At Leningrad's Gates

by William Lubbec

  By February 1944, the 154th Regiment had reassembled and joined the 58th Division at a location near Narva in northeastern Estonia, where it took up a position in a previously constructed network of defenses that ran between the Baltic Coast and Lake Peipus. Operating from this fortified “Panther Position,” the 154th Regiment helped to repulse Red Army attacks around the town of Sirgala, about 15 miles west of Narva and our old Plyussa battlefield of 1941.

  Upon my arrival at the 13th Company’s position on May 20, I immediately assumed the role of acting Kompanieführer (company leader). Within a month, Col. Behrend confirmed me in this position. Normally it would have been held by a captain rather than a second lieutenant, but the desperate shortage of officers had now made my situation relatively common in the German Army. As the only officer in the company, I was forced to run my platoons with sergeants who normally commanded squads.

  Senior Sgt. Jüchter was still in charge of the Tross (rear area) and Staff Sergeant Ehlert continued to lead the communications platoon, but now I was their superior. The camaraderie that I once enjoyed with many members of the company as an enlisted man was no longer possible. Addressed as “Herr Leutnant,” a certain awkward distance appeared between myself and the other longtime veterans of the company like Willi Schütte.

  Yet, as a result of the discipline and respect for rank instilled by army training, we soon adjusted and became accustomed to the changed relationship. While there was deference to my rank and a distance between us off the battlefield, the old comradeship would return during combat or if one of them was wounded. My relationship with the men in the 13th Company may have also been helped by the fact that I continued to spend about the same amount of time at the front as the enlisted men.

  Though there were few casualties in the company during the first two months after my return, the intense fighting over the preceding months had reduced the unit to about 200 men. This strength was significantly less than the complement of between 250 and 300 troops we had maintained in the first couple of years of the war in Russia. Fortunately, the relative calm at the Panther Position permitted us to restore our depleted strength to some extent as we received replacements and the return of wounded troops from convalescent leave.

  The fact that the Wehrmacht drew most of the men filling its divisions from a single region enhanced camaraderie and cohesion within a unit, but it could also lead to significant tension when the army had to send outsiders as replacements or when units from different regions had to act in close cooperation.

  While interaction between troops from different regions could lead to problems, a few strangers from outside northern Germany performed very successfully in our company. In particular, an Austrian private first class from Vienna surprisingly proved to be one of the best soldiers I would command in combat. His relaxed manner caused me some initial concern, but he executed orders promptly and always remained calm when the bullets were flying. You could never predict someone’s behavior in combat.

  As an officer, I was issued a Luger pistol for my sidearm. While only firing it a couple of times in combat, it proved a good weapon and fairly accurate up to a range of 20 to 30 yards. Later, I obtained a Spanish-made Astra Model 600 pistol that would serve as my favored sidearm. In some instances, I also carried a Mauser rifle or MP-40 submachine gun, though I preferred the rifle in action due to its much greater range and accuracy.

  With my new rank, I acquired the services of a soldier who took care of my clothes and delivered my meals from the company field kitchen. The company had few motor vehicles, but there was a Citroën at my disposal and, fortunately, a designated enlisted man to serve as my driver. Because my family had not possessed an automobile or truck when I was growing up, I had never learned to drive nor obtained a license.

  My position also entitled me to make use of a horse named Thea and receive the services of her handler, although I would seldom ride her unless we were on the march and conditions were quiet. With a farming background, my knowledge of horses often proved greater than that of the soldiers charged with their care. On one occasion, when a sergeant was experiencing trouble taming a particular horse, I leapt up on it and rode around in circles until the horse became submissive.

  Despite my responsibilities of command, Anneliese remained constantly on my mind. While suffering many difficult and painful experiences as a soldier, the worst part of the war for me was my separation from her and the uncertainty of whether we would ever see each other again. Our letters were filled with expressions of our yearning to see each other, our wish to marry, and our desire to enjoy a normal life. Beyond conveying our love to one another, we also shared the hope that the war would soon end. In the face of ever-darker news, we sought to reinforce each other’s morale about the outcome.

  Working as a nurse in Belgium, Anneliese mentioned her frequent sightings of the massed bomber formations flying overhead on the way from England to Germany or on their return. Having witnessed the horrible fate of Hamburg, she would wonder which city would next face devastation.

  She also conveyed news from her correspondence and phone conversations with my brother Otto, who was posted relatively nearby her in France. Soon after the long-anticipated landings by the Western Allies on June 6 1944, she and my family became greatly concerned when they lost touch with him. Three months of uncertainty passed before they finally received a note from the Red Cross indicating Otto had become a POW following his capture on August 30.

  Yet, though my anxiety over my brother’s fate eventually lifted, my concern for Anneliese’s safety only intensified, especially when I learned that the area around her hospital in Genk had been bombed in mid-June.

  THE DÜNA: mid-July–August 7, 1944

  There had been only limited action along the Narva sector of the Panther Position since my arrival in late May, but an urgent crisis on the Eastern Front soon developed to the south. On June 22, the third anniversary of our invasion of Russia, the Red Army commenced a massive offensive that virtually annihilated Army Group Center, killing or capturing hundreds of thousands of German troops.

  The destruction of one of the Wehrmacht’s three army groups was a strategic disaster at least equal to Stalingrad that gravely undermined Germany’s entire position on the Eastern Front. With the southern flank of Army Group North almost unprotected, the high command rapidly assembled units from around the northern front to deploy down to southern Latvia in mid-July.

  As we were preparing to pull out of the Narva area, the division supplied my company with about two-dozen 210-millimeter rockets. These were capped with a variety of different warheads, including one type that spread small steel ball bearings dispersed by a high explosive; another variety that spread shrapnel dispersed by an explosive compressed air canister; and a third that used an incendiary naptha material.

  With our departure imminent, it was necessary to expend or destroy any remaining ordinance that would have been difficult to haul with us, in order to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. After witnessing a test-firing of these rockets a few months earlier at the company commander’s course in Munster, I was also simply interested to assess their combat effectiveness.

  Lacking the necessary equipment to fire the rockets, I came up with the idea of using their shipping crates as launching tubes. Working behind a hill that hid us from enemy surveillance, we constructed two sets of simple wooden supports and then chopped down a couple of five-inch diameter trees for crossbeams.

  Leaning one of the shipping crates against a crossbeam at the appropriate firing angle, we aimed the ersatz launcher by sight at a target in the Soviet lines. After connecting one of the rocket’s electric trigger mechanisms to a hand-operated electrical detonator normally used to set off mines, we carefully loaded the weapon into the improvised launching tube. On ignition, it flashed through the air and exploded right on target.

  Following this success, I issued orders to similarly prepare our entire stock of rockets for launching, setting their buil
t-in timing mechanisms in order to produce a short delay between each rocket’s firing.

  When the detonator handle was twisted, the rockets began racing across No Man’s Land to their designated targets on the edge of a nearby woods. In an awesome display of concentrated firepower, the explosive warheads’ detonations tossed trees into the air, while the incendiary warheads instantly ignited a blaze across a wide swath of forest.

  Though we were uncertain exactly what Russian forces were arrayed across from us, these rockets had obliterated whatever was there. With the proper launching devices, the rockets would have been highly effective weapons, but we never received any further supplies.

  Leaving the Panther Position, the 58th Division transferred about 100 miles west to Reval, Estonia.

  Generally, we moved these longer distances by train and shorter distances by horse or by foot. Despite some attempt to motorize the 58th Division during the course of the war, the process had been very inconsistent. While lacking any trucks when we fought in France, the Wehrmacht subsequently issued us a number of Bedford trucks captured from the Allies after that campaign had ended.

  From about the end of 1942, we began to receive a large number of German-made motorized vehicles in Russia. This effort to motorize our division soon halted and we received no further vehicles after mid1943. Once the army stopped supplying us with new vehicles, we thought it somewhat amusing to find ourselves increasingly on horses once again as our existing trucks were destroyed or immobilized from a lack of spare parts.

  Motorization had mixed results in the conditions we experienced in the Soviet Union. When the spring and fall rasputitsas (rainy seasons) turned many Russian roads into a mud resembling quicksand, horses sometimes proved superior to trucks. Often, the mud was so deep that our Panzers would have to haul the trucks out. Even in good weather, you could never drive very fast on primitive roads while hauling a 150-millimeter howitzer.

  On reflection, I believe that many commentators have overestimated the significance of our lack of mechanization, especially once Germany had been placed on the strategic defensive. Horses did not require petrol for fuel nor steel and industrial plants to be produced, so in this sense helped preserve Germany’s resources for more vital weapons and ammunition. Whatever the relative merits of horsedrawn versus motorized transportation, our division was again relying almost exclusively on horses to haul our guns and other equipment by the time I returned to the front in mid-1944.

  Soon after arriving in Reval, our division made the 150-mile journey by train south to Dünaburg, located beside the Düna River in Latvia. At the end of a 30-mile march west to the town of Rokiskis in neighboring Lithuania, we engaged in an intense battle with advancing Soviet forces on July 17, but failed to hold the city. Adopting a defensive posture, we entrenched in a nearby position about 75 miles southeast of Riga, Latvia.

  Though no longer a forward observer, I continued to operate close to the front as an officer. Confident of my horsemanship, I probably also took some unnecessary risks. On a quiet day, I decided to take Thea out for some exercise, but ended up straying too close to the enemy’s position.

  Suddenly bullets began whizzing through the air around us. It was a scary moment for me, particularly since captured Russians had told us that Red Army troops had standing orders to shoot first at those German soldiers who wore the form-fitting pants and boots typical of German officers. Swinging Thea around, I jumped her over a fence and galloped to the rear. Once again, my life had been spared.

  In addition to visually monitoring the enemy’s frontlines, we listened for any change in the volume or type of noise emitted from their position. Sometimes the change was subtle, but at other times it was obvious. At our first position close to Rokiskis, the sound of female laughter echoed across No Man’s Land. Calling back to our guns, I ordered a few rounds be dropped in that direction. Following the short barrage, the front became completely silent.

  Late one night soon afterward, a sudden torrent of heavy machine-gun fire erupted from our frontlines about 50 yards ahead of my bunker. Confirming my suspicions, an infantryman arrived moments later to report that a Soviet attack was coming directly toward our position.

  With our troops in urgent need of fire support, I moved outside the bunker and contacted the teams manning our three 105-millimeter mortars, aware that the vertical trajectory of their fire made them more effective than our howitzers among the Düna’s tall trees. Uncertain how close the Russian assault had penetrated, my initial orders directed a barrage of mortar rounds into an area about 100 yards to our front.

  When several salvos produced no diminishment in the intensity of the battle, I pulled the curtain of shells 50 yards nearer to us. The concentration of fire from our machine guns immediately made it clear, however, that the enemy had advanced even closer. Cutting the range back to coordinates 25 yards ahead of our frontline, I ordered a final bombardment, fearing that any further reduction might risk hitting our own troops.

  As the mortar rounds slammed into a rectangular zone roughly 25 by 75 yards, the Soviet assault was finally halted. Rather than spreading out as they normally would in a daylight attack, the Red Army troops had clustered together in the darkness, amplifying the deadly results of our barrage. Our infantry later told me that just one of these rounds alone had killed ten to twenty Russians. The total enemy death toll from the 30 or so mortar shells must have been in the dozens.

  One afternoon a few days later, I was resting in my bunker about 100 yards behind the front. Lieutenant Colonel (Oberstleutnant) Werner Ebeling, who had just become the acting regimental commander, entered and asked, “Lübbecke, do you have something to drink?” Pleased to have a chance to talk with him, I grabbed a bottle of cognac from under my bunk.

  Almost immediately, three more officers I knew from the regimental staff appeared and demanded, “Is that all you have?” Happy to share my stock, I produced additional bottles.

  The problem with this situation was the German custom of toasting. When a toast is made, everyone present must empty their glasses, turning them upside down as proof of their consumption. At the end of a long afternoon of toasts, we were all so drunk that we could barely walk.

  Departing the bunker, we somehow stumbled the mile and a half backtothe Tross, no doubt resembling a bunch of drunken sailors. Locating our quartermaster, we obtained a barrel of salted herring and ate the fish right out of the top of it.

  My impression is that we eventually wandered back up to the front, but I was too drunk to recall exactly. The following day, my head was aching with one of the worst hangovers I had ever experienced. For the rest of my life I have not been able to smell cognac without feeling ill.

  BACK TOWARD RIGA: August 7–October 5, 1944

  Shortly after our drinking party, advances by the Red Army threatened the German forces near Rokiskis with encirclement, forcing us to make our first major retreat in the Düna region on August 7. Withdrawing to the northwest over the course of the next couple of days, the 180 or so remaining men in my company established a new position near the western turn in the Nemunelis-Memele River. This placed us about 40 miles northwest of Rokiskis and roughly the same distance southeast of Riga.

  When we reached our new position, I ordered a single round to be fired at a particular set of coordinates to our front, as was standard procedure. When our howitzer boomed behind me, I waited for the expected explosion in our front.

  Instead, there was a blast right behind me and I realized that the shell had fallen short. Immediately afterward, an enlisted man came running up to our position yelling, “Those sons of bitches—they shot me!”

  Uncertain whether the misfire resulted from a mistake on my part in calculating the range or an error by the gun crew, I did not volunteer that I might have been to blame for this incidence of “friendly fire.” Luckily, the man’s wound was slight and no one else was injured.

  As August progressed, the situation on the Düna front grew more fluid and we were in
creasingly on the move. Red Army attacks across a wide front against outnumbered German troops led to the increasing use of ad hoc “fire brigades” assigned to block Russian penetrations. Their effective deployment was hampered by uncertainty as to whether the enemy was in front of us, to the side of us, or to our rear. To avoid being outflanked and encircled, there was ultimately no alternative but for the whole frontline to steadily pull back.

  Acting as one of these emergency “fire brigades,” our heavy weapons company sometimes occupied an area of the front separate from our regimental infantry or even in support of units from another division. While none of the main Soviet assaults struck our company’s sector of the front, we frequently engaged in numerous smaller combat actions.

  Whereas in offensive operations we used our guns to reduce the capability of the Soviet forces to resist an advance, in defensive actions we sought to break up concentrations of Red Army forces before they advanced or during an attack. When this failed, we sought to limit the enemy’s ability to closely follow our retreat.

  When orders came to pull out of a position, our gun company was always the first part of the regiment to pull out since we required more time to load our equipment and also traveled more slowly. The regiment would leave a rearguard of the two or three infantry squads with machine guns supported by a couple of 75-millimeter howitzers or 105-millimeter mortars from our company. When this infantry rearguard pulled back, the remaining gun crews received little time to load their equipment and get on the road ahead of the pursuing Russians.

  Throughout the Baltic region, there were a few large depots where the Wehrmacht had accumulated enormous quantities of supplies to support the operations of Army Group North. These stores of war materials and food often had to be hastily destroyed or simply abandoned because of the speed of the Red Army advance. Frequently, there were large clouds of black smoke billowing up into the sky behind the frontlines just before we retreated.