the delayed fuse detonated inside the structure a second later. The only thing observable externally was a little white smoke that drifted out through the roof.
Before I could call back the targeting coordinates for the second bunker, enemy mortar rounds suddenly began bursting in the snow around me. Despite my camouflage, a Soviet observer had somehow spotted me during the twenty minutes that had passed. Now I was the prey.
Moving clumsily through the snow, I headed for cover in our bunker a dozen yards away. Just over halfway to the entrance, a shell exploded right behind me. I felt a rush of air, but the deep snow partially absorbed the force of the blast, probably sparing me from serious injury.
Gaining the relative safety of our bunker, I asked an infantry soldier inside whether I had been hit. Examining the back of my padded jacket, he confirmed that it was perforated with tiny holes caused by metal splinters from the mortar round. During the next half-hour, he painstakingly removed the small shrapnel fragments from my skin. Once again I had been lucky to avoid more serious injury.
Because the precision involved in targeting enemy bunkers was a great challenge, it became my favorite task as forward observer. My success in knocking out perhaps a half dozen of these structures over the previous year had earned me a reputation as a bunker-busting specialist inside the 13th Company. The destruction of the large bunker on the Demyansk corridor, however, had drawn me unwanted attention from the enemy.
Around this time, the Red Army had begun to deploy loudspeakers on the frontlines to spout propaganda and threats delivered in perfect German. Perhaps a week after my successful elimination of the bunker, a soldier from one of the regular infantry companies asked me if I had heard the Russians calling out my name over the loudspeakers.
Replying that I had not, he informed me that these broadcasts were threatening me personally, announcing, “Lübbecke, when we catch you, we’ll cut off your nuts!” Apparently, a captured German soldier had identified my role in destroying their bunker.
From experience, I regarded this warning very seriously. In at least one recent instance, the Russians had castrated a sergeant and a corporal captured from one of our regiment’s infantry companies. We discovered them the next day, dead from loss of blood.
Such brutality reinforced our determination to avoid being taken prisoner by the Red Army at all costs, even if we had to take our own lives to escape that fate. This mentality was totally different than the mindset we possessed during the French campaign. If surrounded by French troops, I would have surrendered with confidence that I would be treated humanely.
Realizing that the isolated position at Demyansk was a strategic liability, the army’s high command began withdrawing equipment in early February 1943. On February 17, it officially ordered the evacuation of the pocket to begin. Though under intense pressure from Soviet forces, the German Army conducted an orderly retreat. The 58th Infantry Division pulled out of the area on February 24.
NOVGOROD: March 1943
At the beginning of March 1943, our division returned to the north coast of Lake Ilmen to occupy a new defensive position near Novgorod, not far from where we had served the previous fall guarding against potential amphibious operations. Now the thick winter ice covering Lake Ilmen provided a hard crust across which Russian forces could carry out “land” operations.
In the weeks that followed, however, the Red Army’s attacks across the frozen lake proved disastrous failures because of our ability to spot their approach across the flat surface at a great distance. Even under the cover of darkness, the Soviets found it difficult to move across the ice since we could illuminate the area with floodlights when we heard anything approachin
g.
When the Russians made their attempts, the heavier artillery pounded them so effectively that they generally never even came within range of our company’s guns located a couple of miles from the shoreline. As the artillery shells shattered the lake’s ice shell, men and equipment would slide into the freezing waters below.
In a battalion-sized attack against the regiment positioned next to us, the Red Army employed a number of large motorized sleds, apparently intending to cross the frozen lake before our forces could react. This particular assault did succeed in reaching our lines, but the enemy was soon repulsed with heavy casualties.
The relative security of our position at Novgorod allowed us a little time to relax. Among the German troops, perhaps the most readily embraced feature of Russian culture was the banya (bathhouse), typically built about 50 yards behind a Russian home. After steaming ourselves inside, we would exit the banya to cool ourselves in the snow. On one of these occasions, someone started a snowball fight. Still naked, we engaged in a running battle in the frozen winter landscape, momentarily forgetting the real war.
Despite the Wehrmacht’s successful evacuation of the Demyansk pocket to more defensible positions, and small tactical victories like those we achieved at Novgorod, our previously high morale slowly began to decline in 1943. For Army Group North, the war had definitively shifted to a defensive struggle to hold the gains achieved in 1941, while the Soviets now held the military initiative.
At Leningrad's Gates Page 16
