by Hans Werner
In another story possibly about the same event, my father noted that they had been unable to reposition their cannons, and “during the night the Americans broke through with their tanks.” They had to leave in a hurry at night, driving through the same village where “a short distance ahead there was an American tank.”10
Johann was frequently called upon to take equipment to rear areas and sometimes well into Germany for repair or to bring up new equipment from factories. On one such occasion, likely when the brigade had withdrawn from the Ardennes combat area, he made a day’s journey to pull a cannon back for repairs. Along the road, he came upon dead German soldiers hanging from trees. SS soldiers stopped him, and he had to show them his orders. After he passed inspection, he asked what the soldiers had done to earn being executed. The reply was that they were deserters and “didn’t want to fight anymore, they wanted to go home.” My father found out later that they had actually been wounded and noted that such actions resulted in hatred between SS and Wehrmacht soldiers. The SS “were very strict, soldiers were not supposed to go home, they were all supposed to fight.”11
After the 401 left the Ardennes forest, the Allies advanced rapidly, and soon the German Army had its back to the Rhine River. In the face of renewed Allied attacks, the Rhine became a major barrier for the 401 to cross. They arrived at the riverbank at night in a forested area where they had to wait for a ferry that could take only four machines at a time. They were in a lineup most of the night but finally crossed the Rhine and drove a short distance before stopping. There seemed to be a lot of confusion about where they were supposed to be, and it took a few days for things to settle down.12
As with many of his memories of the war, my father’s stories were so disconnected that it was difficult to determine at what point in the war each took place. One notable example was the struggle to place the stories about a break from combat in Holland. The unit arrived in Holland at night, and after Johann dropped off his cannon at its firing position he drove his machine into a barn and went to sleep. He awoke to the soothing sounds of milk streaming into a pail. He realized he was parked between the rows of cows, and it was milking time for the Dutch farmer. He switched on his radio and, knowing the Dutch were not enthusiastic about their German occupiers, tuned it to a British station that broadcast propaganda even though they were expressly forbidden to listen to foreign stations. The sounds of the milk streaming into the pail became slower and more irregular as the farmer began to listen to the broadcast. When Johann got out of the Zugmaschine to introduce himself, he soon made a friend, who was curious about whether he was allowed to listen to such broadcasts. When Johann assured him it was entirely forbidden and begged him not to tell anyone, the farmer’s goodwill was assured. It turned out the farmer had a number of attractive daughters and tried to convince Johann to abandon the war, which he thought was almost over anyway, and stay to live with them. They found out that Johann’s Mennonite Low German and the farmer’s Dutch were similar enough that they could understand each other remarkably well. Johann’s memory of the soldiers hanging from trees in the Ardennes likely made desertion a remote possibility, but it helped to make the stay in Holland a fond memory.
In a number of interviews interspersed with my research on the events on the western front, my father and I tried to fix the dates of the Holland stories. Although he could place them after the battles in the Ardennes, his only time frame for remembering when he had been in Holland was a memory of the apple blossoms being on the trees. That memory placed the events in spring. In one exchange, I asked the question a number of times:
But can you remember when that would have been?
No, it was in spring, that I know. First we came to Germany, right across the border, we were there for a while, and then, then we came to Holland. No, first we came to Holland, and when we came to Germany we were in the Ruhr area, that was our end.…
But you cannot remember when that was?
It was early in spring; it could have been in the beginning of May.
It must have been much earlier, you see this is 1945, 1944–45, and you see in April you were already captured. This must have been earlier.
I always judge the time by the weather, the weather was pleasant, and the fruit trees were blooming, but of course they bloom earlier there, they probably bloom in April already.13
The above series of stories was typical of my father’s stories of his time in the German Army. In broad terms, it was clear that they occurred after the Allies had landed and retaken most of France. References to the Battle of the Bulge and the crossing of the Rhine River fixed some of the stories in time. However, it was difficult to get a sense of what part his unit played in the various battles. Between formal taped interviews with my father in the 1980s, I was pursuing research on the military history of the war on the western front and trying to locate additional sources in German military archives. Although details of the 401’s role in the war were mentioned only in passing in the military histories of the western front, a sense of the kind of unit the 401 was gradually emerged. It was an artillery brigade of five battalions, with each battalion consisting of two batteries. A battery was made up of a number of cannons, usually six. In December 1944, the unit had seventy-two guns of wide assortment, ranging in size from the 75 mm field cannon to the 152 mm captured Russian howitzer that was operated by one junior officer and eight soldiers and fired a 43.5 kg shell.14
Some good fortune also produced additional sources in the German military archives that shed light on the activities of the 401. In my initial contact with the archives, staff advised me that the unit was small, and due to space limitations war diaries for units below the division level were generally not available. Fortunately, however, they had received a small collection of records that included the war diaries of the 5th Battalion of the 401. Although Johann was likely in the 2nd Battalion, this find provided daily records of the 401 through the lens of an official war diary recorded at or near the times of the events it described. Daily diaries were kept by an officer of the unit and varied somewhat in content, depending on the diarist. They recorded military details such as where the unit was stationed, when it went into battle, significant events of its engagements, and notations about enemy activity. The 401’s diary collection also included the written orders kept on file by the 5th Battalion, some of which emanated from brigade headquarters, and they offered a window onto the more general events in which the 401 participated.15
The war diaries record the formation of the Heeres Artillerie Brigade (mot.) 401 on 30 September 1944. It was formed as a unit of Wehrkreis XIII, the military district that included portions of Bavaria and the area of Bohemia in Czechoslovakia. Its official training and replacement unit was the 103, the unit Johann had been assigned to after being drafted in October 1943.16 On 2 November 1944, the Heeres Artillerie Brigade (mot.) 401 became an active unit.17 That meant that the 401 was soon loaded onto trains for transport to the western front. My father’s memories of loading the Zugmaschines coincided with these events. The unit arrived in the Saar region, just east of a line between the French cities of Nancy and Metz, on 7 November 1944.
Insertion of the 401 into the Saar battles must have been as much for testing and gaining combat experience as anything else since it was engaged in battle for only eight days. During that time, it was to assist the 11th Panzer Division in an attack. That attack either never materialized or was overtaken by General Patton’s Third Army offensive, which began on 8 November. The 401 was unable to take up the position it had been ordered to occupy and then had to withdraw even farther almost immediately. In the emotionless summary of the first day of combat, the diarist noted that “in the evening the unit prepared to change position because of the situation and unsuitable firing opportunities.... The 13th battery already made its move in the evening because of losses.” In the details that followed, the diarist curtly noted that at 18:00 the “firing position of the 13th battery was hit by enemy artillery
fire, 1 dead, 3 seriously wounded, a number of lighter wounds,” and nineteen minutes later he noted “further artillery fire on the firing position of the 13th battery, 1 wounded.”18 Even during the brief engagement, the unit was constantly short of ammunition, and sometimes firing orders had to be curtailed because of the dearth of ammunition. According to the war diary, the 401 was engaged in the Saar battles from 9 to 17 November, when it was withdrawn from the front to go into reserve. Two days before going into reserve, while engaged in heavy fighting, the unit was renamed the Volksartillerie Korps (mot.) 401, an apparent move by Hitler to recognize the participation of ethnic Germans such as Johann and to appeal to the unity of the German people. My father had no memory of the unit’s change of name; he always referred to it by its earlier designation. During the two weeks the unit was in reserve, extensive orders came down for training and refitting it. The replacement of fifteen officers and sixteen regular soldiers in the 2nd Battalion alone might offer some hint of the losses experienced in the unit’s first taste of combat.
The diarist noted that at 4:30 p.m. on 5 December 1944 at a meeting of the unit’s commanders the corps was advised that orders to move from the Saar to another area would arrive within twenty-four hours. At 1:00 p.m. the next day, the 5th Battalion received orders that it would be entraining that evening. Due to Allied dominance of the skies and the absolute secrecy surrounding the buildup of troops, transports travelled only at night, when their movements did not invite the attention of jabos, as the diarist called Allied fighter–bombers. The corps travelled north from the Saar to the area east of the Ardennes forest by train. It arrived in Meisburg on 11 December, unloaded, and then moved forward under cover of darkness from 12 to 14 December. This creeping forward and driving only at night for a few days might be the memory my father had of driving to the Ardennes. Orders for the attack itself arrived at the 5th Battalion at 11:00 p.m. on 15 December.19
In my father’s memory, the artillery shelling for the attack in the Ardennes forest began at midnight, but according to the war diaries the attack began at 5:30 a.m. My father also recalled that the crescendo of artillery fire culminated in the cannons of his unit joining the attack, but according to the war diaries the 401’s guns remained silent in the early hours of the attack. General Hasso von Manteuffel had ordered there be no artillery preparation in the area in front of the 401 to allow the infantry to slip unnoticed through the widely spaced American positions in the wooded area of their sector.20 It was not until 8:30 a.m. that the 5th Battalion’s diarist recorded that the corps began firing at enemy targets, and by then the attack had moved beyond the Our River, which marked the initial line between the opposing forces. In the next few days, however, the corps was heavily involved in supporting the attack.21
My father’s memory of venturing out with the Zugmaschine to collect booty from abandoned U.S. Army warehouses was also noted by the diarist of the 5th Battalion, who reported that on 19 December, “in the area around Ouren, the battalion captured a large quantity of booty in terms of vehicles, communications equipment, weapons, and rations.”22
The town of Bastogne never came up in my father’s stories. My father seemingly had no knowledge or memory of the drama that unfolded in the area around this relatively small place in Belgium. Bastogne had been surrounded by German troops during the initial thrust of the battle, but they had been unable to capture it in spite of repeated attempts. On 26 December, units of the U.S. Army broke through to relieve the beleaguered forces there. The relief of Bastogne signalled the beginning of the end for the German attack, but Hitler became even more determined to capture the town. On 29 December, the 401 was moved forward to support a renewed attack.
The dramatic stories of Johann having to transport large numbers of wounded and dying soldiers after the unit was shelled cannot be placed clearly in the diaries. The war diaries of the 5th Battalion do offer some hints, however, of where these events might have taken place. After firing on roads and intersections just outside Bastogne for the first few days, the corps was forced to move back toward the villages of Oberwampach and Niederwampach on 8 January 1945. The 5th Battalion’s 13th and temporarily assigned 9th Batteries came under heavy shelling from the Americans during the next few days. It is likely that the events my father described took place in the same area.
In 1990, while on a trip to Germany to visit his sisters, who had just arrived there from the Soviet Union, I took my father on a trip through the areas where his unit had been during the Battle of the Bulge. I thought revisiting the landscape where these events had transpired would trigger more memories and provide new stories. Cues can improve recall if they provide a match in some way with how the memory of an event was stored. We entered the Ardennes forest from Germany at a small border crossing and travelled the roads that information in the war diaries of his unit suggested were the ones he likely travelled along. In general, being in the area some forty-five years later did not evoke more, or clearer, memories for my father. However, when we drove down a winding road into the valley toward the village of Niederwampach and crossed a bridge, he had me stop the vehicle to point out that it had been beside that bridge where he had driven his machine into the river to wash it off after unloading the wounded and dying soldiers he had picked up after they had been shelled.
Although it might have been the inexperience of a commander that was to blame for the shelling experienced by Johann’s unit, it might also have been Hitler’s insistence that Bastogne be captured and his refusal to authorize a retreat of any of the forces concentrated there. Hitler finally relented and allowed the withdrawal of some forces from the Bastogne area on 8 January.23 On 14 January, after firing its last ammunition, the 5th Battalion withdrew from the Bastogne area and, like the rest of the Volks Artillerie Korps (mot.) 401, travelled back to the rear areas for rest and refit.24
A day or two after the corps arrived in its rest area, orders arrived with notifications of new appointments, awarding of medals, and lists of replacements. The orders of the day noted that the corps received a new commander on 4 January, a few days before the shelling that figured so prominently in my father’s memory occurred and that they had blamed on an inexperienced commander. In stark contrast to what was actually happening on the battlefield, the new commander exuded extreme Nazi confidence in his letter to the troops when they arrived in the rear:
Volks-Art. Korps (mot.) 401 Battle Situation, 17.1.1945
—Kommandeur—
Volks-Art. Korps—Orders of the Day
Comrades!
As of 4.1.1945, I have taken over command of the Volks-Art. Korps (mot.) 401.
With proud joy, I have heard about your engagements and successes from both the Army Group and Army. I am proud to be the leader of such an artillery corps.
I am of the firm belief that you will continue to do your duty, despite the burdens of responsibility [Belastungen] and the difficult weather [Witterungsunbilden].
With fanatic belief in Germany’s victory and unshakable loyalty to the Führer, we will fight and destroy our enemy.
Victory is still ours!
Long live the Führer.
[signature illegible]25
Among the medals announced when they were preparing for their next engagement was an Iron Cross 2nd Class for Milostav Zacharda, Johann’s long-term friend, when judged by soldiers’ standards, and whom my father had remembered as Zachada Miller.26
After two weeks of rest, the corps was again on the move from its rest areas to the west side of the Rhine River near Koblenz. The movement of vehicles and cannons took from 5 to 10 February. From there, the corps received immediate orders to entrain and was transported to the area around Xanten just west of the Rhine before it crosses into The Netherlands, arriving there on 17 February. To prepare for the unit’s reinsertion into battle, twenty-two replacements filled its depleted ranks.27
Most entries in the war diary of this period refer only to constant repositioning of the batteries. On 18 a
nd 19 February, the 5th Battalion was in Luisendorf; on 20 February, it moved to the Sportspalast; and on 21 February, it moved to the area around Behrens. On 22 February, the battalion moved to Nabershof, where it remained through 25 February. At each location, the diarist reported that the battalion was ready to fire, but it seems that the pressures of battle prevented reporting the kind of detail present in the earlier entries. On 28 February and 1 March, the tross was moved to Rheinberg. On 2 March, a major move occurred, with all the support vehicles and as many Zugmaschines as possible being moved across the Rhine River. The batteries remained in the narrow strip of land left to the Germans west of the Rhine to be what the diarist referred to as the Schwerpunkt Artillerie in the bridgehead. The diary entries reflect the battles of the Reichswald, described by military historians as the scene of bitter fighting.28
After crossing the Rhine River, a vivid memory for my father, the 401 reassembled on 8 March near Peddenberg and then went into firing positions on the banks of the Rhine south of Wesel. An indication of the deteriorating German military capability was the command for battalions to establish communication line patrols to walk the lines every two hours with the order to shoot anyone found sabotaging them. On 9 March, new orders were received, and “after refuelling and travelling in bad weather” the 401 spent 11 March driving to Etten, just north of the border in The Netherlands.29
The availability of daily diaries offered a complementary narrative for the stories my father told when I formally interviewed him. He never saw the diaries, which I received while my formal interviews with him were taking place. Compared with the daily accounts in the diaries, his stories were even more disconnected from the larger events of the war but also from the immediate military objectives in which he took part. His stories expanded and contracted time and often failed to distinguish among various periods of markedly different activities as recorded in the war diaries. For instance, he made almost no distinction between periods of rest and refit and combat. In his stories, these periods merged, and it seemed as if the entire period between November 1944 and the end of the war was one long period of combat. The war diaries record eight actual days of combat engagement in the Saar region, about two weeks in the Ardennes, and approximately two weeks in the Rhine-crossing battles. My father had few clearly demarcated stories of the rest of the time, which he likely spent waiting, repairing equipment, and running errands. On occasion, when something out of the ordinary happened, such as the soldiers hanging from trees at the edge of the road, or the incident in the Dutch farmer’s barn, he was apparently not in battle, but for the most part he had no stories of the day-to-day events of these times of disengagement.
