As if ordered, there stood a motorcycle ready to go. So we drove across country in a northwesterly direction to a nearby wood, where Schröder tied me on in a makeshift fashion. Once ready, we were electrified by the sound of tracks of moving tanks. I could see tanks moving slowly toward us like an armada, snapping off the young trees of the little wood like matchsticks. Yet again, as on the previous day, our troops were being surrounded by tanks in a pincer movement and overrolled in a flanking action.
The condition of my unit and the naked fear of death gave me the strength to run. In order to survive, we had to reach the edge of the woods furthest from the tanks and cross the open field beyond. We went up a sloping meadow and had just reached the crest of the hill when we saw the heavy tanks driving out of the little wood. The Diedersdorf-Heinersdorf road, along which the remainder of our supply vehicles, some horse-drawn, were retreating, ran along the far side of the hill in dead ground to the Russians. With the last of my strength, I clambered up on to an open horse-drawn wagon, which took me to the Main Dressing Station in Heinersdorf.[28] The Russian tanks were firing from the edge of the wood, even though their shots could only reach the tops of the trees lining the road. Despite the splinters from bursting shells, nothing serious occurred.
Schröder left me at the Main Dressing Station with a heavy heart. I sat for one or two hours with a lump in my throat. I could hardly think, as the experience kept going around in my mind. Once I had been tended to and bandaged, I was laid on a stretcher outside; outside being an area the size of a football field, filled with with wounded soldiers laid out in rows on stretchers.
Like a flash of lightning from the sky, two Russian fighter-bombers suddenly attacked the Main Dressing Station at low level, mowing gaps in the rows of helpless men with their machine guns. They circled a couple of times repeating their murderous fire before flying off to seek new targets.
I could see how long the transport was taking to evacuate the wounded, there being only four vehicles available, so, with the driver’s consent, I sat on the forward left mudguard of an ambulance with my back to the direction of travel and held fast on to the driving mirror. After a drive lasting over four hours, we were eventually delivered to a reserve hospital in Königs Wusterhausen.
Against all the rules and some well-meaning advice, I did not stay there, but made my way back by train to Hamburg. So, on 22 April, only three weeks after my departure, I found myself back home again. My sister did not recognise me when she opened the door. My mother came to the door with my father behind her. In his surprise he said: ‘Are you a deserter?’ When I replied: ‘No, I have been wounded.’ he said: ‘In that case, you can come in!’
Tams became a successful businessman in Hamburg after the war.
SEVEN
Marxdorf
ERICH WITTOR
Erich Wittor, squadron commander in the Armoured Reconnaissance Battalion ‘Kurmark’, was in divisional reserve at Falkenhagen, so he and his unit were not committed to action until 18 April 1945, when his experience appears to take over from that of Karl-Hermann Tams.
At battalion headquarters on 18 April 1945, I was given the task of defending the area southwest of Seelow with my squadron, where the enemy had broken through. We immediately drove via Lietzen to Neuentempel. I was checking out the area on the edge of some woods to the west and northwest, and giving instructions to my NCOs, when we came under shell fire. Without any cover whatsoever, without even our steel helmets, we lay defenceless on the open ground, trying to make ourselves as flat as flounders, only able to pray that we would not be hit, the explosions coming right on top of us. Stones, clumps of earth and twigs pattered down all round us. A few minutes seemed like eternity. At last the artillery stopped firing, and the first thing I did was to get out the steel helmets.
Then the squadron was deployed into defensive positions and started digging in. My command post was in an earthen dug-out with a roof of logs that only a direct hit could have penetrated.[29] By evening we were fully prepared for defence and could have held our positions. It became dark, and again artillery fire fell on our positions. Suddenly, from my dug-out I could hear the sound of tanks, and wanted to look out and see what this meant. I had already gone up five or six steps when a shell exploded close by, the blast driving me back down again. I felt numbed, unable to stand or feel anything.
Had something happened to me? I could neither feel nor hear anything. My senses came slowly back to life. A shell splinter as long as a little finger was sticking out of my left hip, jutting out like a needle, so that the medical sergeant was able to pull it out on the spot. I had been lucky. For safety, he later gave me an anti-tetanus injection. Fortunately, the sounds had come from some Tiger tanks coming to our support.
On the 19th we were ordered back to the area south of Marxdorf, which had already been penetrated by the Russians. The enemy had to be tackled with hard, hour-long fighting in the woods, in which my men fought bravely and willingly, the NCOs giving excellent examples to their men. Eventually we gained the edge of the woods south of Marxdorf and set ourselves up for defence.
Here my company sergeant major brought in a staff sergeant and a sergeant who had aroused his suspicions. I could not spend much time on them and had them sent back to the command post. They were wearing German uniforms with badges of rank and decorations, but none of us knew them, and what they had to say made us suspicious. Later I was told that they were members of the National Committee for a Free Germany and had been sent by the Russians to cause confusion and thus give the Russians the advantage. The fate of these two is not hard to guess. Even as prisoners of war, one cannot act against one’s own country and work for the enemy, whatever the reasons. This was the first time that I had come across members of this committee.
The Königstiger tanks of the Waffen-SS had taken up position on the right flank of my squadron, and we were soon to discover how valuable they were.
Late afternoon some T-34 tanks began attacking Marxdorf from a patch of woodland to one side. With incredible accuracy the Tigers’ 88 mm guns shot up tank after tank, each shell causing the T-34 hit to explode, mostly leaving only the glowing remains of what had been a fast-moving, attacking tank. There was not a single miss, and we were overjoyed with the outcome. The excellent siting of our tanks did not give the Russians a chance to retaliate, and they were able to push forward into Marxdorf only at night.
With nightfall we were able to conduct a reconnaissance in Marxdorf, capturing some drunken Russians and also had the opportunity to use our Panzerfausts.
Next morning a grenadier battalion of the ‘Nordland’ prepared to launch an attack from immediately west of the village, and soon did so. We were able to observe the action from our positions quite clearly. The SS-Grenadiers advanced as if on exercise, cutting through as in our best times. Within a short while they had taken the village and driven the Russians out, displaying the fighting morale of our troops all over again, their spirit and steadfastness even now leading to success even when outnumbered two-to-one. Unfortunately, the overwhelming numbers and equipment of the other side were so great that this disparity could not for long be overcome by the tactical skills of our leaders, nor the courage and steadfastness of our troops. It was 20 April 1945.[30]
Erich Wittor was wounded during the last days of the war but managed to get through to the American lines across the Elbe at Tangermünde, where he was taken prisoner. The Americans had so many prisoners that they passed some on to the British and some to the Soviets. Wittor was fortunate enough to be passed on to the British, who released him at the end of August 1945. He joined the Bundeswehr as a lieutenant of Reconnaissance Troops in 1956 and went on in that branch to end his service in 1984 as the Deputy Commandant of the Bundeswehr’s Armoured Training School in the rank of colonel.
EIGHT
Retreat from Seelow
DR. FRITZ-RUDI AVERDIECK
Rudi Averdieck was the radio sergeant of Panzergrenadier-Regiment 90 of the 20th
Panzergrenadier Division that was deployed around Seelow awaiting the main Soviet offensive on Berlin. Averdieck had been conscripted in 1938 and had been with the same unit as a radio operator throughout the Polish, French and Russian campaigns.
The bombardment which started at 0700 hours on 14 April introduced the last phase of the war on the Eastern Front.[31] The initial enemy attacks were all beaten back, the 76th Regiment shooting up twelve tanks, and by midday some small breaches in our lines had been eliminated. However, our counter-attack failed in the face of the second Russian bombardment, which was reinforced by simultaneous heavy air attacks. The companies fled back, incurring heavy casualties. They then occupied the main battle line about 200 metres in front of the Annahof. The Soviets could be seen hitting our surviving wounded with spades. At dusk the enemy closed in and the Annahof came under fire from artillery, rockets and heavy weapons. We withdrew during the night and occupied the lines on the Seelow Heights above Werbig, in which we spent yet another quiet Sunday (15 April) under occasional disruptive fire. We had a magnificent view over the Oderbruch from these Heights, except when smoke from the explosions made everything hazy. I spent the night with my driver in a small, very fragile bunker.
On Monday, 16 April, we were awakened at 0400 hours by the Russian bombardment. Every time we tried to get out and run to the armoured personnel carrier (APC), flashes of lightning illuminated the darkness and dirt and shrapnel whistled around our ears. An enemy battery had taken our command post as its aiming mark. Luckily, it moved its fire back some 70 metres across the fields. This inferno continued until 0600 hours and then the aircraft appeared. A squadron of twin-engined bombers dropped a carpet of bombs over a wood behind us in which there were all sorts of artillery. However, our batteries fired only very seldom. The nakedly exposed Heights and roads were meanwhile being controlled from the air, our own air effort being exceptionally weak.
By midday, from the sounds of battle and rumours, the enemy were already past us on the left and right. The remains of the detachments deployed in front of us were caught in our positions. Our troops were running from their trenches towards us as the Russian infantry appeared and, before we knew it, the Ivans were already on our Heights. With hastily assembled forces they were driven back halfway down again and our new positions held for the night. Air activity and continual mortaring robbed us of any sleep that night and caused some deaths in the supply column.
At 0400 hours on 17 April our command post was moved back more centrally in our sector to Gusow railway station. We had hardly camouflaged the vehicle and moved into the cellar of the station when a tank alert was given. The tanks had come up the road without firing. At the same time the bomber squadron reappeared and started bombing a little to our rear. To add to our misfortunes, alarming reports were radioed from the battalions. The enemy was in the rear of the 1st and 2nd Battalions with tanks and infantry, and the 3rd Battalion was falling back. At 0900 hours there was another bombardment on our forward positions, knocking out the radio APC of the 1st Battalion, and the crew of the 3rd Battalion’s radio APC were injured by wood splinters. The section leader, although the most seriously wounded, nevertheless drove the vehicle back to the supply column himself.
The regiment was now in such disorder, with no communications or physical contact, for instance, that we had to withdraw under cover of some self-propelled guns (SPGs) and tanks[32] to the next line of defence, the ‘Stein-Stellung’ near Görlsdorf. It was none too soon, for we were already being fired at from the flank and we were showered with wood splinters in the copse where we stopped to assemble. When we arrived at midday with the remainder of the regiment at the ‘Stein-Stellung’ it was already under shellfire and the Russians were assembling tanks and infantry opposite. Of our 1st and 2nd Battalions only a few scattered groups had come back, and these were now re-organised into a weak battalion. The command post was set up on the reverse slopes of the defence position.
While the commanders were setting the sector boundaries, the enemy artillery and mortar fire steadily increased. Mortar bombs and salvoes of rockets crashed down around us and it was getting more and more uncomfortable. Helmut Melzer was killed by this fire as he tried to get through the woods on a bicycle to the supply lines to get a new radio.
Suddenly there was another alarm. Somehow the Russians had got through our lines and were behind us. There was a mad rush by the staff to get some soldiers together and recover our positions with a counterattack. Soon machine gun and tank fire was coming from every direction. At dusk we went into the attack with the support of some 20mm anti-aircraft guns and tanks, although these heavy vehicles could not manoeuvre much in the woods. We formed a blocking position on the corner of a wood with our APC. The fighting went on into the night but the old positions were not recovered.
As tanks drove into our flank from the left on the morning of 18 April, our APC and the remaining vehicles were sent back a kilometre to Worin. The small, deserted village looked so peaceful, but hardly had we set ourselves up in a house than a cannonade of tank fire broke out in our corner. As we were at a crossroads, we came under fire from heavy weapons and artillery fire, in which several soldiers sheltering in a barn several meters behind our APC were wounded. In those two days our signals platoon suffered 17 casualties. During the morning the companies withdrew to Worin and the command post found itself in the front line, the regimental commander himself becoming a casualty. The divisional headquarters were only a few hundred meters away in the same village. To add to our misfortunes we had a mixture of petrol and diesel oil in our fuel tank so that the APC would only move very slowly and the engine had to be kept turning over. Our young second lieutenant, who had only been with the regiment a few days, had a daring plan to drive the APC over open country to the command post, for as the route was downhill, should we fall into a hole we would quickly come out again! As we started off, we came under a real mortar barrage. The vehicle speeded up, backfiring several times, and we were expecting it to give up the ghost. After minutes that seemed to last for hours, we reached the cover of a sunken lane and followed it to behind a barn, where all kinds of vehicles had assembled, oddly enough failing to attract the attention of enemy aircraft.
The Russians were bombarding the supply routes that we would have to withdraw over later. As their tanks penetrated Worin I decided to leave the place with my lame APC and with luck creep over the hill to the edge of the woods to await further events. Splintering trees forced us to move back further into the wood. There was some heavy anti-aircraft artillery hidden in a commanding position on the edge of the woods. Everyone was to withdraw to positions in front of Müncheberg during the afternoon, but our division was to take up the rearguard once more. Convoys of vehicles rolled through the woods to Jahnsfelde to join the main road back to Müncheberg. However, a short while later the last convoy returned with the news that we were cut off. There were only about two kilometres of woodland track to the positions and tanks in our rear – Jahnsfelde was already occupied by the enemy – and we could hear machine gun fire from that direction. We knew that there had been fighting on either side of us for some time, and now there was no way out. As it emerged from the woods, the divisional radio vehicle, which had tried to make a breakout on its own, fell into Russian hands, along with three of its five-man crew. With our APC almost lame from its fuel problem, the situation was particularly uncomfortable, especially as there were none of our own positions behind us. We prepared for action and aimed our machine-gun in the direction from which we expected danger, at the same time preparing the vehicle for demolition.
Towards evening our companies withdrew from Worin to redeploy to Müncheberg. Everyone assembled in the woods, infantry, armour and vehicles. The only possibility was to break through to our lines along a route unknown to the enemy. Our Regimental Commander, a lieutenant, organised those on foot, and our APC was put on tow by a Tiger. At dusk we took up positions along the edge of the woods. Firing behind us indicated that Ivan ha
d followed us into the woods from Worin. As soon as it was dark enough, we broke out of the woods and encountered no resistance. We passed through the burning village of Jahnsfelde without incident and reached the main road to Müncheberg and then, a little later, our own lines, which we occupied immediately. Our APC was towed on into the town, where the fuel tank was emptied and refilled by our supply column.
19 April had hardly begun when I was woken from a few hours of death-like sleep by the headquarters staff with orders to prepare for an immediate move. As a result of enemy tanks breaking through our lines, we would have to pull back yet again. As there was enough fuel, the little APC whose crew had been wounded by wood splinters was re-manned and sent on in advance. We reached the new supply column location in a pine forest at noon and prepared our vehicle for action once more. We were in touch with the little APC, which reported being unable to get through to the regimental command post and that the situation was completely confused. Then I failed to get any further response to my transmissions. Later the crew returned on foot, their APC having suddenly been attacked by a T-34, which chased them and shot them up. Then we had to drive on straight away, having received urgent orders to move, as enemy armoured spearheads were only a kilometre from our position. Apparently the Russians were no longer meeting any resistance, our enormous supply columns being in full flight without any thought of putting up any resistance. The journey to Rüdersdorf in the Berlin-Erkner area lasted until 0300 hours. Close by was a horde of refugees that had been forced to leave their homes in the middle of the night with their pushcarts.
With Our Backs to Berlin Page 14
