Having been promoted to the rank of lance corporal (Obergefreiter) on October 1, I was now permanently tasked to serve as our company’s forward observer, which meant increased interaction with the company commander. At the beginning of November, First Lt. Von Kempski, who had earned our respect leading us since Belgium, was promoted to the divisional staff. He was replaced by Second Lt. Münstermann, who had fortunately suffered no lasting ill effects from the artillery barrage at the Plyussa.
By mid-October, a frost had already hardened the landscape and it began to snow. At about this same time, we were able to shift out of temporary shelters into our more permanent rear bunkers constructed jointly by the regular troops and our Pioniers. Whereas the bunkers along the front provided us with additional protection and acted as defensive strongpoints, our rear bunkers would serve as our living quarters in Uritsk.
In building our rear bunkers the Pioniers followed a standard method of construction. After digging out waist-deep holes between 10 to 50 square feet in size, they erected log walls and heaped part of the just excavated soil against them. Following the placement of heavy timber beams or tree trunks to serve as a roof, they then covered the top of the bunker with the remaining soil. Despite offering little protection in the event of a direct hit by the Red Army’s heavy artillery, the bunkers offered us a measure of warmth from the freezing temperatures outside.
At Uritsk, my assignment as the F.O. required me to spend perhaps three-quarters of my time in one of the various bunkers located along the front or even out ahead of our infantry’s frontline. In contrast with the rear bunkers, the frontline bunker was little more than a covered ditch with a slot for observation. As the snow grew deeper, we piled it into a wall that ran in front of our line of forward bunkers and trenches in order to conceal our movements from enemy observation.
If it was quiet at the front, I normally made the short trip back to my rear bunker a couple of times a day. Furnished with only a dirt floor and walls, bunks, a table, and a wood-burning stove, the rear bunkers were primitive but made a comfortable dwelling for four to six men. Because the 13th Company’s howitzers were located only a quarter of a mile further back, my friends Schütte and Sauke, who were both now serving in gun crews, were able to reside with me and another comrade in the same bunker. Asserting our veteran status in the company, we posted a sign reading “The Four Old Sacks” over its entrance. Naturally, we tended to spend most of our free time with the half dozen or so other comrades we had known from the Lüneburg barracks.
Especially when there was little fighting, our bunker was a refuge for us to relax, sleep, eat hot meals, play cards, read mail, and write letters. Such a sanctuary gave us an essential escape from the stress of combat and the exhausting vigilance required at the frontline.
In November 1941, just after we had settled into our new bunkers, we began to confront bitterly freezing temperatures of minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit. This was far colder than any conditions we had ever experienced in Germany.
In the harsh months that followed, the wounded on both sides sometimes froze to death where they fell before they could be transported back behind the lines for medical care. By my estimation, the cold weather that first winter in Russia was responsible for perhaps a third of the deaths among casualties who might otherwise have survived. Of course, this type of death was even more common in mobile warfare such as that taking place on Army Group Center’s front as it engaged in the Battle of Moscow far to the south of us.
The temperature dropped so low that it actually caused the grease in our weapons to freeze unless we fired them regularly or took measures to protect them from the cold. Other soldiers told me that they witnessed entire steam engines that had been frozen solid down to the grease in their wheels. The weather-related problems in the transportation network intermittently resulted in supply problems that occasionally forced the army to reduce our rations to half a loaf of bread per day. Though only providing enough for us to survive, we knew it was far more than the amount supplied to the cut-off Russian population in Leningrad.
Transportation problems and inadequate planning also led to a four- to six-week delay in the provision of warmer clothing to replace our summer uniforms. As a F.O. operating on the frontline, I needed winter camouflage and was therefore lucky to be one of the first to receive an army-issued white helmet, a white poncho, white coat, and white pants as the most extreme cold arrived.
As the snow grew to a foot in depth, it became much easier to travel by ski than on foot when I crossed the couple of hundred yards between the forward and rear bunkers. More importantly, skis allowed me to move much more swiftly across the open area that was exposed to the fire of Russian snipers.
These sharpshooters had been posted in large numbers among the multi-story buildings at the edge of Leningrad’s suburbs, approximately a mile away from our front line at Uritsk. This situation reflected the Red Army’s effort throughout the war to field larger numbers of better-equipped, well-trained snipers than the Wehrmacht. Our snipers considered the Soviet scoped rifles superior and preferred to use captured Russian weapons rather than the equivalent German rifle. When I once had the opportunity to test one, its precision amazed me.
The accuracy of sniper fire meant that the number of killed relative to wounded was much higher than with other weapons. Our helmets protected us pretty well from glancing bullets or shrapnel, but if a bullet hit one squarely it would easily penetrate the steel. Being six feet tall, I soon learned to keep my head down and travel quickly through any area where I might be vulnerable.
While snipers posed a great threat to us, most of our casualties at Uritsk resulted from the enemy’s regular artillery barrages. The Red Army’s artillery was highly accurate and equal to its German counterpart in capability.
Russian machine guns were another danger. They mostly utilized ammunition that exploded on impact, causing a lot of damage. Sometimes their machine-gun position could be a mile away, but it would feel very close when its bullets ripped up everything in the vicinity of one’s position. Unlike artillery shells, you cannot interpret and react to the whistle of a machine gun’s bullet. If you hear the bullet whistling past you, you are safe. If you do not hear it, you are wounded or dead.
Though rarely engaging in close combat at Uritsk, my MP-40 submachine gun always remained at the ready as a precaution. My routine was to check the weapon before setting it aside after reaching our rear bunker.
One evening as I entered the bunker, several of my comrades were standing around. Thinking that my MP-40’s safety was on, I made a perfunctory check of the weapon. Pointing the barrel at the floor, I squeezed the trigger. When a half-dozen rounds noisily spewed out, everyone jumped as if Soviet infiltrators had surprised us. While the episode was amusing, such careless behavior could easily produce casualties. At the front, the Red Army was not the only enemy.
Indeed, everyone feared frostbite and hypothermia as much as Soviet weapons. Skiing between the front and rear bunkers helped minimize my exposure to the subfreezing temperatures, but frostbite still posed a danger. Arriving back at our rear bunker one day, I realized that there was no feeling in my toes. When my boots were off, I discovered that my toes had become white and completely lacked sensation.
Though soldiers had been warned not to treat frostbite with hot water, I thought cold water would be safe to apply. Going outside, I slowly poured cold water over my feet as I massaged my toes. The pain was excruciating, but the blood gradually began to circulate again after about twenty minutes. Many less fortunate soldiers lost toes and fingers to frostbite. It was sobering for me to think that another couple of hours of exposure to the cold could have meant amputation for mine.
Returning from a long period of duty up at the front on another evening soon after the close call with frostbite, I entered the bunker to find my comrades engaged in a festive drinking party. On learning where we were stationed, one of our old comrades from another division had come to see us. Such an occas
ion was cause for celebration and the “old sacks” had warmly welcomed him with our stock of cognac.
By the time of my arrival an hour or two later, they had already consumed a half dozen shots. Demanding that I catch up, they ordered, “Lübbecke, we had six cognacs. You will have six cognacs and the seventh we’ll drink together.” By the sixth shot, I was already stone drunk. Waking late the next morning, we paid for our temporary escape from the war with aching heads.
TRENCH WARFARE: November–March 1942
When operating as a forward observer, a communications specialist would assist me since my skill with Morse code was limited. He would wire the targeting information to the gun crews located about a mile back from our bunker. When I called out, “Five more!” to indicate a correction of five meters forward or “Ten right!” to shift the aim point ten meters to the right, he would rapidly tap the instructions to the rear.
If we held a particular position for more than a day as at Uritsk, our company would typically establish a field telephone link to our bunker. These field telephone links were as secure as telegraph lines and allowed me to communicate my instructions directly to the gun crews. While also possessing radios, these were rarely employed because of their vulnerability to Russian interception.
When moving into a new position, I would carefully survey the terrain to our front against a map in order to determine the most probable path of a potential Red Army attack. After identifying a likely route of advance, I would request one of our gun crews to fire a single ranging shot at those map coordinates. About 85 percent of the time, the shell would fall where intended. If it did not, the second round would almost always confirm the range.
Following the verification of the coordinates, I would instruct the gun crew to retain that target as Position A in order to allow for a more rapid reaction from our guns if an attack was attempted. Repeating the procedure at other probable routes of advance, we would establish Position B, Position C, etc. At others times I used first names instead of letters to identify a preset target.
Once the process was complete, I could simply call back, “Position A: five rounds, two guns.” Of course, when the enemy fired a single shot, we recognized that the Soviets were establishing their own network of predetermined firing coordinates. Before long, the whole area of No Man’s Land between us became one large pre-targeted kill zone.
The primary responsibility of a F.O. in a static position is to remain vigilant for any changes in the enemy’s frontline that might indicate an impending attack and to alert the company commander of any developments. If possible, it was also crucial to provide the gun crews with an advance warning to prepare the howitzers for action so that they could respond rapidly to any request for a fire mission.
In relatively active environments like Uritsk, it would typically take about two minutes for the gun crews to ready the guns and deliver a salvo if I was unable to alert them in advance before issuing target coordinates. Where the fighting was more intermittent, gun crews often remained in their bunkers rather than with their guns. In these circumstances, it might take up to four minutes for the crews to man their batteries and deliver the first shell. If the firing had commenced or the crews had received advanced warning, rounds would usually arrive on the target within a half minute or less of my request.
Once the enemy’s attack is under way, the forward observer must simultaneously select the number and types of guns and rounds to employ and precisely orchestrate their firing so as to break up the assault swiftly and efficiently. Though it was very technical in some respects, it was as much an art as a science.
During larger battles, both sides also conducted intense but brief artillery barrages to soften up enemy positions. In contrast to the First World War, where shelling of entrenchments might last for days or weeks, artillery in battles on the Eastern Front fired smaller caliber rounds and expended many fewer shells. Normally, these bombardments lasted for perhaps 20 minutes, though they might occasionally persist for an hour. As long as this pounding continued, a soldier could remain under cover in his trench or bunker.
As soon as the barrage began to roll back toward the rear areas, it was critical to get rapidly into position to defend against the infantry assault that would immediately ensue. Larger enemy attacks put pressure on our front, but we typically pushed them back before they penetrated our lines. In some instances, the Russian assaults reached our frontlines and forced us to retreat, but we usually staged a quick counterattack with the help of reserves and regained the lost ground. Because we generally had good intelligence on Soviet dispositions at Uritsk, the Red Army rarely achieved surprise.
Over this period of stationary warfare in front of Leningrad, the numbers of the German and Russian forces were about equal, though the enemy lacked our training, experience, and leadership. Both sides constantly engaged in numerous smaller reconnaissance missions and larger probing attacks in order to test the other’s defenses as well as to gain intelligence through the capture of prisoners. As the F.O., I remained constantly alert for any Russian attempt to infiltrate small groups of men into our lines for this purpose.
If I observed Red Army troops out in the open, I would immediately inform the rear and try to place a curtain of shells in front of them in order to deter any further advance. Our heavy guns had a great advantage over machine guns in that they possessed the range to take the enemy under fire much farther back. If we had to use our machine guns in such an engagement, it meant that they had gotten too close to our lines.
When German troops staged reconnaissance and probing operations into the Soviet lines, we kept our guns on call in case our men needed covering fire as they retreated. In addition to seeking prisoners and assessing Soviet strength, such missions also helped to draw Russian artillery fire, allowing us to determine their positions. Using a network of listening devices, a special unit would triangulate their location for our artillery to target highly accurate counterbattery fire. It was a deadly game of cat and mouse.
Soon after Christmas, Schütte began to complain to me that he was bored with the monotony of his routine with the gun crew. One subfreezing night, he decided to take action and snuck alone across the snow-covered No Man’s Land that separated us from the enemy. Armed only with his MP-40 submachine gun and a satchel containing a kilo of dynamite, Schütte slipped past the Soviet sentries and crept up to a Red Army bunker. As he heaved the satchel inside, he shouted to the doomed Russians, “Here’s your bread!”
Fighting his own war, he pulled off this crazy feat at least a couple of times. On the second occasion, I even heard the sound of the dynamite’s explosion. What had begun as an unauthorized action soon won the approval of our superiors. On my and their recommendation, Schütte was later awarded one of Germany’s highest military decorations, the Gold Cross.
The critical food shortage in Leningrad that inspired Schütte’s black humor also led to more serious discussions among us. There was real concern that the Russian authorities might decide to send the city’s women and children across the lines to our side. It was not clear what would ensue in such a situation, but everyone agreed that mowing down a crowd of civilians with our weapons was inconceivable. My own inclination was to feed them and then send them further back, once we made certain that the enemy had not exploited such a population transfer to slip military-age males into our rear areas.
About this time, our intelligence learned that the Red Army was infiltrating dogs across the lines. These poor animals had been strapped with dynamite around their bodies and trained to run under our vehicles. When they did so, the triggering antennas on their backs would bend and detonate the explosive.
Though there were probably few dogs actually armed this way, the army directed us to shoot all dogs as a precautionary measure. Carrying out these orders was especially painful for us, but we obeyed. Over time, war hardens your heart and leads you to do brutal things that you could never have imagined yourself doing in civilian life.
In early 1942, a reporter from a German-language newspaper in Reval in Estonia came up to the frontline to do interviews with the troops. When he asked me if they could take my photograph, I willingly agreed. To my surprise, that picture eventually ended up on the front page of The Revaler Zeitung on April 2, 1942 above the caption, “This is the German soldier who you will find in the trenches, young, agile, and sure of victory.” Though it was amusing to be featured in such heroic terms, the words accurately reflected the high morale that we felt.
At the beginning of March, Army Group North ordered our division to make urgent preparations for redeployment. A couple of nights later, we pulled out of the trenches. Our replacements were a police division composed of police officers who had volunteered for the unit and a Waffen SS division filled with troops from Nordic countries like Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.
Because many of these Scandinavians were tall men, their heads frequently poked above the snow walls in front of our trenches, making them especially easy prey for Soviet marksmen. Before we departed Uritsk, we heard they had suffered perhaps a dozen such casualties in just their first day at the frontline. Following this cruel lesson, they too would respect the Russian snipers.
By the time of our departure from Uritsk, confidence in an early victory had faded. It was already clear that the war in Russia would be a long struggle. Nonetheless, I remained utterly certain of the Soviet Union’s ultimate defeat.
BEHIND THE FRONT
Uritsk was a battle zone largely deserted of inhabitants, but it still retained a small population of about 100 Russian civilians, mostly women and children. These few residents kept their distance, but were not visibly hostile in their behavior. Curious to gain my own impression of the Russian people, I decided to pay a visit to one of these families.
At Leningrad's Gates Page 13
