In the Fire of the Eastern Front

by Hendrick C. Verton

  We were continually counted by the Russian soldiers, “Odin, i.e. one, Dwa, i.e. two, Tri, i.e. three”. An officer asked me if “wounded?” to which I replied “it’s nothing much”, for I did not want to be parted from my chums. “Ospital” was his curt reply. So with other wounded who had been separated from the rest, our next stop was the medical quarters for POWs in Herrenstrasse.

  Standing at the entrance were gruff-looking ‘Ivans’, with fixed bayonets on their long rifles. They gave me the impression that they were troops from the communications zone, for front-soldiers would have been a little friendlier. They ran their greedy eyes over us, shouting “Uri, Uri”. They must have been disappointed, for how can you steal from a naked man, who has no pockets? We had been “freed” of everything that we possessed.

  The Russian soldier was given privileges, in that they were allowed every month to send home “bounty parcels”, or ‘plunder packets’, weighing up to eight kilos. The regulation for officers was even more generous, double the weight, to allow for their collection of “militaria souvenirs” as the Russians called them. That regulation was clearly an encouragement to steal. And the little soldier when not so fortunate, not having so many opportunities, coming too late? What did he have to send? The bandages from his feet or the remainder of his ration?

  The bed allocated to me was still warm from the previous occupant and the blanket smeared with blood, but it was at least a real bed. During that first night in Herrenstrasse, the paratrooper in the next bed to me died and I witnessed his struggle with death. I lay and watched all the stages of tetanus leading to the terminal stage. The tragedy of it was that of all of us he was the slightest wounded. He had only had a graze from a passing bullet. All that he had needed to live was a tetanus injection, which he never received. He had to lie for nearly four hours, stiff in cramp, the only movement coming from his pale eyes which looked at me. He, just as I, had been one of the walking wounded and yet he had to die. During the night, the stillness was broken with screams, screams from those waking bathed in sweat, from nightmares of their most recent battles.

  In Herrenstrasse I had time to look over my new room-mates. They were young, very young, being in school just yesterday? But their schooling had not equipped them for what they were today, old men of war. They had certainly believed that their schooling had equipped them for the important things in life. I was sure that it had not taken long for them to ascertain that it had been useless for war. This education had had to be replaced with another, even more important, a desire for life itself. That lesson was simply to shoot quicker than the enemy, and be even quicker to hit the ground for cover in order to live, to survive. As I looked at them, it was clear that they had been robbed of their freedom before their lives had even begun. I believed at that point, that there must be another purpose to life, other than that which my life had revolved around till then. Surely life consisted of something else other than schooling and shooting? These lads would certainly have other experiences in life, after this, and hopefully ones which would produce laughter one day.

  I went to war as a boy and I became a man, one with clean hands. That was an achievement in total war, and because of it I personally found imprisonment unfair. I was not the only one who shared that opinion. Others had to and did accept their fate. Most of them, tired in mind and body, acquiesced to that ‘truism’. They played cards, or tried to relax themselves and others by telling jokes, most of which we had all heard before, but laughed at nevertheless. Only now, the laughter had no echo. This artificial ‘stiff upper lip’ behaviour showed itself amongst the officers by the dissection of their tactical mistakes. “When we, or if we had”, who now knew how they could have won the war. Some were obsessed with food, and titillated their palates and that of others, with imaginary meals, explaining how they were cooked. “Take so many ounces of butter and two eggs”! Perhaps because we only had lentils as a good square meal, every day!

  There was another theme which wove itself into our daily conversations, women. And why not? We were all in the prime of our manhood. We all without exception, admired Sister Susi, the nurse from Hamburg. She was young, very petite, had red highlights in her dark blonde hair, was scrubbed and left a sweetness behind her of soap and face-cream, which we followed, one after the other with our noses. She was the epitome of womanhood for us, myself included, and was the nearest to our dreams that we had. We all held a secret love of her to our breast, no amour-fou, but more of a platonic nature. This sweetness in our lives did not last long, for we became unwilling members of a ‘Wandering Club’, as our cross-country wanderings began. Instead of the usual coach-house stops, we went from one prison hospital to another. One of those I remember was the bombed Scala Cinema in the former Employment Exchange, a huge building on the edge of the Oder, in Saltstrasse.

  Up to that point, my blood-group tattoo, despite medical examinations, had not been a disadvantage for me. The knowledge of this significant and distinguishing ‘mark of Cain’ had obviously not filtered through on a large scale, but at some time it would. Mine had to be erased, at all costs. This was easier said than done. Some of the other WSS patients tried with burning cigarettes, or continual abrasion with a rough stone. It was even said that it could be done with milk. I did not believe the latter of those solutions. In any case, where on earth could I lay my hands on milk?

  The assistant doctor Markwart Michler wanted to help me and arranged an operation. His equipment was rather primitive. The operation itself was to be performed in strict secrecy, away from everyone. He procured a razor-blade as a scalpel and ice as an anaesthetic. At the agreed time, we met in one of the large rooms in the cellar and I prepared myself for the worst, with guards at the door. I bared my arm and it was duly iced. We then had an interruption, with the result that the area around the tattoo was no longer anaesthetised, but “ten minutes pain, or 25 years in Siberia?” And so with the light from a candle, the operation began.

  It could not to be compared to the seconds that a foreign body sears into one, such as a bullet, shrapnel or glass, producing the numbness of shock through causation. This was deliberate, so my mind reacted accordingly! It was hell! I ground my teeth, for I had no other choice, or one that I did not contemplate. And it bled! I tried for some minutes to stem the flow by sucking it away. Then, after urinating on a shred of an army shirt, Michler wound it around the wound to sterilise it. At some time later, this was exchanged for a plaster, after it had scabbed. Now my fears were allayed. I was no longer named ‘Cain’. Thus I hoped to evade the hunt for members of my organisation. I escaped with only the faintest of scars, which can still be seen today.

  I held the highest rank of all of the wounded in the group. Therefore I had the responsibility of reporting to the doctors and non-resident doctors on numbers present, and other things that interested the Russians. The very first time that I performed this duty, it caused smiles from the German doctors and nurses who were standing behind the Russian team of doctors. I clapped my heels together, which was the custom when in the presence of higher ranks or personages, together with my arm salute in Deutscher Gruss. I very slowly rested on my cap, in doubt. Habit is habit! The Russian team did not bat an eyelid, ignoring the rebellion against the new regime.

  Poles in Breslau, 1946. A drawing by the author from that year.

  In comparison with those conditions to be found in prisoner transports, in cattle-wagons, and under way to the East, we could not complain. We could move around on the banks of the Oder. All day long we lay in the sunshine, watching it shimmer on the water’s surface. We were thankful for small mercies. Others, fallen into deep depression, lay on their bunks the whole day. Others walked to and fro over the few metres of their room, like caged cats looking for a quiet corner where they could be alone in their despair.

  One day in the middle of August 1945, this was all very rudely disturbed, as mighty underwater explosions from the Oder sent fountains of water high into the air. The hot summer sun had red
uced the level of the river’s water, exposing unexploded shells and other ammunition, as well as weapons from the German soldiers who had thrown them into the river. All had reached exploding point with the increasing heat. The force of the blasts threw to the ground those wounded who were walking the promenade. It caused already weak walls to collapse, and resulted in damage to buildings, and to the furniture in the hospital. The Russians were in pure panic and believed that we were breaking out on a large scale, with the help of explosives. We were just as much in the dark as they. We had no idea what was happening. They ran wild over the hospital yard, screaming as they ran criss-cross in all directions, with cocked machine-pistols. To see their cool command broken to such an extent through a false alarm gave us a lot of pleasure, for there was not much entertainment in our everyday lives. One could nose-dive into deep depression, when busy only with one’s self.

  I tried to wile away the time by reading every book that I could lay my hands on, to put some distance between myself and reality, to forget what was going on around me. I had to sort out my feelings and my mind, for some objectivity. Mainly I needed peace, peace after the din, the loud, unpleasant and prolonged noise of battle, and the months of strain. The books in the Employment Exchange were plentiful, in the attic and cellars, and I helped myself. To my joy I even found some in my mother-tongue, which must have found their way from the lending-library, perhaps for the foreign labourers. I read everything that I could find, gladly reading about journeys into foreign lands, plus everything that had been formerly uninteresting, including the poems and works of Schiller.

  I perused the world once more, soaking up every minute detail of it, the warmth of the shining sun, bird-song, the fascinating flight of the butterfly. I followed the route of the beetle in the sand, like a small child. I did so despite the stifling worry in my breast about the fate of my family back home. I had to work up some optimism and clarity of mind, and not become a sacrifice to the ‘barbed wire syndrome’.

  I sought conversation in every corner of this band of brothers-in-arms, from different units, from older comrades, to help strengthen my courage to face life. They discussed their experiences with me. I found their philosophy of life was all the more surprising, in the short time since the end of the war. Among those were engineer Karl-Heinz Corfield, who had grave leg injuries, and assistant surgeon Markwart Michler, with whom a very deep friendship developed over many years.

  The war had already been over for some months and the fanaticism and brutality of the ‘Ivans’ had relaxed. They were even lenient with the prisoners, some showing sympathy for our situation. We even formed an orchestra at that time, with self-made instruments. The qualified musicians among us played from their personal repertoires. We had a magician among us too, who made one of the prisoners disappear from his wooden box. “Where is comrade? The box is empty!” What would happen to them when one of us had failed to turn up at the count, the next day? We laughed our socks off. Afterwards, as they cottoned on to how it was done, they laughed too, at themselves!

  We had moved once more, to Hedwigstift, a church boarding-house, to be shorn like lambs. One could never have failed to notice the varying degrees of the hair-cut of the Russian soldier. The ‘men’ had their heads shaved, the sergeants were shorn to ear-level and the officers were not shorn at all. Such were the medical measures against lice. Nonetheless we protested. It was of no avail for our protests fell on the deaf ears of the grinning Russians. “Shaved heads, no lice, dawai, dawai!” Those who refused, were physically brought to the barber by force. I found it all demoralising and so I refused to move too. In the palaver that ensued it was overheard that I was Dutch. This saved my hair, but I had to report to the Commander.

  Two Russian soldiers appeared, to escort me to the Commander. They wore blue caps. Blue caps meant that they were certainly from the NKVD and with granite-hard faces, they conducted me for interrogation. “What is your name? You are not German, but you are SS?” Now I knew what he was after and I played dumb. My repeated words in Russian “I don’t understand,” brought the Captain who was sitting at the wooden table to a rage. Then he ordered me to remove my jacket and shirt, which I was not allowed to lay on his field-bed, for fear of lice. I explained freely that the scar on my arm was due to shrapnel, but he chose not to believe me. “You SS!” With that the two granite-faces had turned to grinning ones, and their owners took me to the barbers, where I was shorn just like the others.

  I had hoped that that was the end of the matter, but I was wrong. I was now branded. I was now ‘one of those’, and treated accordingly, being separated from the rest. It was however not long before I was joined by the others. For a witchhunt had begun for other SS soldiers. All had to bare their left arm and show their tattoo. The Commander had been informed and the information had filtered through. Now the guards wandered through the building, searching. Some were able to hide themselves, in the attics and the cellars, and the Commander made good use of the incident for another purpose.

  Up to that time, individuals had escaped. It was clear that as there were now 25 in my room, that the commander wanted to use us as pressure to stop those attempts. It was announced that for every one who tried to escape, one of us would be shot. We hoped and prayed that we could rely on the solidarity and comradeship of the others. We were under special arrest for six weeks, six weeks when our comrades never let us down. No one tried to escape in that time.

  We, under special arrest, as well as all in the Hedwigstift, were moved once more. Following that move the witch-hunt for the SS was forgotten for a short time. The pressure on sorting ‘us from them’ eased and we were moved to the Cloister of Compassionate Brothers. For me it was to be the last stop in Breslau as a prisoner. There was no compassion from the Soviets in possession of this house of God. The cloister was the sorting house for Siberia. The fate of every man inside its walls was decided by a commission of Russian doctors, male and female. The cloister was very strongly guarded and the compassion came not from the guards but from the monks. Most spoke Polish and with this language tried to communicate with us.

  After a while, the word went round from the others already there, that when a certain doctor was on duty and sat in the president’s chair, then few escaped the journey to Russia’s paradise. Fear struck every man whose name appeared on the list on the same day as that doctor, who was a female major. The accent being more on ‘major’, than on ‘female’. When this was confirmed, the word went around the prisoners like wildfire, and there was no escape. The said ‘lady’ could be described as a typical Russian. She wore a tight high-buttoned blouse stretching over her more than ample bosom. There were fist-thick epaulettes on shoulders and neck, and she looked as if she was growing out of it all. She was never, even in high summer, to be seen without her Schapka, with its red star on the front, covering the military cut of her short dark hair.

  She was as hard as granite. Not fever, nor a bad stomach, would qualify anyone for exemption from Siberia. For of course the weeks of the long, long journey would act as a ‘cure’ whilst underway! Those prisoners belonged to Group One and would be shipped off to Russia. That woman had a rather doubtful method of delivering her diagnosis as to whether one was healthy or not. Disregarding the symptoms, she would give every man a good hard pinch on his backside! Many doubted if that method of testing the flesh on this area of the male torso had been medically founded. But she believed in it, or wanted to. Under her scrutiny even those on crutches, or with wounded feet, were classified as Group One.

  I celebrated my twenty-second birthday on 4 Sep t ember 1945, but there was no joy on that day. According to the entry in my diary it de noted utter depression. My thoughts were back home. I asked myself if anyone was thinking about me on that day. One thought led to another, as to whether they or any of my family were still living. My entry also tells me that because of malaria, or dysentery, many of my comrades were no longer with me. They had been sent in massed transport to Hundsfeld, the transiti
on camp. From there they went in the direction of the East instead of, according to General Niehoff s conditions of surrender, returning home. Home? One upset oneself by saying the word out loud and so it remained in one’s thoughts.

  The day came when I had to go before the commission, when my name was on the list. There must have been all of a hundred men who had as sem-bled. We queued like lambs for the slaughter on that day, in the dark, tiled, cloister corridor leading to the doctors’ room. There were amputees among us. In circumstances such as those, one could almost be jealous of their very good chances of escaping this plight. But there was no escape when the scales tipped in your direction. Even those who had received a bullet in the lungs, which no one would ever wish to have, gazed with interest at the beautiful frescoes decorating the cloister ceilings. Their optimism could not be overlooked. However, that did not interest us, for we were too busy with ourselves.

  The queue moved slowly, too slowly. The hours ticked by. The tension built up inside every one. Would it be Siberia or our home land? German medics accompanied the Russians with their long lists. They controlled the queue, together with a very young Russian woman in uniform. Her appearance distracted our thoughts. She was the only thing that could have distracted our thoughts, nothing else! It could have been very amusing under any other circumstances. Even so, this very feminine apparition replaced our thoughts with others. They lasted only for seconds. She was blonde, with obviously long hair that was twisted into a grandmother’s knot at the back of her neck. When she undid this knot of angel hair she must have been beautiful! Every time she passed us, we all looked. Our mouths fell open, one after the other, and our eyes followed her very shapely legs encased in soft Moroccan leather boots, which caressed her legs like stockings. She wanted, with her short, brisk military steps, to give another impression. But conscious of her attractiveness, she pursed her red lips as she went, as if that could detract from her beauty.