Excerpt from Chapter 20:
I left Frankfurt by mid morning for
Aschaffenburg, Schweinfurt, Hof and on to
Dresden, Breslau and Warsaw. The further east we
travelled the more relaxing it became as the
Americans, and the British in particular, had
not yet earmarked the East German cities for
their mass destruction. Churchill and his mate
Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris's Bomber
Offensive was too busy wiping out Berlin,
Hamburg, Duesseldorf and Hamm, resulting in
horrible deaths to thousands of women and
children and old people, but as Sir Arthur once
said "Our aircraft occasionally kill women and
children but in spite of what happened at
Hamburg and other cities, bombing proves a
comparatively humane method"! 'Offensive' he
was, indeed.
There were hardly any civilians on the trains,
only military personnel on their way to the
Russian battlefields, like cattle to the
slaughterhouse. How many would come back one
could only guess. There was not much in the way
of conversation, just faraway looks in fellow-travellers'
faces, each preoccupied with thoughts and
perhaps memories of happier times at home with
their families. Quite a few on our train hadn't
found their wives and children or parents
anymore when they arrived on leave. Probably
ripped to pieces or burnt to death in the raids.
For them it would be more of a relief to get
back to their units and their mates, though even
they might not be there anymore - just pushing
up next season's potato crop. All personnel en
route to Warsaw was ordered to change trains in
Breslau for a connection to Posen and from there
was directed to board a train that went up to
Allenstein, Kaunas and Vilnius in Lithuania. Why
the detour, - as the direct line to Byalistok
from Breslau would have been via Warsaw, - we
were never told, and we didn't really care as
long as we had our proper endorsement on the
marching paper with the sanction of the military
police and the station master's office, it
wasn't our worry anymore. The mood was also
changing the further east we rolled. The
soldiers' inner thoughts again came to grips
with reality, to terms with the inevitable and
conversation slowly turned to events on the
front - a sort of a mental adjustment to
something one cannot readily run away from.
We reached Byalistock around 2 February on a
cold, bleak morning. The huts on the station
were crowded with troops awaiting their various
transportations, all huddled around the potbelly
stoves to catch a bit of warmth while listening
for their transport to be announced. Some would
go straight to Vilnias and on to Leningrad, some
to Brest-Litovsk and some hadn't a unit to go to
anymore, wiped out by the last Russian
onslaught. They would be redirected to wherever
the present 'shit' was deepest and where they
would have to get used to new mates. The
'potbelly 'news kept one pretty well informed of
what was happening at the various fronts. Olevsk
had fallen to the Russians on the 3 January,
also Novgorod-Volynsky. Berdichev and Rokitno on
the fifth and sixth, and Sarny was lost on the
12 January. All those places were on the rail
line from Korosten to Kovel with Sarny closest
and were all taken by Vatutin's First Ukrainian
Front. Marshal Kurochkin's Second Belorussian
Army was already between Gorin and the Styr
river, about halfway from Sarny to Kovel and
ready to take Kovel when he deemes conditions
right. Kovel was my destination. Outside it was
snowing heavily and every time the hut door
opened, an icy blast ripped through taking all
warmth from the room. However, it wasn't long
before the announcement came for all personnel
going south to Brest- Litovsk to board
immediately. A quick check by the military
police and I was aboard.
The train was cold and miserable like the
passengers and the landscape looked equally
bleak and uninviting. The bad pot belly news -
and perhaps the direction we were heading into -
surely played on everyone's mind... Was that the
last home leave? No doubt it was true for a lot
of us. Perhaps I am one of them. I wished then I
had never gone on leave. It becomes hard to
adjust to the conditions again.
We reached Brest-Litovsk by mid afternoon, there
was a quick change of train and we were on our
way to Malorita. Not much had changed since I
was there. Full partisan alert and again with
every available rifle sticking out the windows I
felt a bit out of place. I was sure I was the
only one with no rifle and was gradually getting
fed up explaining why. The irony was I still had
the ammunition in my belt.
It was beginning to snow again when we pulled
into Malorita, where the duty Panzerzug was
waiting to escort us, this time right into Kovel
station. Things must have taken a turn for the
worse. Kovel by then was the end of the line as
the next station some 25 miles further south was
Lutsk and was already the scene of a heavy
battle. I enquired at the station about my unit.
"Yes" I was told," they are still there, the
headquarter that is". All the guns were gone,
deployed around Rovno and Lutzk.
The military police gave me directions to our
headquarters and by the time I arrived it was
getting dark and snowing heavily. I passed my
old gun position and noticed the living quarters
had caved in. Oberleutnant Hahn had moved his
headquarters close to the Abteilung HQ. Juergen
was still there and he showed me where to find
Hahn. "Zurueck vom Urlaub, Herr Oberleutnant" I
reported. I wasn't quite sure how to put it.
Should I tell him then about my rifle deserting
me or should I leave it to the early hours oft
he morning? Then I thought, what difference does
it really make whether I get shot tonight or
early in the morning but my mind flashed back to
a lecture we'd had in training in
Friedrichshafen: Should you ever get into a
situation where you see your freshly severed arm
lying next to your rifle -forget about the arm,
pick up the rifle! Oh well, in my case I'd had
no opportunity to pick it up -it wasn't there.
Mitigating circumstances, surely. Standing to
attention, I summoned the courage and reported
the loss of my rifle, gasmask, rucksack and all
the goodies that were in it.
Hahn put on a stern face and let me know that
the loss of the rifle could constitute
sufficient grounds to have me summarily shot. I
respectfully replied "Jawohl Herr Oberleutnant".
But then he decided that the loss of my rucksack
with all the other stuff should be regarded as
enough punishment, for the time being, and as he
put it, a living soldier was more useful to him
than a dead one. I was dismissed and ordered to
front up in the morning for a new rifle and
necessary gear and meanwhile he suggested I find
a place to sleep somewhere in the store room.
I was issued my rifle and gas mask and a good
fitting steel helmet in the morning and told to
make myself useful around the Headquarters until
transfer to my gun crew could be arranged. At
the moment the entire battery was under the
tactical command of a cavalry regiment from the
SS Division 'Viking' providing fire support to
each of their squadrons, two guns to each
squadron. The squadrons were all on horseback
and operating somewhere in the area around Lutzk.
I didn't want to get involved in too many odd
jobs, so kept out of everybody's way as much as
possible though there wasn't much to do apart
from peeling potatoes, a bit of kitchen work and
shifting ammo boxes from one corner to the
other. A couple of days later Oberleutnant Hahn
called me to his quarters and ordered me to get
ready to board the supply train leaving for
Kamen-Kashirskiy sometime the next day. Kamen-
Kashirskiy was some 40 km to the north-east of
Kovel on the line to Pinsk. My orders were to
report to the Commanding Officer of a Panzer
unit operating out of Kamen and collect
documents for our Major, the Commander of the
Abteilung. Hahn wrote down the name of the
officer and made it clear that it was absolutely
important that I saw him in person.
I didn't feel at all good about it. All sorts of
things went through my mind - clandestine
operation, spy mission and then getting captured
by the partisans?-- Ouch!... But orders are
orders and must be carried out.
Equipped with the appropriately endorsed courier
papers, I went to the station and reported to
the Escort Commander, a Oberleutnant. "Melde
mich zur Stelle, Herr Oberleutnant" and handed
him my papers which he waved aside. He told me
to shut up and hop on and take up guard
position. Obviously he'd been informed of my
coming. We were ready to leave but there was
some delay in the arrival of the Panzerzug and
without that escort we couldn't pull out. We
were going in a north-easterly direction, a
heavily partisan infested area.
We finally got under way and it was late in the
afternoon when we arrived at Kamen-Kashirskiy.
The Kamen railway station looked more like a
fortress than a station. It was snowing heavily
as I walked to the station commander's office
and presented my papers and enquired the
whereabouts of the Panzer unit. They gave me a
sympathetic look and said I should follow the
arrows signpost with the unit's identification
number and that should bring me right to their
headquarters. "In any case, it's only about 4 km
to that windmill you can see from here" they
added. Indeed, looking in the given direction
one could clearly see the windmill vanes. They
also said if I hurried I should be there before
dark. It had stopped snowing a bit so off I
went.
There was no need to follow the unit's tactical
signposts. As long as I kept the windmill in
sight I should be pretty right but once I'd left
the station I was well and truly on my own and
suddenly I wished I was back in Kovel shifting
ammo boxes or peeling potatoes.
I kept walking. It may have been 4 km but the
damn windmill didn't get any closer and, to make
it worse, it began snowing again making the
daylight less and less. But there was something
else that was beginning to worry me and that was
a stretch of wooded area before the windmill
that I had to cross to reach the building.
Forests and partisans were in total harmony,
especially when it got towards night time.
I toyed with the idea of turning back to Kamen
station, but since I was already more than
halfway, took a deep breath and carried on with
rifle at the ready and finger on the trigger.
Despite the cold, I was breaking out in a sweat
and generally didn't feel too good, especially
when I thought of what the partisans would do to
me if my luck ran out.
The freshly fallen snow had brightened up the
surroundings sufficiently for me to find my way
on the road and I hoped I blended in well in my
camouflaged battle dress which I wore white side
out and the white hood fitted tightly over the
helmet. I reached the woodland and to my relief
found it was not as deep as I'd first feared,
more like a large wind break, and at last the
windmill was getting nearer. Another quarter of
an hour and I should be there but daylight had
faded into darkness. Then a ghastly thought
entered my mind and I froze: What about if the
unit had moved and the windmill was occupied by
partisans now? No, that couldn't be. They would
have known at the station. Or would they have
been concerned about such trifling matter? I
continued walking.
A few minutes later I missed another heartbeat
or two when I heard a motor approaching from the
road ahead with no lights on. Would it be a
German patrol or not? I hoped so. It was too
late to dart into the wood so I just dropped
down into the snow the moment they switched on
their head lights but they had seen me and a
short burst of a submachine gun zinged over my
head, the bullets thudding into the trees behind
me! I dropped my rifle, got to my knees and
stuck my hands above my head, the whole length
of them. Surely they could see I was one of
theirs! Or could they? After all a camouflaged
overall looked the same on a Russian as on a
German.
The vehicle slowly came closer. It was a German
patrol car and a Leutnant jumped from the
Kuebelwagen with his pistol drawn and a
submachine gun was pointing at me from the rear
of the vehicle. the Leutnant asked for my
identification papers and an explanation. I told
him I was on courier duty from Major Kessler of
the Flakabteilung in Kovel to the headquarters
of the Panzer unit. Actually I didn't say it to
him, I was talking to the muzzle of his menacing
08.15 (Luger pistol) which he kept pointed at my
head. Wouldn't be much left of my face if he
pulls the trigger now I thought. Instead he
picked up my rifle and ordered me into the
vehicle to look over my papers. After he had
established my identity he made it clear I
should have told him in the first place and 'all
that' could have been avoided! I couldn't make
out what 'first place' he was referring to.
After all they were the ones who started
shooting. "Verdammter Dummkopf" he said. "You
should have stayed at the station and we would
have picked you up from there!" "Jawohl Herr
Leutnant", I agreed, not with his opening remark
but that I should have stayed on the station.
They never tell you that beforehand, they think
you can work it all out by yourself...
The patrol was on its way to the station anyhow
so they finished their run then took me back to
their headquarters where I reported to their
Commanding Officer, a Panzer Major. He was
already informed of my coming and asked how his
friend, Major Kessler was coping? I said, "Very
well indeed, Herr Major," which was pretty well
an outright lie since I hadn't seen our good
Major since the day I'd arrived at his outfit
about ten months previously. Then he handed me a
parcel, well wrapped and sealed, to deliver to
my Commander with his very best wishes.
I had my doubts whether the contents of that
parcel would have been important enough to
drastically change the course of the war. It
could have contained anything from a choice cut
of salami to a box of fine Dutch cigars. The
Major then ordered a quick check over the radio
for the whereabouts of the armoured train and I
was taken to the station by the same patrol, to
board the train to Kovel. I got back to
headquarters well before midnight and reported
in to Oberleutnant Hahn and handed over the
parcel. He asked me how I got on. I told him
that I nearly got shot while carrying out my
duty. "Just as well you didn't" he said looking
seemly concerned. "You're going out tomorrow
with the supply vehicle".