The day after one of these nocturnal raids by a Nähmaschine, not long after the tank battle, I was again up front operating as forward observer. Immediately after directing one of our 150-millimeter howitzers to fire a round against an enemy target, I instead heard an enormous boom from the direction of our heavy guns in the rear.
The mystery was soon revealed. A misfiring shell inside the barrel of the howitzer had caused an explosion that detonated the shells stacked next to it, killing the five-man gun crew and obliterating everything in the vicinity. Though unable to get back and observe the scene myself, I was told that only a large crater remained.
This malfunction could have resulted from faulty workmanship or sabotage in the manufacture of the shell, but I was convinced it resulted from the phosphorous dropped on our position during the previous night’s air raid. A corrosive particle of the phosphorous could have burned a small hole in a shell that went undetected during its loading. Unfortunately, a sudden change in the battlefield situation within hours of this accident forced my company to pull back from the position without conducting an adequate investigation.
Earlier combat in the area of the Leningrad siege had primarily involved stationary trench warfare similar to that experienced on the Western Front in the First World War. In contrast, the combat near the Neva was more fluid and more bloody. Frequently, there were sudden shifts in the frontlines as both sides in turn retreated and counter-attacked.
As always, the 13th Company experienced a much lower casualty rate than the 154th Regiment’s regular infantry companies, since the majority of our personnel served in the rear handling our heavy weapons. Even though my assignment as forward observer placed me on the frontline, my freedom to avoid or pull out of more hazardous areas gave me a significant advantage over the regular infantry, as the earlier incident with the sniper at Volkhov demonstrated.
Back in Germany, where Anneliese was completing her nursing training, she and other civilians had begun to experience firsthand the horror of war. Frequent Allied air raids by large bomber formations now often forced her and the other members of her household to take refuge in the basement of her father’s home in Hamburg.
At the end of July 1943, I heard on the radio that the Allies were repeatedly targeting Hamburg with powerful air strikes. Employing hundreds of planes in the first of a series of massive area bombings of German cities, the enemy dropped large numbers of incendiary bombs that ignited multiple blazes. Heat and strong winds soon whipped these into a firestorm of unprecedented scale that killed about 40,000 people and devastated much of the central part of city.
In the aftermath of the attack, all mail to Hamburg stopped for a couple of weeks, leaving me deeply concerned. A long three weeks later, I received word that Anneliese and her family had survived. By the time her letter reached me, Anneliese had meanwhile completed her basic nursing training and been transferred up to a hospital at St. Peter-Ording on the North Sea coast, a location where she would be much safer.
Composing a letter to Anneliese, I conveyed both our difficult conditions at the front as well as my concerns for her. “We are in the most northern part of the Eastern Front on a large river [the Neva]. We are in foxholes [and] life is really miserable. We don’t get any sleep. I await a letter from you concerning the bombing of Hamburg on 25th and 26th of July, 1943.” It would be months later before I learned what she had personally experienced.
Despite the hardships in Russia, I still expressed an abiding optimism about the outcome of the conflict. “We don’t have very much of our younger years [left to us], but this will change when the war is finished. We here on the front are very positive that we will win the war.”
My words also sought to reassure her by painting a brighter future for us after the fighting had ended. “All that we are going through now will be compensated by our mutual love. After our victory, we will make up for all these missing moments and hours.”
Chapter 12
OFFICER CANDIDATE
September–December 1943
ORANIENBAUM TO NEVEL
Early September–October 31, 1943
At the beginning of September, the 58th Division received orders to prepare to transfer 40 miles westward from the fiercely contested Ladoga area to the relative calm of the Oranienbaum pocket, roughly two years after our previous posting there.
Before making the shift to a new position, a Vorkommando would be sent ahead to determine the placement of the guns and other equipment. As a recently promoted sergeant, I was assigned to head the team by our company commander, Second Lt. Reichardt. On September 8, the day before the remainder of the division arrived, I wrote a letter to Anneliese describing the view from our new location near the coast: “I can see the Baltic Sea, the towers of Leningrad, and the hills of Finland.”
In the midst of a conversation with Reichardt the day after my letter, he abruptly asked, “Do you want to be an officer?” Though it had been apparent that he had been grooming me for greater responsibility, the sudden question still caught me off guard. Despite my surprise, I responded instantly with an enthusiastic, “Jawohl, Herr Leutnant!” With my acceptance, I became an officer candidate, finally earning the chance to pursue a leadership role to which I had long aspired.
Two days later, on September 11, Col. Behrend, our regimental commander, decorated me with the Iron Cross First Class for bravery in recognition of my role in halting the tank attack near the Neva River as well as a number of other combat actions. In our company, the Iron Cross First Class was awarded to only a few soldiers so it was a distinct honor that I felt privileged to wear.
Excited to share my news, I decided to try to give Anneliese a phone call from my frontline bunker at Oranienbaum. Since the communications network was restricted to military needs, I was aware that my effort might be blocked, but figured it was worth a try. Using our field telephone, I reached the regimental switchboard and was patched through to the division. The divisional operator, in turn, placed a call to the hospital in St. Peter-Ording where Anneliese was working. Much to my disappointment, I learned that she was already off duty that day. I tried to phone her again, but never reached her. My failure to speak to her left me even more anxious to see her again.
Before entering a military academy back in Germany, officer candidates had to fulfill a short tour of duty in charge of an infantry squad. On September 18, I was assigned temporary command of a squad of about a dozen soldiers in one of the regular infantry companies, comprised mostly of men from the Hamburg area.
Removed from my familiar role and comrades, this new assignment placed me in a role for which I felt unprepared, among soldiers I did not know. Naturally, I greeted the task without much enthusiasm, but accepted it as a necessary step in the process of becoming an officer.
Larger events soon took us into action. Intelligence in early October revealed that the Soviets were massing two armies before the German front at Nevel, located about 150 miles south of Leningrad. As the junction point between Army Group North and Army Group Center, it was a particularly vital sector of the front.
Responding to this imminent threat, the high command directed additional forces to the Nevel area from across the northern front, including the 58th Division. Together with the rest of the 154th Regiment’s infantry, my squad spent October 2 to October 6 aboard trains on a circuitous 300-mile journey south from Oranienbaum.
The expected Russian offensive commenced on October 6 and quickly broke through at the seam of the two German Army Groups. The newly arriving 58th Division played a key role in halting the enemy’s advance just north of Nevel, but its hastily organized counterattack was unable to regain control of the town.
When the train carrying my infantry squad and other elements of the 154th Regiment reached the Nevel area, we joined the desperate fight. After the infantry company’s commander outlined my assignment on a map, I met with my men to explain what we could expect as we moved into our frontline position. “Listen closely, this hill
ahead of us is under Russian fire. When we reach the top of it, the Russians will be able to see us. Get over the top and onto the other side where we’ll have cover again.”
Shouting, “Auf gehts!” (“Let’s go!”), I led them forward. Advancing over the treeless crest of the hill, we immediately encountered machine-gun fire and dashed for cover at the bottom. Given our vulnerability in this situation, I was relieved to execute the mission with only one wounded man.
Upon reaching our frontline, I instructed my squad to dig trenches and haul up logs to create a rampart. In the midst of constructing these defenses, a group of several German Stuka dive-bombers appeared up in the sky.
With sudden alarm, we watched as they began to plummet toward us. Gaining speed in their descent, the sirens mounted under their wings screeched louder and louder. The planes were coming right at us! Only at the last minute did they veer off to deliver their bombs on an enemy target about 150 yards to the front of our trenches.
A short time after we took up our post, a flock of sheep wandered into the No Man’s Land running between the German and Soviet lines. In the fading light just before sundown, one of the men in my squad brought down one of the sheep with his rifle. Once it was dark, a couple of my men hauled the lamb back into our lines, where it was skinned and roasted over an open fire. Having gone without fresh meat for a long time, we all savored a rare feast of mutton.
Our satisfaction did not last long. Apparently, the meat was cooked inadequately. Everyone in my squad soon began to experience stomach cramps and had to run for the bushes. At the end of my own two-week bout of diarrhea, I swore an oath to myself that I would never touch mutton again.
Because of casualties suffered by the infantry company’s officers in the intense combat, I was shortly assigned the command of a full platoon of roughly three-dozen men. Lacking bunkers in which to take shelter, we huddled in our holes in the already freezing weather.
During a firefight on October 12, a bullet passed through the left arm of my overcoat. While only slightly grazing my skin, the injury nonetheless required me to seek first aid and bandages from our medic, temporarily pulling me off the frontline.
With a brief moment to contact Anneliese, I penned a letter. The following line conveys the extent to which my feelings for her sustained me. “It is because of your existence and love that life in combat here on the Eastern Front is made bearable.”
After a couple of days back up at the front with the infantry platoon, new orders arrived on October 16 reassigning the infantry command to someone else and directing me to remain in the rear area. Running increasingly short of officers, the army perhaps took this measure as part of its larger effort to ensure that officer candidates would not die in battle just before returning to Germany for training at one of the five Kriegsschulen (war academies).
Though my brief stint in command of regular infantry troops proved a positive experience, there had not been enough time for us to develop any sort of bond. While the troops treated me with the respect due anyone superior in rank, they were otherwise indifferent to me.
Likewise, I felt little personal attachment to them and missed my old comrades back in the 13th Company. Working as a forward observer gave me a greater sense of responsibility, knowing that the whole regiment was depending on my skills to provide them with fire support from our heavy guns.
On October 17, I received orders from Col. Behrend to attend a ten-day course. Conducted a few miles behind the frontlines, it was designed to help prepare officer candidates who would soon be entering a Kriegsschule. Having obtained the official status of Fähnrich (junior officer candidate), I finally departed Russia on October 31 for the long train trip back to Germany.
PARTISANS
To defend against attack by Soviet partisan forces, the front and rear railcars of the train were mounted with light anti-aircraft guns. Although sabotage of the railroad tracks along our route delayed the trip a couple of times, we otherwise crossed through occupied Soviet territory without encountering significant partisan activity.
Despite the interference with its logistics that the German Army faced from enemy partisans, most of the time our division did not have much difficulty obtaining supplies at the front. The worst supply problems had actually resulted from the weather during the bitterly cold winter of 1941–1942. Since that time, the Wehrmacht had succeeded in adequately meeting our needs for food, ammunition, and other essential supplies. Even letters and parcels from home arrived promptly.
Although we did not notice any change in the availability of our supplies at the front, soldiers returning from leave in 1943 began to report that the partisans were becoming a significant problem in rear areas. They eventually grew so powerful that the German Army deployed whole divisions behind the lines to conduct counterinsurgency operations to secure the rail links to our army at the front. Even with these efforts, the partisans frequently succeeded in disrupting our rail network and impeding the movement of troops and supplies.
Up at the front, we placed a large part of the blame for the growing problem with the partisans on the brutal way the Generalkommissariat (Nazi political officials) ran the occupation behind us. These Nazis in the Generalkommissariat were known as Goldfasanen (Golden Pheasants) because of the golden brown color of their party uniforms and their arrogant and corrupt misrule.
Most of the German soldiers around me felt a deep bitterness at the suffering that these Goldfasanen intentionally and unnecessarily inflicted on the Soviet civilian population. This ideologically inspired cruelty led many of the occupied peoples that had once welcomed us as liberators to shift their support to the partisans working for a Communist victory.
RETURN TO GERMANY
October 31–December 7, 1943
Because my orders did not immediately require me to report to the 58th Division’s reserve base in Oldenburg, Anneliese and I had made plans to spend four days together in St. Peter-Ording, in Schleswig-Holstein, where she had been posted as a nurse. On November 3, I finally reached the small town and took a hotel room.
Despite windy, cold and wet weather that time of year, Anneliese and I still enjoyed strolling around the scenic resort area and watching the waves crash against the coast. After all we had been through during the previous six months apart, we were simply happy to have time together again.
On November 8, I returned south to the reserve base in Oldenburg, which served as the 58th Infantry Division’s primary processing center for soldiers departing and returning from the front. There was little for me to do, but Anneliese was able to follow me down from St. Peter-Ording for a two-day visit.
Just after she returned to St. Peter-Ording, Anneliese began experiencing stomach pains and underwent an emergency appendectomy on November 17 at a hospital in Tönning near St. Peter-Ording. Before returning home to Püggen for my three-week furlough before the start of my training at the Kriegsschule, I made a trip up to Tönning to spend a little time with her in the hospital.
Reaching home the next day, my family gave me their usual warm welcome. As always, my sisters wanted me to carry them on my back and play games with them. Despite such light moments, it was clear to me that life in Germany was growing harder.
Beginning in the winter of 1943–1944, the local authorities required children to bring a piece of peat coal to class each day in order to help heat Püggen’s one-room schoolhouse. If the supplies ran out, my sisters and the other students would have to bundle up in their coats throughout the day to stay warm.
By this time, Marlene had completed her elementary schooling and had entered an upper level school in nearby Salzwedel, where her main teacher was a strong Nazi. Aware of our family’s lack of support for the Nazis, this teacher caused Marlene many difficulties, especially for her failure to use the “Heil Hitler” salute in which the arm is thrust out. Politically handicapped and under constant scrutiny, Marlene had to work extremely hard to achieve a measure of academic success.
Her experience refle
cted the broader treatment that my family received because of its unfavorable attitude toward the Nazis. For example, when my family sought permission to butcher one of our pigs, it encountered problems obtaining authorization from the local farmer who had been granted such decision-making powers because of his Nazi loyalty. Likewise, when the higher authorities issued a directive requiring Püggen to supply a certain number of animals for slaughter or horses for transportation, this same Nazi farmer made sure that my family was the first one required to surrender the necessary livestock.
In other ways, my family’s experience was typical of that of other German families. Like many of them, my parents risked losing more than one son in the war. Earlier that year, the army had drafted my younger brother, Otto. When he completed his basic training, he was stationed with an infantry division in northern France, in the area south of Normandy. Because his twin Hans had suffered a childhood accident in which a wagon wheel ran over his left leg, he was unable to serve at the front, despite his desire to do so.
When we were away at the front, my mother would anxiously await letters from Otto or me each day. While eager to hear more news on the military situation, my mother did not trust the information presented by the tightly controlled German media.
Although risking harsh punishment for tuning into enemy broadcasts, she would regularly get out a small radio she kept hidden away and scan the dial for the BBC’s distinctive classical music call sign. Though occasionally joined by other members of the family, she frequently would sit alone in a back room listening to their German language program in an effort to obtain a clearer picture of the war. Closely following military developments on a map, my mother knew where the frontlines ran and sometimes even where our divisions were operating.
At Leningrad's Gates Page 18
