Excerpt from Chapter 26:
It wasn't Wachtmeister Wehrt's best day by any
means. One of his guns was positioned across the
road in the vicinity of the barracks complex
when four tanks rolled past, the last stopping
directly in front of them. Wehrt had made up his
mind how to tackle the situation. He grabbed two
stick grenades and began crawling towards the
tank intending to creep underneath and place the
grenades in the chain links. It was good
thinking but by the time he reached the back of
the tank, unfortunately the tank's commander
decided to move on, leaving the Wachtmeister
holding the grenades. To make matters worse by
the time he'd got out of the mud and back to the
gun, the carrier was engulfed in flames. A
well-placed burst from the tank's machine gun
had penetrated the petrol tank, forcing the crew
to abandon it.
Above the petrol tank were six boxes of high
explosives. Courageous Wehrt, his temper already
upset by the tank giving him the slip, jumped
straight on to the burning carrier and tried to
salvage some of the ammunition. He managed to
get two boxes down before the rest blew up,
showering him with splinters all over his face
and body. He was pretty well cut up and looked
like he was on his last moment as he was carried
off to the nearest first aid station. He was
certainly lucky. His wounds were found to be
mostly superficial, caused by exploding
cartridges, not the grenades. Wachtmeister Wehrt
was later awarded the German Cross In Gold for
his actions that day.
Spring was approaching, with the consequent
shlosh and mud all around us. The two bodies
still lay there, no longer oozing, the skin
peeling off their skeletons. They should have
been buried a long time ago though they wouldn't
be the only ones in town rotting away; it was
just that I was aware of them as I had to step
over them every time I went on my rounds. A
message from the Russian High Command to their
various field units was intercepted by German
intelligence. They were planning an all-out
assault on the whole of the town which would
start precisely at three in the morning. I was
woken in my foxhole just after midnight to go
out and alert the gun crews at the farm and in
the cemetery.
Where the field track to the farm started was
the end of the defence trench which was occupied
by the infantry from the former armoured train.
A sentry was keeping a look out behind a broken
down paling fence. "Wouldn't go out there if I
were you," he said casually as I was trying to
pass him. "I have to," I said, "I've done it
quite a few times before," and just to make
sure, "Where is Ivan now?" I asked. "Out there",
he chuckled, as if it were his funniest joke,
pointing his nose into the darkness while
keeping his hands in warm pockets. "The field is
full of them" he said, "moved in during the
night".
It was pretty quiet `out there' and pitch dark.
The sentry's remarks weren't helpful since he
had no definite information and I was in a
hurry, so I just went. Usually I kept to the
right side of the track but that night I chose
the left and had no trouble reaching the farm
house. The first thing they asked me was which
way had I come. When I told them they thought I
was verruckt (crazy, mad). They said Ivan had
dug himself in all the way along that track! I'd
certainly been lucky. The Russians must have
been asleep, though perhaps not all and probably
what saved me from slaughter was I was unaware
of their presence and walked upright so whoever
saw me assumed I was one of theirs. My luck sure
would not have held had I returned the same way.
That was my last trip to the farm as my message
for them was to retreat towards the town centre.
I was on my way to the cemetery through the back
streets, feeling my way from corner to corner. I
covered good ground as the incoming artillery
shells were few and randomly spaced over the
town. Rounding a corner into a side street I
froze to an abrupt halt. Two figures were half
kneeling on the ground with their backs to the
wall. It was too dark to see details but I could
still make out their machine pistols resting on
their knees and I heard one of them saying
something and it certainly wasn't German "Da,
yob twoyu mat". I quickly slunk back round the
corner and sank to my knees for a few seconds to
consider whether I should give them a bit of
hell with a few shots, but I didn't. Instead I
slowly backed down into the side street,
deciding I still wanted to walk to the cemetery
and not be carried! It took me a bit longer to
get to the morgue that night and my well-earned
Samakhonka.
A fair bit of battle noise was coming from the
south-west and had been for some days. Something
was going on. At night the horizon was alight
from continuous flashes and we heard the
rumbling of big guns, like a distant
thunderstorm. Could it be the German High
Command had changed its mind and was sending in
reinforcements to get us out? That would be
wishful thinking. Why would they be concerned
about us and our survival? There were other so
called "fortified places" like the "Korsun
pocket". They had tried to break out with a
strength of 40,000 men in a full-scale bayonet
attack, just 20,000 made it. Two others to the
south of us, Ternopol and Brody, were also
designated Feste Pl„tze (fortified towns, to be
defended to the last man). They were trapped
like us and still holding their ground. There
wouldn't be many left after the Russian steam
roller...
The rumbling and battle noises, did indeed come
from a raging battle taking place to the south
of us, between the Russian forces and two German
Panzer divisions of the Second SS Panzercorps,
the 9th and 10th Panzer divisions, the
Hohenstaufen and Frundsberg. They were newly
arrived in the Lemberg region and had come from
somewhere deep in France to support two Infantry
divisions battling Zhukov's vastly out-numbering
forces. Was there still a glimmer of hope that
they might just be able to break open our pocket
and get us out, what's left of us anyhow?.
This was my last crawl through the cemetery as
my message for them was to retreat to the
church. I was really glad about that. No more
creeping past `empty' boxes in the morgue,
though I'd miss the samakhonka! Creeping through
the gravestones in the early dawn I noticed a
Stuka dive bomber coming in at great height
pulling a glider. That was a bit strange as they
usually came in the evening. This was the first
one I'd seen almost before dawn. Whatever time
of the day it was a suicide mission for the
pilots of those contraptions as the moment they
unhooked from the towing plane, every Russian
machine gun and rifle homed in on it. On this
occasion it was a bit different because as soon
as the glider unhooked he went straight into a
vertical dive, too fast for the Russian guns to
keep him in their sights. They missed the target
completely and within a few hundred metres of
the ground three parachutes emerged from the
glider. The sudden breaking action caused the
wings to break off but the fuselage remained
intact and disappeared behind the dim outlines
of the town centre.
My luck nearly ran out for the second time that
morning. Crawling through the hole in the
cemetery wall I saw orange/yellow/red fingers
stabbing the sky from the hills in the north
west, followed by the familiar eerie wailing of
the Katyusha rockets hurtling through the cold
air. I ran as fast as my legs could carry me
towards the artillery dugout in the square,
passing the two wrecked Russian tanks. I could
have taken shelter under one of them but didn't
want to share that refuge with their dead crew.
At least those in the dugout were alive, for the
time being anyhow. They saw me coming and
cleared the entrance and I dived in just as the
first rocket hit the ground. There were a couple
of impacts nearby but the majority of the
rockets ploughed a path away from us. I waited
for the barrage to subside, and to get my breath
back, then sprinted towards HQ before the next
round came in.
A fair bit of shooting was coming from the
trench by the lane that I'd left early that
morning. I could make out bursts of submachine
guns, mixed with rifle fire and the unmistakable
sharp detonations of hand grenades, German and
Russian. The Russians were attacking that trench
and our Headquarters was right next to it. I got
as far as the ruined cottage at the back of our
Command Post when a burst of machine gun bullets
hit the ground around 'us'. Us, because I had
flung myself into the dirt right between the two
corpses. Their facial skin had now disappeared,
just two holes where the eyes had been and the
gristly, split bone that was once a nose. Teeth
were still in their jaws and I was almost sure
those two were grinning at me...
A German machine gun answered back from behind
the cottage ruins, strafing the area where the
Russian gunfire came from. The German machine
gun stopped firing and the Russian gun didn't
answer back. Somebody called out to me to stay
on the ground and make my way over to the
cottage. I used the lull in the firing to crawl
to the ruin, glad to get away from those
skeletons. An infantry platoon had taken
possession and were preparing for a
counter-attack to retake the trench. The
Leutnant in charge, busy topping up the magazine
of his schmeisser assault gun, asked me what the
hell I was doing there but wasn't much
interested in my reply. Instead he ordered me to
fall in and stay with his platoon as he needed
every rifle he could muster to go into the
trench. "And put your bayonet on your rifle," he
said without looking at me, "You will need it in
there!" An order was an order, and no two ways
about it.
Seeing bayonets on his men's rifles and knowing
that those on Russian rifles were even longer
made me think perhaps it would have been safer
to stay with the corpses. The Leutnant, having
finished with his magazine, inserted it into his
pistol. I made another attempt to let him know
that I had been running errands since midnight
and was expected to report in to our Command
Post over there, pointing to the building across
the back yard. Then he told me how lucky I had
been to see him first. "They have moved out" he
said, "and Ivan moved in this morning" he added,
with no emotion while pulling the action bolt on
his gun to the load position. After a bit of
thinking he asked "Are you one of those flak
fellers? If you want to know, there are two of
your guns just behind us in the gully," he told
me, "they came from across the road when Ivan
moved in."
He wanted to say more but was prevented by a
salvo of four mortars that came whooshing in, in
close proximity. The Russians were trying to
home in on the German machine gun. There were
four shattering explosions and shrapnel whirled
and hissed all around us. I buried my face deep
in the dirt expecting fragments to land and
smash my back. I didn't wait for the next round
but got up and sprinted towards the gully and
rolled over just as the salvo hit the ground and
the first chap I tumbled on was just as
surprised as I was. It was Holder and there was
our gun and Wilfried and our driver and two
others I didn't know.
They had managed to fix up the vehicle and a bit
further down to the left was another gun
carrier, Janko's. I asked Holder where the
Command Post had gone, as I was expected to
report in. He told me to forget about them for
the moment and stay with his gun and that suited
me all right as I was getting quite tired of
being sent from one place to another, most of
the time on my belly. "Is Janko there too?" I
asked, looking towards the other gun. "Janko is
dead," Holder told me, "he was killed a few days
ago from a sniper's bullet." I was sorry to hear
that. They had taken him up to the cemetery and
I'd probably walked past his coffin in the vault
without knowing it.
I took over my old job on our gun. Holder moved
the vehicle up close to the platoon in readiness
to provide them with fire support. The Leutnant
was ready to go and had a quick word with Holder
to keep him covered. We were asked to commence
firing the moment his platoon crawled to the top
of the trench and to strafe along the lane to
stop the Russians there from coming out in
support of their units in the trench.
The Leutnant and his group were moving in,
edging their way like caterpillars under cover
of fire from our two guns and two German machine
guns joined in from somewhere near the road.
Schmeisser bursts and pistol cracks and the odd
hand grenade explosion came from the trench. I
was mighty glad I'd stumbled on my own gun when
the mortars fell around us a while ago, or I
would be in there too with the Leutnant and his
platoon, with a good possibility of getting
carved up by one of those horrible long Russian
bayonets. The Russian mortars had started up
again and were homing in on us. They came pretty
close with their first salvo and `Janko's' gun
was hit. I saw one of the crew jump off and then
it was engulfed in fire. Holder instructed our
driver to move closer to the trench where there
was less likelihood of getting hit as the mortar
fire was directed more to the approaches, rather
than the trench itself in case they hit their
own troops.
Our infantry's attack was successful, the trench
was retaken and the Russians retreated along the
lane. `Janko's' gun was lost. The ammo/gunner
was the one I'd seen jump. He'd had a lucky
escape, but his mate in the seat had had no
chance of getting out. There weren't many
survivors from the trench either. It was up to
the stretcher bearers to take out who could be
saved. I saw the Leutnant again when they
carried him past us, and he didn't look like he
would make it to the first aid place. He must
have run straight into a bayonet and most
probably would have bled to death before they
got him there. The Commander of the armoured
train's infantry company, who refused to leave
the trench when the Russians overran it was
still there, propped up by the wall, his empty
pistol clutched in his lifeless hand. A dead
Russian lay at his feet, his PPSH submachine gun
resting on his chest.
We expected the Russian artillery to start up
with some earth-churning, ferocious rounds of
heavy shelling since their ground troops had
pulled back but for some reason the barrage
didn't come. Mortars homed in on us instead and
we moved back into the gully. When the Russians
retreated they also cleared out from our old
Command Post building and dug themselves in
further up the road, somewhere between the
wrecked tank and the ruins of the windmill
tower. They were reinforced by three tanks, two
M4s (Sherman) and a T34 salvaged from the
barracks complex presumably and they and the
surrounding infantry were in commanding control
of the road and everything that dared to move.
As night settled in I again asked Holder for the
whereabouts of our HQ and his permission for me
to report back. Once more he told me to stay
where I was as he intended going there himself
and would fix things. With some luck he might be
able to organize a bite or two to eat. I didn't
wait, lack of sleep caught had up with me and I
crawled under the vehicle and slept. Around
midnight I was woken for watch duty. Some food
was left in the mess kit, the usual goulash and
potato, and stone cold but it filled the
stomach. The chap whose watch I took over told
me the news Holder had brought back from Command
Post which was that a column of German Panzers
had smashed through the encircling Russians and
had entered the town. They were part of the
Fourth Armoured Army, who together with units of
Army Group Centre had succeeded in a powerful
counter-attack. He also said that Gruppenfuhrer
Gille (General, Waffen SS), Commander of the SS
Division Wiking had dropped into town. He
literally had; he was one of the occupants of
that glider I saw diving early the previous
morning.
There was no more sleep that night. We were on
full alert. The tanks up the road continued
sending their shells on to anything they could
hit, including our old Command Post building
which received a few. They stopped firing at
dawn and we braced ourselves for another attack
from their infantry. There was none. They were
probably having a sleep and would try again at
dusk. We had an extra crew member with us who
had belonged to Janko's gun. He told us his mate
who had stood the other side of the vehicle when
the mortar came down was badly wounded. The kapo,
driver and ammo/gunner had taken him to the
first aid station and hadn't come back yet.
There was nothing they could do for Gunner One
and the gun was also completely destroyed.
Mid-morning a tank came rumbling down the gully
with German black and white cross insignia
painted on the turret and stopped at our gun. It
was German Panther tank. The Commander, a
Leutnant, alighted and asked where the Russian
tank was that was menacing the area around
there. He said he was sent at the request of our
sector commander to try do dislodge it.
From our position we had a good view of the
tanks. Holder pointed them out to the Leutnant
and impressed on him that there were three, not
one but I don't think the Leutnant heard what
Holder told him. He borrowed Holder's glasses,
took a good look for himself and coolly said,
"No problem." Then he climbed on to his Panther,
disappeared into the turret and closed the lid.
His driver edged the tank into the slope of the
gully, just high enough for the gun to clear the
top. There was some slight movement of the
barrel as the gunner fine tuned his sight on to
the target and then came an almighty, ear-
splitting crash. One more quick corrective
movement as the barrel recoiled then another
deafening supersonic rip as the second shell
left it. Those two shots left two M4s burning on
the road and the third, the T34 taking no
chances, was reversing and retreated before the
Panther could home in on him too.
Formidable fighting machines, those Panther
tanks were. They weighed 45 tons and their
shells went through 150mm of armoured steel at a
distance of 2000 metres with a velocity of 3937
ft/sec to explode inside the target. Their
aiming capacity was dead accurate.
Two newsreel `artists' from Die Deutsche Wochen
Schau came crouching through the gully and must
have come in with the Panzer column. They
proceeded to take some lengthy shots of the
Panther tank, of our gun by the side of it, and
the two burning Sherman tanks. Whilst they had
their camera trained on them, one was ripped
apart as it exploded. Should make good
morale-boosting viewing on the German newsreel,
if they were lucky enough to get it home. They
then moved on in search of other subjects and
couldn't resist a few close-ups of the two
corpses nearby before heading for the trench and
take detailed shots of its gory remains.
The evening went and night closed and it was
relatively quiet. The Russian artillery units
and the dreaded Katyushas must have shifted from
the hills. Over in the barracks area the
Russians were still firmly entrenched.
Directions were issued during the night for all
German units positioned in the vicinity of our
area to withdraw across the road as an air
strike would be launched in the early hours of
the morning to dislodge the Russians from their
positions. It came precisely with the dawn. We
heard them long before they could be seen in the
cold morning air. Then we made out their shapes,
JU 87 Stukas, some twenty odd, easily recognized
by their 'W'-shaped, cranked wings and forward
leaning, 'trousered' landing gear, like eagle's
talons, escorted by a number of FW 190 fighter
planes. The Stuka bombers started to circle.
They were pretty high up to avoid possible
ground fire and made one complete circle around
the target area, which had been marked out by
flares from the surrounding German positions,
and then they spread out to position for attack.
Meanwhile the FWs came down for repeated low
level strafing runs over the barracks block.
They could only deliver short bursts from their
weapons in case they hit our own lines but the
purpose of it was to keep the Russian ground
fire from concentrating on to the bomber
formation.
We watched the first of the Stukas turn on his
back to commence his dive, the rest following
their leader. Their engines fired off a peculiar
whining scream on the dive not unlike the
wailing of the Katyushas. They carried one 1000
lb bomb under the belly and two smaller ones
under each wing and the ground shook as from a
small earthquake when they hit the target. Their
aiming was precise and there wouldn't be many
survivors after the planes disappeared over the
hills and those who were lucky enough to be
spared were quite happy to surrender.
The fighting in Kovel wasn't over yet. It
continued for quite some time until the last
pockets of resistance were overcome and
communications with the outside forces were
established again. When it was safe enough all
the wounded were taken out by armoured convoy to
Chelm field hospital and as soon as the rail
link with Chelm was restored, our battery was
pulled out too. Most of our equipment was left
behind for our relief units to sort out its
future usefulness. I was mighty glad to get out
of there and I am sure so were all the others
lucky enough to leave and hopefully never
return. There were a great number of our mates
resting there, not only in the cemetery I got to
know so well and hated step by step on my way in
and quite often with a slightly different
attitude on my way out, but also in the
surrounding fields and hills. Some had graves,
some were just rotting away.