Excerpt from Chapter 25:

We were not surprised. It was bound to happen and what amazed us was it hadn't been sooner. Wilfried and I parted company that day. He, Holder and the driver were detailed salvage work on the vehicle and the rest of us were split up for other duties. There were difficulties in communications with our forward gun positions so Command Post decided to retain me as one of their runners. I wasn't too pleased about that as the expected life span of a runner was pretty short as a rule.

My job was to relay messages between the Command Post and three of our guns. One was by the windmill tower on the road to Chelm. Another was positioned behind a farm house and was a fair way out across an open field and the third was located, of all impossible places, by the chapel, right in the centre of the cemetery. The chap who'd had that run before me didn't last long. He went out one night and never returned. He was probably ambushed or worse, taken prisoner and killed. One lonely German soldier - a bullet in the neck and no witnesses.

The gun at the windmill was closest to the Command Post but was not easy to reach as two Russian T34s and a number of Sherman tanks were on the approaches, more or less permanently entrenched and well protected by infantry units dug in. They controlled the area and the road leading to the tower. The gun at the farm building could only be reached under cover of darkness on a track across the open field or, daytime, via a time-consuming detour through the town ruins. Time consuming it was because one could never be sure what part had changed hands during the night. The eeriest run of all three, however, was the errand to and from the chapel in the graveyard.

The cemetery was behind the church, not very far from the main square. It was surrounded by something like a 6 foot high, solid brick perimeter wall and the only safe way for me to get into it from the town square end was through a large hole blasted by an artillery shell. I couldn't use the main gate as this was controlled by Russian machine gun and sniper fire.

Once inside, the cemetery was large and clustered with trees although heavily damaged by constant shells. Splintered tree tops and branches made the going pretty tough and it was very hard to find my way to the chapel in the dark, especially the first couple of nights. Grave stones that showed me the way one night were not there the next, but instead would be a large hole from a grenade.

Often my entry into the graveyard coincided with some hefty rounds of artillery and I was more on my belly than my feet, crawling from one hole to the next, all the way to the morgue. There was also a certain apprehension of what the next hole might reveal, as some of the graves were quite fresh. The only thing I could be reasonably sure of was, as long as the Russians kept their artillery aimed at that part of the cemetery, the chapel had not changed hands.

On nights that were relatively quiet and free from incoming shells I had to watch out where I was going and it was always a relief to see the chapel, though even then I could never be sure the occupants hadn't changed. The last 20 or so metres to their gun position located at the southern end of the building always took me a long time so we had a pre-arranged signal, a short whistle to be answered by the watch at the gun. Their quarters were under the chapel and was accessed via a removed flagstone in the aisle from where wide timber steps led down into the vault. I didn't feel too comfortable the first night I got to the bottom of those creaky steps. The first thing I saw was rows of boxes neatly stacked on top of each other. Coffins they were, outlined by the dim flicker of candle light shining from the gun crews' living corner. In answer to my inquisitive look I was assured they were still empty. I wasn't certain but didn't pursue the matter.

Actually, the run to the morgue carried a bonus - a small reward for my death-defying feat: I was given a liberal slurp of Samakhonka to help me get out of the cemetery with a more enlightened feeling. They had a good supply of that poison and I never asked them where they got it from. It was probably brewed and hidden in the vault by the previous caretakers, Ukrainian undertakers. It was brewed from corn and carbide, or so they said. The stuff was absolutely lethal, dark blue in colour, like writing fluid. A tumbler full of that dubious liquid gave one an elated feeling in a very short time and sure made one forget present worries and fears. It made one momentarily brave, with the capacity to go over the line and take on all single handed. This explained the ferocity of a Russian ground attack, although the effect on them was slightly dulled as they were given the stuff routinely.

It was always important to get out of the morgue as quickly as possible and back to the Command Post as the second run for the night was out to the farm house via the field track. This was a short cut but absolute suicide to use during daylight so I had to make sure to be back before dawn otherwise I was faced with a long, hazardous detour through the town. It wasn't so much the distance that made the alternate return route so long but the daylight, and having to feel my way through the ruins, not knowing what was waiting around the next corner. Houses or perhaps whole streets could have changed hands overnight and there was always the possibility of being picked off by a sniper's telescopic sight and end up with a nice little hole between the eyes.

I never stayed longer than was necessary at the farm house, just long enough to deliver or pick up a message and have a quick word then be on my way again. There was not much comfort there. Their living quarters were under the floor boards, and they had no Samakhonka either.

Again, it was a relief to get back to the familiar surroundings of the Command Post and relative safety, if one could call it that. First there were the two dead infantry men. They had been there now for almost two weeks. Nobody had shifted them yet and they had gone black and were terribly bloated and would burst any time. I exchanged my rifle for one lying beside one of the bodies which was almost brand new and in perfect condition - the rifle, not the body! My rifle wasn't too good anymore. The muzzle was split and the gun- sight direction pointer was missing. It had happened the last time I used the detour through the town, crawling from cover to cover and was jumped on by a large dog. I managed to put a bullet into him before he could savage me but the gun barrel must have been clogged up with dirt and the bullet split the muzzle.

Unteroffizier Kahle and his gun crew were holed up by the mill. Fortunately it wasn't always necessary to visit him as they were close enough to contact Headquarters if they needed to so I delivered only urgent messages. Invariably the assignment of being a runner was a heart-thumping experience as it would coincide with some hefty artillery barrage, when everyone else was sticking it out in their foxholes.

There was a large fireplace in one wing of the HQ building which was still in working order though the room was not. The roof and ceiling had fallen down, the result of mortar hits and the few civilians in the basement had been evacuated to a safer place in town. Stupid as it was, we kept the fire going, though apart from getting hot water, it was of no other use as the smoke was a perfect invitation for mortar crews to use the chimney for target practice. Whoever's turn it was to keep the fire going had to be mighty quick to sling the log on the grate and get the hell out again before the next projectile hit the roof, or what was left of it.

One morning it was Bertl's turn. I can't remember whether his name was Albert or Bertold, we just called him Bertl. Lately he was keeping to himself, refusing to answer when spoken to and just staring with a vacant look in his eyes from his foxhole and only left it reluctantly when ordered to go on errand duty. He had grown very moody, which wasn't surprising. Had we not been trapped in Kovel Bertl would have been on his home leave and was going to be married. He'd told us about it before but now he was not talking anymore. It was Bertl's last half hour, and I wonder whether he knew it? He didn't want to go in to feed the fireplace and only after we goaded him did he get out of his hole to creep over to the steps leading up to the entrance, just five steps. I watched him going up and disappear through the hole which was once the proper doorway. Door and frame had long since been fed to the fire. He had barely got through the opening when a large shell came whizzing in with its terrifying screech and crashed on top of the wing. Its enormous explosion ripped the entire wall where the fireplace stood and brought the rest of the building tumbling down on top of our foxholes which we'd so carefully dug alongside.

There was a long, heart-rending fearsome scream and a figure stumbled down the steps, got to his feet again and staggered across the courtyard towards the five steps leading to the opposite wing. He never reached the door. Halfway up the steps he stood then fell over backwards. The run across the yard was the superhuman effort of a dead man. Bertl must have died the very moment he was hit and by the time I managed to extract myself from the rubble, it was all over for him. He lay on the ground with a hole the size of a fist through his chest where his heart would have been. Two oversized terrorized eyes stared into nowhere from his marble-white lifeless face and there seemed to be not a drop of blood left in the whole of his body.

The shell that caused poor Bertl's untimely and violent demise was not one of the usual mortar grenades but a dreaded 172 mm, the first of a fierce barrage. They screamed in, one after another for the next five minutes or so, crashing and exploding all around us. I wasn't surprised, therefore, when I was called out to make contact immediately with Unteroffizier Kahle's gun at the silo. Being sent out when the going was toughest, right in the middle of an artillery barrage was the lot of a miserable runner...

I waited for the next salvo to subside before making a dash but hadn't gone very far when another salvo came hurtling in with a long wild screech. They seemed to come four at a time, each one getting closer, as if they knew exactly where I was lying. Flat on my belly I tried to shrivel into nothing. A split second after the impact my hands dug into the frozen ground like mechanical shovels, eyes closed and face in the dirt, desperately trying to get a lung full of air. Then came a deafening explosion when the earth rose up and I shook with the tremor and waited for the red hot shrapnel to come hissing down and cut me to ribbons.

When I finally dared to get up I was amazed to see my steel helmet lying about a metre or so in front of me. It had been sucked clean off my head by the force of the explosion without my being aware of it. I picked it up and ran, only to throw myself to the ground again as another round of shells came roaring in, only this time not so close as the barrage was veering away from me. I was still shaking but awfully glad to still be alive when I reached the Kahle's tower.

There were two chaps manning the gun there, its barrel pointing in the direction of the windbreak. I asked them where I could find Kahle and they pointed to the top of the tower. Then I enquired why they were pointing their gun at the wind break. "Tanks" they said, "Ivan put them there during the night. You can't see them from down here but they are behind the trees." I asked what Kahle was doing up the tower and they said he wanted to send a few shell rounds in their direction so was having a good look before starting. "You'll have to go up if you want to see him" they added.

My job as runner was hazardous enough and I didn't fancy the climb to Kahle's perch. The top part was leaning badly to one side and must have been hit once or twice. But Kahle wouldn't come down so I'd have to go up. Inside the doorway one of the crew was crouched by the stairway. It was a wooden staircase with two landings and an abrupt end at the second one where a large hole was ripped in the wall by what must have been a fairly big shell. From thereon the rest of the building was leaning. Reaching the first landing, I could see Kahle on the next, crouched by the hole and scanning the area around the wind break with his glasses. He motioned me to stay where I was and slid away from the hole and joined me. Then he asked me to creep up and have a good look for myself.I saw them all right and didn't need glasses. Mostly Sherman tanks plus some T34s, charcoal black monsters with the Russian red star on the turret. Rows and rows of them. Twenty, fifty, maybe more, I didn't bother counting. I slid down to Kahle and said I'd better make my way back to Headquarters and tell them, but Kahle had something else in mind and had it all worked out. "No", he said, "you had better stay with us for a while; I can do with an extra man". He was going to tackle the job by remote control, directing the shooting from the top of the structure. What worried me most was he kept me up there with him as he needed somebody at his side to relay his corrections to the gun crew.

Well, that was the plan. We opened fire and the grenades found their target though I'm sure very little damage was done to the tanks' 120mm-thick armour. Then Kahle was just going to tell me something when the roof caved in. There was an awful crash and blinding explosion which lifted me off my feet and sent me tumbling down some three or four steps with Kahle falling on top of me. Debris fell all around us. I thought at first Kahle had snuffed it but he collected himself, yelled at me to get out quickly and bolted down the remaining steps and disappeared through the door like a hounded rabbit. I raced after and we both dived into the crews' splinter pit which was already occupied by Helmut who wasn't too happy to share his space.

Shell after shell howled in, straight from the barrels of those tanks and each time they scored a hit shaking the structure until it came crashing down in a cloud of dust. We could hear the tank motors warming up, ready to move out. Kahle ordered his gun to move away to a more protected position across the road where a platoon of infantry was dug in. There was a short lull in the shelling and he ordered Helmut and me to stay in the trench while he took off across the road. He returned soon after with a Panzerfaust (Bazooka) in each hand. "Let them come close and don't miss or you will be squashed in your hole," he told us before darting back to join his crew. 'Verdammtes Arschloch'. We didn't say it, but we both had the same thought.

Actually, he wasn't far wrong with his advice. The Panzerfaust's effective range was about 30 metres but had the tendency sometimes to stray badly off target. It was advisable therefore to let the tank come as close as possible before losing your nerve and pulling the trigger. It wasn't long before the first tank's massive shape loomed through the debris the other side of the ruined tower. He halted briefly to adjust his cannon from crash position to a few degrees above horizontal and then rattled forward on his chains with a jolting lurch. He came nearer, to about 20, maybe 15 metres, close enough to get a good shot at him but it would have been instant suicide for us to do so as he was closely followed by the second and third tank.

We watched the near side of the building for any movement. Any tank coming from there would have given us no chance as he would run straight over our foxhole; we decided to save our two Bazookas for that moment. "We will be dead before long, anyhow" said Helmut and I had to agree with him as there was no way we could get out of our hole and not be seen by the tank crews. I thanked Kahle for our hopeless position. Had he not kept me I could be back at Headquarters.

The tanks moved one behind the other in close formation, allowing less likelihood for any to run into trouble as each was pretty well covered by the one behind. They made straight for the road that would take them past our Command Post to the town centre. Five, ten, fifteen - there must have been twenty-five to thirty of those monsters that rolled past our trench that morning.

Usually a tank formation of a that size was covered by infantry protection, either riding atop the battle cruisers or following closely behind. But those tanks were on their own, they didn't expect to run into much opposition. They knew our predicament probably better than we did. They knew we had no tanks in the town and they also knew how short we were on ammunition. What they didn't know , however, was that there were a couple of 45 mm anti-tank guns in the vicinity, well camouflaged and dug in out of sight, one of them directly opposite our Command Post.

The last tank rolled past our hole, spitting red-yellow darts in short erratic bursts from his machine gun. It was a Sherman and I made sure it was, indeed, the last one. "I'm getting this one" I said to Helmut, who kept quiet. I had to be quick before it reached the road. I flung the stove-pipe over my shoulder, put the safety catch to on, lined up my sight with the tank's turret and pulled the trigger. There was a mighty flash of flame from the barrel on my back as the hollow charge arched its way towards the target then I watched in horror as the projectile, the size of a 6-inch thick pine- apple with its metal fins extended, veered slightly to the left and just clipped the tank's turret on the outer edge and bounced off without exploding.

The tank entered the road, its crew unaware of their good fortune and I guess I was also lucky that the crew of the tank missed to see the flame from the Panzerfaust's stovepipe on my back. He would have headed straight back for our foxhole, lock one chain on top and with one complete turn Helmut and I would have been history, gone forever. I threw the empty sleeve over the side and turned round to Helmut who was standing upright with his head resting on the wall of the trench. I just touched him with my elbow and he slowly slid sideways and came to rest in a sitting position, his eyes were wide open but only the white was staring out.

It had been the narrow width of the trench that stopped him from falling down in the first place. Blood trickled from under his helmet. A stray bullet from the tank's machine gun must have hit him right under the rim of his helmet, entering on one side, made a complete U-turn and came out the other, neatly cutting his skull. I remembered what he'd said a while before and he'd been 'dead' right. I dared not remove his helmet but needed to get help quickly from Kahle's crew across the road, but first had to make sure that last tank was not followed by any latecomers or infantry. It wouldn't make much difference to Helmut, or probably me, for that matter. I would have got some of them with my rifle but their ugly long, square sectioned bayonets would have finished me off in very short time.

I heaved myself out of the trench and dashed across the road. I could still see the back of the last tank and figured it should be almost level with one of our anti-tank guns dug in there. I hoped they would be luckier than I was with my effort. I found Kahle and his crew sheltering behind the ruins of a house and quickly told him what had happened and he got two of his crew to go with him to get Helmut out. "Any more tanks coming?" he asked. I said I didn't know but that I thought we'd watched the last go by. Then he told me to return to Headquarters, which I was more than relieved to do.

I was about halfway back to the Command Post when there were two explosions in quick succession up the road. It was that last tank, whose chains had been ruptured by two mines cleverly pulled across the road by our infantry using ropes. In trying to reverse the tank driver rolled off the broken tracks and immobilized himself directly in front of our Command Post. It had suffered no other damage but was still terribly dangerous as the crew of five were still inside the steel walls of their armaments. The tank turret with its big gun was turning in a full circle, ready to blast away at the slightest movement. I crouched behind the ruin of a house, unable to cross the open stretch that separated me from my foxhole behind the Command Post.

I was joined by a Feldwebel and his offsider. They must have had something to do with the mine pulling act. Those two were carrying a number of stick hand grenades with them which they got busy tying into a bundle. 'geballte Ladung' (concentrated charge), they called it. Then the Feldwebel started crawling towards the tank with the bundle. "What's he doing?" I asked his mate. "He will try to open the hatch for those Ivans to come out" he replied, adjusting his rifle and ensuring it was ready for use. "Wants to take a few prisoners" he added. I looked at the monster stuck there, his turret still going round. "He'll have a job to get up that tank". It's well over 2 metres to the top and hardly any place to get a foothold," I said. "He knows that, he has done it before," he replied, obviously disgusted with my ignorance. His attitude changed slightly when I mentioned that all that wouldn't be necessary had I not missed the wretched thing with my Panzerfaust. "Didn't aim properly?" he wanted to know. I replied, "Yes, I had him perfectly in my sight but the bloody thing veered and bounced off his turret without going off". "Ah", he grunted, though brightened up a bit when I complemented him on the rope job. "You get to know what you are doing, if you do it often enough" he said, "and, of course, one must be dead accurate" he added, giving me a meaningful look.I didn't want to offend him so I refrained from saying what went through my mind.

The fact that the tank had rolled off its chains and churned deeply into the road, almost to the rear sprocket drivewheel helped the Feldwebel and he had little trouble getting up to the top where he placed the bundled grenades, pulled the detonator and jumped off mighty quickly. The ensuing explosion ripped the lid off its hinges and the turret stopped turning. The Feldwebel got on again, dropped one more grenade through the narrow opening created by the first explosion and crouched waiting for the bang.

There was one survivor, the driver. He opened his forward driver's hatch but didn't come out. Instead he fired his pistol at the Feldwebel, but missed him. The Feldwebel did not miss when he returned the fire. The driver couldn't have been more than sixteen.

I was glad to be back in my foxhole. I reported in to the staff sergeant, told him about the windmill tower and what had happened out there, and to Helmut in particular. "Unteroffizier Kahle will bring him in shortly," I said.

Unteroffizier Kahle was later awarded the Iron Cross First Class for his exploit at the tower. I was at his side then but didn't get a mention...

Bertl was still lying there when I got back. They hadn't had the opportunity to shift him but would be taking him to the cemetery in the evening and put him in one of those 'empty boxes' in the chapel vault I supposed.

Hans, a fellow runner with HQ went out that same morning on an errand to Wachtmeister Wehrt's position, but never came back. He came from a shoemaker's family near Weissenfels and was fascinated by leather. If he found a dead horse with a saddle on its back he would bring it back and cut all the good leather into small bits the shape of shoe soles which he stored in his rucksack to take to his parents on his next leave. The rucksack was still there but Hans wouldn't be taking it home anymore. I was asked to include the run out to Wehrt's gun in my itinerary but never found out what happened to Hans, except his dog plate turned up at Headquarters.

Some of the advancing tanks must have run into trouble, judging from the sound of shooting and explosions that came from the town square. Our artillery had surprised them and they lost four in quick succession to the German field guns. A 105mm shell fired from close quarters goes through 100mm of steel like a knife through butter. The other tanks had split up into smaller groups and were heading in different directions. Actually their overall success wasn't very great as by the end of the day most of them had been picked up and immobilized or destroyed, either by artillery or by individual effort like that of the Feldwebel's this morning.

 

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