In bunkers, three above ground and four underground, and the ten hospitals in Breslau, an eighteen-hour operation programme was the order of the day. The flow of casualties was unending. I had cause to visit one of the above ground-bunkers, in the search for a friend of mine, who had been wounded when we were fighting in Augustastrasse and whom I found after a long search. I found him eventually in the round, concrete and steel six-storey bunker at Striegauer Platz, which I could only describe as a catacomb of death. Originally it was to be used as an air-raid shelter for the in-habitants, but the building, which was without windows, had been used for the wounded since the siege began and housed as many as 1,500 patients. It was always full and the doctors and nurses always gave dedicated care in that mausoleum.
Entry into this bastion was through two steel, fireproof doors, designed of course for the protection from fire. Because of that, one was confronted with firstly a wall of darkness, upon passing through the doors. Secondly, one was immediately met with foul air, the stench of pus, blood and ether, mixed with a pungent sweetness, reminding one of the battlefields. A narrow stair case wound its way upstairs around the round building. The electric light was sparse, very sparse. Leading from the passages were concrete cells, for want of a better word, housing three patients lying on collapsible beds, almost in darkness, for the only light came from the passages. The delirium of dying men emerged from the ghostly darkness, together with the cries of pain or the faint murmur of “Comrade, com rade”. The suffering of mankind rang in their voices. It came from the remnants of men, who had ‘run the gauntlet’. They had received the military ‘punishment’ of that destructive war.
I wanted to escape from that horrifying place, but I found my friend in his wretchedness, lying on bare boards, bandaging protruding from underneath his open jacket. There was a light in his eyes as he saw me and silently he gave me his hand. I did my best to console him, telling him that he would pull through. But three days later he died from his wounds. If that was not enough, I saw with my own eyes the facilities available for the dead, in that situation and place of death, which were far, far less than offered in a cata -comb. The corpses were piled one on top of the other, on the ground floor near the stairs that I had to pass. My friend, with his broken ‘dog-tag’, was finally to be put on top of that pile of corpses.
There were many rumours about that bunker at Striegauer Platz, some becoming a legend. They stemmed from German soldiers not wanting to surrender it, but abandoning the burning bunker in the end. My friend and as sistant field-doctor from those times, Markwart Michler, who was an eyewitness and with whom I have been friends since we were both prisoners of war of the Russians, told me however, that a planned evacuation of the bunker took place at the end of April and the bunker was left to the Russians.
I visited Breslau in 1972 and apart from obvious shell holes in the structure, I could not determine any other form of damage and certainly no burn marks. That still mighty concrete bastion was naturally sealed against inquisitive eyes and stretched itself to heaven as usual twenty-seven years later. Twenty-seven years after, the Polish authorities had not thought it necessary to clear the rubble of war away from its portal where it still lay.
Life in the besieged city was full of contrast. Here one fought and died, there one lived and loved. The front was not recognisable as anything but a communications zone, and there was practically nothing to determine soldier from civilian, for we had become a conspiratorial community. The war was everywhere, but even that slept, if only for a short while, like a beast of prey, bloated from the blood of its sacrifice. It was then somewhat peaceful and the soldier-lad dreamed for a couple of hours of the love of a lovely girl, for it helped him to forget the nightmare of war.
Everyone in the fortress, be it soldier or civilian, now greeted one another with an ironic “Stay healthy!” this irony interpreting the ever present mind-set which did not hold much optimism of surviving. When however, the few opportunities presented themselves, then they used them to the full, with wine, song and girls, with the motto “Enjoy the war, as freedom will be hell on earth”!
We were frustrated young men. We had seen nothing of the world. We had not sown our wild oats. We had not lived or loved. What had we had from life? Was our final chapter to be death, or to freeze in the wilds of Siberia? To ignore a ‘tantalising situation’ is a question of moral determination, is it not? To enjoy this ‘tantalising situation’ while in the midst of it, one needed to adapt, to make the best of life under the slogan, “Live today, for tomorrow you die!” And we did! People must understand, that with the enormous exertions that we had to make in that besieged city, in war-time, inhibitions that we would have had to overcome in normal times, were at a minimum and quickly thrown aside.
A new order was received and executed, in the middle of March. All women and girls, from the ages of 16 to 35 years of age, were conscripted into the Labour Service, to help the military, some in uniform helping the Wehrmacht. Naturally enough this brought us into closer contact with the feminine species. Many of the girls were employed in the ordnance units and were mostly very young assistants of supplies. Some were engaged as helpers in the kitchens, others as auxiliary nurses, who were lovingly called ‘carbolic-mice’ by the men. Despite their age, these girls became mothers for confessions, comforters of the soul, and bracketed as ‘soldier-brides’. It was very easily understood, by everyone, when such young girls, alone and away from their familiar surroundings, sought the company of the soldiers. In sharing the same fate as we did in that inferno, the ‘fortress Lolitas’ were dancing on the top of this volcano with us. It is therefore no wonder that they sought, and found, more than willing guardians and protectors, in order to survive the ‘fate of Breslau’.
As a man of the cloth, the priest Ernst Hornig saw the situation differently. He criticised it as “depraved, a definite lowering of moral standards and inhibitions” and described “Orgies, whereby women and alcohol were the main priorities, and the overflowing cup of lust led to intoxication”.
Of course it was a contradiction and a paradox. Soldiers were engaged in bloody house-to-house fighting and people were enduring unbearable pain and suffering in Breslau’s hospitals. At the same time, perhaps just a couple of buildings away, comrades danced a ‘ring o’ roses’. It was however a very big exception to the rule and not to be over exaggerated, for after that ‘honeymoon in hell’ the said soldiers found themselves in the middle of a merciless battle, just a few minutes later. They could, and many often did, lose their lives. Willingness and discipline suffered the least of all under those conditions, for such virtues were too deeply rooted. Although strongly forbidden by the rules within the fortress, a short visit by lady-friends was allowed, even in the foremost lines of the front. The ‘hard-necked’ and love-hungry among the girls, donned long military coats as camouflage, daring to visit the chosen warrior at his post. It was dangerous not only because of the iron-polluted air, but also the danger of attack, and of course of being discovered on the spot. The comrades did not care and looked in the other direction. It must be said in looking back, that the soldier lost his life before his innocence. The reality of fighting within Breslau’s fortress was far from ‘love and lust’ as described by the priest Hornig, but of fighting and dying.
An affair, and my feelings for a female worker from the East, developed into a spectacular story, and one that could have had a fatal end. In the same manner that foreign volunteers fought in Germany’s army, foreign volunteers worked in civilian positions as nurses. For example, some came from the north and west European countries, as well as forced female labour from eastern Europe. It was a pure coincidence that I learned that both Flemish and Dutch nurses were working in the Spital, on the west side of the city. Overjoyed at being able to use my mother tongue, I found not only them, but also the beautiful Tanya, a Russian girl working in the kitchen. She came from somewhere around Smolensk and was very sympathetic. She had been a student and spoke very good G
erman. In our ‘fire-pauses’ I visited her, drawn very much by her beauty, and the strange aura that she radiated. She had high cheek-bones denoting her Slavic origin. I can remember very well how her dark curly hair peeped from the white headscarf that she wore. Despite her simple clothes, for me she was the absolute Venus. I warmed in particular to her sympathetic interest in the fate of my comrades at the front. When I told her of the fate of some of my friends in that merciless war, the resonance was of utter pity and sorrow.
I could not, and did not want to believe that her absence one day was because she had been arrested as an enemy spy. Tanya a Russian agent? My friends advised me very strongly not to intervene on her behalf and luckily I followed their advice. Unwillingly I realised, and later it was to be very clear to me, how dangerous such a tête-à-tête could be, for she was in truth a Russian agent. My behaviour was based on the presence of soldiers from Ukraine fighting alongside us. I wrongly assumed that she was of the same opinion as they. Before she had begun to work in the Spital, her mission had been to inform her Red Army comrades of the supply routes and movements of German troops. It was done from her hiding place under the eaves of a deserted house in Striegauer Platz, for the Russian artillery. She was not to be compared with Mata Hari from the First World War, but was more the perfect actress. I own up to being a romantic and clearly naive admirer, and became one of many of her ‘sacrificial candidates’.
We had been warned so many times! Many times in our training period we were warned about sabotage and spies, as in Reibert’s “Service Laws of the Armed Forces”. We were particularly warned about the wiles of the feminine species. I had fallen, ‘hook, line and sinker’, into that trap. Only now is the enormity of the potential results of that situation quite clear. Cleary Tanya was very interested in the situation in our fighting zone, and had shown false sympathy for the fate of my friends. I found some consolation in the fact that I, as a subordinate, could not and did not give her any important strategic information, thank God! Despite an enormous disappointment in Tanya’s character, I had to admire her courage and her dedication to her Bolshevik convictions. It could have led to her execution, as the International Rights of Law permitted. But it pained me too. It did not turn out that way, however. Fate decided to show Tanya some mercy, at least provisionally.
Long after the war, I was informed by one of the women who had also worked in the Spital, that she had seen Tanya, in the uniform of a Lieutenant of the Red Army, driving in an open horse-drawn coach through the city, decorated with medals. I would have loved to have had the chance to ask her how she had escaped, or was freed, for that was a real wonder. The throw of the dice from ‘lady luck’ had given her the ‘six’ that she needed. Never had a German soldier such a peaceful, happy and also naive relationship, with a member of the enemy, and a Russian agent at that.
There are times when the truth is not as believable as fantasy or fiction, but is none the less the truth, such as the following. Our soldiers bumped into their well-armed Russian counterparts on a wander through the cellars, looking for wine. It was to be found in well-stocked but deserted cellars. They bumped into a group of Russian soldiers with the same idea. The ‘Ivans’ and the ‘Fritzes’ it would appear, had the same fine nose for the bottle, and both had the same needs.
Although armed, there was a stand-off. Perhaps the Russians, already in a light state of stupor, decided that reasonableness under the motto, ‘well, you find what you want, and we’ll do the same!’ was the best course of action. For that is exactly what they did. Is there anything more curious than that? It is said that Roman warriors fought with a short, sharp sword in their right hand and a bottle of ‘juice from the grape’ in the other.
The ‘good stuff’ was not the only necessity sought after in the cellars of Breslau, shelter was sought, too. It was in those cellars that both the civilians and the military found protection, when not on duty. The ceilings had been strongly supported with wooden or steel posts, to prevent collapse. The advantage of the man-made passages through the cellars, connecting whole streets with one another, was that one could escape when trapped in a house. It was carried out at the beginning of the siege and was the escape route for both the inhabitants and the soldiers, during the air raids. There was, at the same time, an orienteering problem down below. You had to know where you were and how to get to your destination. Otherwise you very quickly found yourself behind enemy lines, bumping into the ‘Ivans’. The problem was quickly recognised and the routes provisionally walled-up, or under armed guard.
Along the front-line, the cellars of the houses were emptied of their contents. Everything landed in the garden or the back yard, but the big, fat rats, in whose territory we were encroaching, stayed. The doors of their quarters were the drains into the underworld and their numbers were not small. There were literally hundreds, which is why one had to sleep, when sleep was possible, with one’s blanket over one’s head. Chairs had been commandeered for the cellars from the deserted or damaged flats and houses. So we were hunched together in the pantries or coke-rooms, or where space allowed, pale faces giving a ghostly appearance in the flickering candlelight. There was seldom conversation, as it disturbed those who dozed while sitting in a chair. We were in a continual state of listening, with at least one ear cocked as an antenna. Our weapons had been cleaned in the lull and were at the ready, for the ‘enemy’ must not surprise us.
When peaceful in our zone, then we always heard the spasmodic rat-tat-tat of Russian machine-guns and mortar fire somewhere else. When we were the target, we knew that we had to go into action immediately after the firing ceased, into close combat. With that habit one could have slept for a couple of hours, in theory, but we never relied on this, it being the unspoken advice of our inner guardian. When exhaustion overcame us, which was often, and we slept, then it was always only enough for a short dream or two. Our dreams were never about the gruesome war, for our unconscious saw to it that we had a recovery period from it. We dreamed about the exciting and the peaceful. With death breathing down the back of my neck, I dreamed about my trouble-free childhood playing in green meadows, in the polder. My brothers, sisters and parents, and all of Zierikzee, came to life when I was dreaming. It was only after the war and my time as a prisoner of war was over, that my dreams then plagued me. They became nightmares about the war and followed me in my sleep for many, many years after.
In comparison with our brothers-in-arms on the front line, who were never in danger of aerial bombardment or very heavy artillery fire, we were regularly under shell fire from the Russians. “When the ‘Ivan’ spits”, began the verbal apprenticeship of newcomers from the ‘old hands’ of the Eastern Front, or “when it bangs over there, then count to twenty, for it’s a twenty-gun salute!” Then we had to ‘watch out’. If you were surprised by a sudden swish in the air, then hit the ground ‘pronto’, for that could be your end. “If that hits you, it is not only you but everything and everyone around!” The conversation was about the Russian ‘Big Bertha’ whose shells had a very sensitive detonator. The shells detonated on a hair’s-width contact with the earth, without making a crater but reducing everything to splinters as they raced, flat over the ground. Everything and everyone without adequate protection, was grated into splinters, within a radius of 50 metres. A weapon with a steep trajectory, it was ideal in reaching much wider targets behind the defensive lines and field positions. Although we had this weapon too, it was of course the German version.
When the alarm went, we sprang up instantly, using the already rubble-covered steps, to join the combat above. In the pauses, the positions were only protected by a one-man guard and a machine-gunner. When well and truly lost in rubble-reduced Breslau, and one heard that whistling projectile, then one had to duck to avoid it. Your luck had run out when you were a part of a direct hit. In the mountain of rubble within the fortress, we felt that we had returned to that of the Middle Ages with battlements and embrasures. We were surrounded by an overpowering enemy o
utside its walls.
The reliability of our comrades within our battalion was still very strong, despite heavy losses. That was something at which Tanya had wondered, on meeting my comrades, into whose eyes she looked, to find them still full of optimism. It must have been clear to her, why all of the assaults of her Red Army friends had failed till then. The crown of laurel leaves was for them as ‘victors’, but it remained out of reach. The field-grey uniforms were perhaps tattered and patched, but the spirit of their owners inside was not. Their faces had not shown her any fear of this merciless siege. She could not ignore the fact that these Germanskis had been able to withstand the stranglehold on Breslau for so long. The spy from the east had perhaps felt some apprehension, that despite the dull silver runes on their collars, such men could still survive a storm or two.
The fortress had now been under siege for some weeks and not fallen to the enemy. It was not only the German newspapers that reported the high losses of the Russians and “the fanatic fighting of the brave defenders of Breslau”, but also neutral foreign newspapers regularly reported on ‘the tough defence of Silesia’. In the Stockholm News of 22 March 1945, they said the following, “One cannot really imagine how the defenders can supply themselves with food, water, and ammunition. During the whole of the war, there has been no other example to compare with this dramatic and fantastic battle of wills, where the bitter defiance of death is second to none. Pravda echoed the report of “stiff resistance in Breslau”. They had paid “a high and bitter price for a success that could only be called at that stage, minimal. The toll in men was unimaginable.”
In the Fire of the Eastern Front Page 22
