“Where are the rest?” I asked in a somber voice. One of the men quietly replied, “We were attacked with bombs, rockets, and artillery fire. We lost our horses. We lost our equipment. We lost everything. It is all ruined. We are the only ones left.” Anyone else who may have survived the assault had disappeared in the ensuing confusion or had simply fled west.
There was little further conversation. The events of the preceding hours and weeks had left us traumatized and exhausted. With the end in sight, a bleak mood filled the bunker. The men only wanted basic information and direction. They looked to me to provide it, but I knew no more than they did. For the first time in the war, I was on my own with no orders where to go and no idea what to expect.
In urgent need of new orders, I told my men that I would seek to locate the commander of our 154th Infantry Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel (Oberstleutnant) Ebeling as soon as my vision cleared. By the time one of the men had finished wiping my eyes and removing bullet splinters from my face an hour later, I could see well enough to commence a search.
Ordering my men to remain at the bunker, I set out into the woods on the narrow neck of land farther west. Shells continued to rain down intermittently, but did little to hamper my reconnoitering of the area. Fifteen minutes later, I came upon a small camouflaged bunker about 25 yards south of the main road. When I stepped inside, I anticipated nothing but another vacant chamber.
To my astonishment, the bunker instead held half a dozen senior German generals, easily identifiable by the red stripes that ran down the side of their pants. Left momentarily speechless, I reflexively came to attention and saluted. Gathered around a table studying maps, they failed to show any surprise at my abrupt appearance and simply returned my salute.
Just as I was about to request new orders, the sudden drone of planes outside ended the awkward moment. As the generals scrambled under the table inside, I ducked back outside the entrance. From the south, a formation of about a dozen American-made B-25 bombers marked with Soviet red stars had already begun to dive toward our area. Still 3,000 feet up, a steady stream of small black objects began tumbling out from beneath the aircraft. There were only seconds to take cover before their bombs commenced plastering the ground where I stood.
Sprinting twenty feet from the bunker, I leapt into a long, six-foot-deep trench. If you seek shelter in a bunker that takes a hit and collapses, you are doomed. If you can take cover in a foxhole or a trench, however, a shell or bomb must land almost directly on your position to cause death or serious injury. You might suffer a concussion if a shell or bomb impacts nearby, but you will live.
Crouching down in the trench, I kept my head just below the surface to avoid the risk of being buried. With my hands cupped loosely over my ears, I opened my mouth. This allowed the air pressure inside my head to match that of the atmosphere. If an explosion occurred nearby, it would prevent my eardrums from blowing out. Combat teaches a soldier many tricks of survival, if you live long enough to learn the lessons.
At the same moment that I gained cover, the Russian bombs began detonating around my position in rapid succession, almost like a salvo of giant rockets. A succession of deafening blasts shook the earth and convulsed the air with indescribable violence. In that instant, I wondered whether my luck had finally run out and it might be the end for me. Strangely, perhaps, I experienced no sense of terror. Shelling, rocketing, and bombing had become such a routine part of my existence in the preceding years that I had almost grown accustomed to them.
As the bombs pulverized my surroundings, there was nothing for me to do but wait it out. My mind became a numb void as an animal instinct to survive took over. Even with my mouth opened to equalize the pressure, an explosion perhaps six feet away generated such concussive force that it nearly blew my eardrum out.
When the minute-long rain of bombs finally ceased, I knew that I was fortunate to have survived once again. With my ears ringing and my mind dazed, I unsteadily climbed out of the trench. Despite minor wounds, lack of sleep, and inadequate food during the preceding weeks of combat, I was still in fair shape physically. My psychological state was more battered, but I had to try to remain clear-headed. As an officer, it was my duty to lead and take care of my men.
Though the generals’ bunker was still intact, I decided that they had greater concerns than providing orders to a company commander. Renewing my search for my regimental commander, I headed back in a northerly direction and recrossed the main road.
Perhaps ten minutes later, I unexpectedly found Lt. Col. Ebeling attempting to establish a new defensive line a quarter of a mile away. Relieved, I could now finally find out what was going on and obtain new orders.
In a short conversation, he informed me that the high command was sending us back to Germany. All the surviving officers from our 58th Infantry Division were to return there to serve as the nucleus for a new division that the army planned to create in Hamburg. Meanwhile, the few remaining enlisted men in our division would be transferred to the still intact 32nd Infantry Division, which would remain behind as a rearguard to slow the Red Army’s advance.
After explaining the directive, Ebeling wrote out and signed the order in my small Soldbuch (military record book). Since the officers of our division would be traveling on their own to increase the likelihood that some would reach Germany, these written orders would prevent the SS (Schutzstaffeln) from punishing me as a deserter if I was stopped. A stroke of the pen had opened the door for me to escape death or capture by the Russians.
Grateful for the chance to escape the mounting chaos, it was nonetheless apparent that accomplishing such a journey would be almost impossible. Already, the Red Army had cut off the overland route back to Germany farther west beyond the Frische Isthmus, a long, narrow strip of sand that ran along the coast of the Baltic Sea. At the same time, ships attempting to reach Germany over the Baltic faced great risk of Soviet attack.
When I reached my remaining soldiers waiting at the bunker, I pulled aside Senior Sgt. Jüchter and explained that I had been directed to return to Germany with one soldier from my company. As my second in command, Jüchter was the natural choice to assist me in building a new unit, but I felt it was important to allow him to make his own decision rather than issue an order. “Will you go with me?” I inquired. With a simple “Jawohl” he assented.
While our own prospects for reaching central Germany appeared doubtful, Jüchter and I would at least be given a chance to try. Aware that such information would only compound their sense of hopelessness, I did not divulge my own orders as I informed the other men of their imminent reassignment to the 32nd Division.
With almost all of my company lost, it was anguishing for me to leave these few men behind. In the two days that remained at the ammunition bunker, I sought to oversee the successful transfer of these surviving troops in my company to their new unit. Meanwhile, Jüchter attempted to use his connections with the rear echelon of our regiment to obtain medals that several of them were due.
Two days after the disaster at Fischhausen, I was able to present an Iron Cross First Class and several Iron Crosses Second Class, but it simply proved impossible for me to oversee their reassignment in the prevailing chaos. In the end, I had to leave my men to report to the 32nd Division on their own, like lost sheep in a storm.
Unless they were killed in the final days of the war, they almost certainly became Soviet prisoners of war. If they were strong and lucky, they perhaps endured the ensuing three or four years of captivity in Russia to return home to Germany. Even now, sixty years later, the thought of their suffering and the uncertainty of their fate deeply torments me.
A DESPERATE JOURNEY: April 18–May 8, 1945
Under sporadic fire from Soviet artillery, Jüchter and I left the bunker late in the afternoon of April 18 and set out down the main road toward the city of Pillau, located about six miles away. If we were able to reach the harbor there, we hoped to cross over the short span of water that separated Pillau from th
e northernmost tip of the Frische Isthmus.
Approaching the city as dusk fell perhaps three hours later, a gruesome scene greeted us. Along the road, a dozen or so bodies of German soldiers hung down from the branches of tall trees. Jüchter and I remained silent, but it was apparent that this was the grisly handiwork of the SS. Whether the men were deserters or simply soldiers who had been separated from their units or in shell shock would have made no difference to them.
Most German troops with whom I had fought perceived the Waffen SS (the military formations of the Schutzstaffeln) to be, in essence, part of the Wehrmacht, but disdained the regular SS, which was seen as a thuggish Nazi political militia. With the Nazi regime facing its end, it was not surprising that the SS would string up any of those they judged to be traitors as a warning to others. Witnessing their crude “justice,” I hated them.
As we made our way through Pillau in the lingering twilight, the intensity of the shelling grew heavier as the Russians concentrated their fire on the sector’s one remaining major target. Whenever there was a momentary lull, Jüchter and I left our cover and raced to the next ruined building, always remaining alert for the next incoming rounds so as to avoid being caught out in the open.
When we arrived at the inlet on the west side of town a few hours later, there was already a growing throng of hundreds of troops and civilian refugees gathered at the dock. Despite the chaos, one or two ferries continued to carry passengers and a few vehicles across the 200 yards of water that separated Pillau from the start of the Frische Isthmus. There was nothing for us to do but wait our turn under continuing intermittent artillery fire.
It was dark a half hour later when Jüchter and I squeezed onto a ferry with perhaps 100 soldiers, refugees, and a variety of trucks and other military equipment. As soon as the boat docked on the far shore ten minutes later, we joined a couple of dozen other soldiers cramming onto one of the trucks just ferried across the channel.
As shells still occasionally dropped around us, our truck joined the impromptu convoy departing westward down the Frische Isthmus. The column proceeded slowly through the darkness, driving without headlights in order to avoid attracting the attention of any Russian aircraft that might be lurking above.
A few hours into the trip, we passed a group of burning buildings. Since there was no artillery fire or bombing in the area, this seemed very odd to me. Turning to the soldier seated next to me on the truck, I asked what had been there. “Oh, they are probably burning the KZ,” he responded.
My unfamiliarity with the word led him to explain that a “KZ” was a Konzentration Lager (concentration camp) for enemies of the Nazi regime. As incredible as it may seem, it was only at this moment at the end of the war that I became aware of the existence and function of concentration camps.
The revelation left me bewildered, though I still did not connect such camps to a Nazi policy of genocide. My ignorance of the system of concentration camps during the war matched that of most other Germans. Actual photos of the camps were not seen by any public, German or Allied, until after the war.
In his fascinating memoir Europa, Europa (John Wiley & Sons, 1997), Solomon Perel, a boy who kept his Jewish identity secret throughout his years at a Hitler Youth school in Germany, related a similar astonishment when he first learned about the Nazi death camps after hostilities had ended.
The ability of Hitler’s regime to keep this massive atrocity a secret from the population demonstrates their effectiveness in controlling information that would have jeopardized their support. Like most Germans, I felt bitterly betrayed when I eventually learned that Nazi leaders had directed the execution of millions of Jews, Gypsies, and other prisoners in these camps. That was not the cause for which I had fought and for which so many of my comrades had sacrificed their lives.
Just before dawn, our ad hoc convoy reached Stutthof, an assembly point for the troops who had made the 35-mile journey from Pillau. We spent the rest of the day under cover before renewing our journey northwestward by sea. Boarding a ferry that night, Jüchter and I crossed the Gulf of Danzig to Hela, a port located on the end of a long peninsula about 20 miles from Stutthof.
Disembarking at Hela, we took refuge in a block of three-story brick apartment buildings which had been deserted by their owners. Exhausted after months of combat and our long trek, we fell into a deep slumber.
While we were unaware of it at the time, the disaster at Fischhausen had occurred on the same day that the Red Army had commenced its final assault on Berlin far to the west of us. This offensive made the whole Baltic coast a relative backwater in the larger war, though Hela’s geographical isolation probably also served to deter the Russians from trying to occupy it. In any case, they appeared content to keep hammering us with artillery fire from the area around Gdingen, a town and harbor about ten miles away on the Soviet-occupied mainland.
Finally out of combat, I thought almost constantly of my fiancée Anneliese, whom I had met six years earlier, a few months before being drafted into the military. Though several months had passed since we had last corresponded, my love for her remained my lone source of hope in the otherwise dark and uncertain future that lay ahead. In my heart, I felt sure that we would be together for the rest of our lives, if I could somehow evade the Russians and reach Germany.
Throughout the days that followed, we did little more than rest and try to scrounge up something to eat. One afternoon, I caught sight of Lt. Colonel Ebeling and a group of staff officers from the 154th Regiment off in the distance, but did not speak to them. Though we were all seeking to find our way back to Germany under orders, it was clear that the Wehrmacht was in the process of disintegrating. Everyone was now basically on their own.
During this period we received word of two of the worst maritime disasters in history. In back-to-back tragedies in January and February of 1945, the German liners Wilhelm Gustloff and General von Steuben had been torpedoed and sunk by the Russians while evacuating thousands of civilian refugees and wounded personnel from East Prussia back to central Germany. Despite all we had endured at the front, this news further deepened the overpowering sense of grief and despair among us.
Even if it was possible to find space on one of the few vessels departing Hela, the threat of Soviet naval attack made the prospect of reaching Germany appear more remote than ever. At the same time, most of the officers on the Hela Peninsula were not even making a serious effort to leave, regardless of their orders to return to Germany. A lingering sense of honor and a bond of solidarity among us created a kind of inertia. In spite of the general breakdown in military order, none of us wished to give the appearance of deserting our comrades by departing before they did, even if it served no purpose for us to remain where we were.
About two and a half weeks after our arrival on Hela, Jüchter was outside the apartment building one afternoon when a sudden Russian artillery barrage began hammering the area. Caught in the open, he was hit in the thigh by a piece of shrapnel. Notified by a medic of his injury, I requested that our regimental physician come to examine him.
Observing the doctor as he bandaged Jüchter’s wound, I asked whether he should place a tourniquet around the sergeant’s leg as a precaution to ensure that he would not lose any more blood. The physician assured me that this measure was not necessary and that his injury was not life-threatening.
Once the bandaging had been completed, the doctor directed me to take Jüchter to a field hospital that had been established in an underground concrete bunker. Together with the medics, I assisted in carrying Jüchter the 75 yards to the facility.
Inside, wounded men were lying like cordwood along the bunker’s walls. Locating the doctor on duty, I informed him that I had a badly wounded soldier who needed urgent medical attention. He responded, “Yes, but take a look. We have to go in order of priority. Lay him down there and we will take care of him.” Leaning down to Jüchter, I assured him, “I will be back tomorrow to see how you are doing.”
On my
return to the hospital bunker the following morning, I was told that Jüchter had passed away during the night. Realizing that he probably died from shock and loss of blood, it was difficult not to feel angry and bitter at the regimental doctor’s decision not to apply a tourniquet that might have saved his life. Even after experiencing the loss of so many comrades, Jüchter’s death seemed an especially needless sacrifice to me.
Now alone and possessing nothing other than my uniform and a couple of pistols, I contemplated my situation. Nothing had changed in my orders, but I finally felt a renewed sense of motivation to find a way off Hela.
Early the following evening, I wandered the 500 yards from the apartment building to the harbor area to find out what was happening. Unexpectedly, I stumbled onto a chance situation that changed the course of my life.
Observing about 400 fully equipped troops standing around near the dock, it was obvious the unit was preparing to depart Hela. In an instant, I made up my mind to tag along with them wherever they were destined. Conversing with the soldiers, I recognized their Silesian accents and learned that their infantry regiment had orders to sail for Germany.
Oddly, no one ever questioned my presence nor requested my orders either in Hela or during my journey there from the front. This may have been due to the deference given an officer, though I still only wore the lower rank of first lieutenant despite my field promotion to captain in March. Alternatively, this failure to challenge me may have simply been another reflection of the mounting chaos behind the lines.
When the order to depart came just after dark, I filed onto the deck of one of the small barges with a couple of hundred of the soldiers. A half hour later, a mile or so outside the harbor, a giant shadow loomed up in front of us. A brand new destroyer of the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) was readying to sail for Germany.
At Leningrad's Gates Page 2
