Excerpt from Chapter 11:
We were in for a long wait with heavy armour,
artillery, motorised troops and infantry all
waiting to cross the Don via a temporary pontoon
positioned the side of the damaged railway
bridge leading to Bataysk. There was a huge
bottle neck, with quite an impressive gathering
of Generals and their staffs directing the flow.
The Russian Air force could have had a field
day, but it looked like they were licking their
wounds or perhaps engaged somewhere else and the
only planes above were Richthofen's
Messerschmitt fighters.
Eventually our turn came to make the crossing
and roll on south towards Bataysk, which was
taken on 27 July by Kleist's Panzers. Russian
resistance had grown weak and was almost non-
existent as the bulk of the armies retreated or
surrendered leaving behind an enormous arsenal
of weapons and equipment. Outside Bataysk near
the railway junction from Salsk to Azov we
stumbled upon a battery of 'Stalinorgels' - the
dreaded Katyusha rocket launchers, 'Kostikov's
gun' to the Russians, named after it's inventor.
Eight of them, each with two tiers of 132 mm
calibre rockets in firing position, aimed in the
direction of Rostov and all primed ready for the
firing plunger to be activated. Nearby in the
fields stood two batteries of heavy 152 mm field
guns again, all loaded ready for the firing
string. The interesting thing about the guns was
that each carriage was fitted with a large brass
plate which said 'Made by Krupp, Essen,
Germany'. A comforting thought to know that the
next artillery barrage might be well and truly
home-made!
A little further back on the line to
Kushchevskaya stood a goods train with the
engine facing Bataysk, still under steam, only
the crew had disappeared. Langhans immediately
deduced it was a supply train full of provisions
and was very keen to find out what it carried.
Oh no, not again! We'd seen it all before we
remembered, and we still had heaps of those
'Hindenburg' candles on board, though they had
served us well, we had to admit. Under
Langhans's instruction, we opened the first
carriage and found it full of cartons, all
marked in Russian so we had no idea of the
contents but a quick job with a jemmy revealed
Zigarren! Bloody hell, a whole carriage full of
Russian cigars for the Russian top brass, no
doubt. The ordinary 'Ivan' smoked 'machorka', a
tobacco wrapped in a neatly rolled cone of
'Pravda' or maybe Izvestia. We helped ourselves
to a few boxes before opening the next wagon
which had the same sized boxes only they
contained tinned meat, so Langhans said. By this
time Oberleutnant Belling, our battery
Commander, stormed alongside waving his 08-15
(pistol), ordering us to put everything back
where we found it and close the doors
immediately, raving on about looting, and
threatened us with 'Kriegsgericht' (court
martial). We still managed to hide a box of each
on our vehicle.
Langhans was in a bad mood and blamed us for not
opening the right wagon, meaning the one with
the vodka in. How the hell should we have known?
Anton told him that the next time we fell over
another supply train, he (Langhans), could go
and get the vodka himself and drink himself to
death on it. Crossly insubordinate on Anton's
part, we thought but Langhans was too furious to
be upset about that. "Just wait, when we get
into Maykop," he countered, "there are big
breweries and the beer they make there is that
strong it has to be eaten with a spoon and I
will make sure that you get none of it" he said.
Anton responded questioning his knowledge of
Russian beer and adding, "For all you know, we
might not even get there". He started to grin as
though he had just hit on something profound. "I
prefer Hofbr„u Bier to Russian dish- water any
time". Ha-ha, good old Jrgen
got hit with his own hammer, and he won't
forgive Anton for a long time...
That evening we had tinned meat with our
Bratkartoffeln and lit up our cigars but they
turned out to be worse than the machorka
newspaper cones, and the meat tasted terrible
and gave us all diarrhoea. As usual Langhans was
right; we should should have looked a bit
harder. He always made it clear he had more
brain in his head than the lot of us had
together. Well, on occasions like that one could
hardly argue the point.
from the time we crossed the Don the Russian air
force left us pretty well alone as they were
tied up north in the Stalingrad section where
heavy fighting was in progress, and also in the
Kuban sector which was under the pressure of
Ruoff's 17th Army. The speed with which Army
Group 'A' advanced into the Caucusus was
astounding, with Kleist's Panzers taking town
after town and leaving the infantry a day, or
maybe two, behind to mop up. Armavir and
Kropotkin were taken on 5 August, followed by
Thikhoretsk on the 6th and Maykop on the 9th. We
reached Kropotkin and Maykop at the foothills of
the Caucasus with its oil wells and, as Langhans
said,large breweries. However, both
installations had been completely destroyed by
the retreating Red Army. A Russian Yak 4 had
crashed into the side of one of the still
burning breweries and the two crew were still in
the smouldering plane, their heads shrunken to
the size of an orange that closed the chapter of
the Maykop famous beer.
Looking south-west into the massive mountain
range of the Caucasus, Mount Elbrus stuck out
like a sugar-coated pyramid, 5.642 metres high.
We proceeded along the foothills in a north
easterly direction towards Armavir. Since we had
entered the Kuban area Russian air activity was
again increasing with IL 2s attacking the
Rollbahn. They came from an air base south which
we guessed was Pyatigorsk. Halfway to Armavir,
near a river junction we encountered heavy
artillery fire coming from the surrounding
hills, and causing quite a bit of disturbance
and delay. We left the Rollbahn, headed for a
wooded outcrop nearby, and waited for a lull in
the barrage. One lone IL 2 came lumbering along
from the north-west, obviously on his return run
home. His belly was bare of rockets but he still
had plenty of ammunition left to feed his
canons, judging from the bursts he delivered on
to the Rollbahn. Being on his own and with no
fighter escort he was just right for us, so we
thought, and well within range as our distance
reading showed 200 metres,and closing in, almost
impossible to miss. We hit him with a whole
magazine of armour-piercing missiles as he
passed overhead. which we saw to our horror they
just bounced off on impact though probably gave
the pilot a bit of a shock. The plane went
momentarily out of control and then veered off
sharply southward. Those planes were flying
battleships. Luckily the pilot was unaware where
the fire came from or he would have emptied
whatever he had left in his guns on us for
revenge.
We got underway again and reached Labinsk half
way to Armavir mid afternoon, then pushed on for
another couple of hours before halting for the
night on the bank of a river. I think it was the
Kuban river, where the western embankment was
lined with grape plantations. A settlement on
top of the embankment caught the curiosity of
Oberleutnant Belling and he decided to send two
gun crews up there to investigate. Langhans and
his crew was one of them, so off we went. What
struck us on entering the settlement was all the
buildings, all 'izbas', looked alike with
white-washed walls. Nobody was about, just a few
dogs. People were there all right, but were
staying out of sight. We positioned ourselves on
the end of the main street, guns ready for a
quick burst if need be. A figure came through a
doorway clad in a long white robe with a hood
and if he'd held a scythe could easily have been
'Old Father Time' himself. Then we saw that part
of his nose was missing! Langhans pointed his
pistol and indicated to him to put his hands
above his head, which he readily obliged and we
noticed there were no hands either, just
deformed ugly stumps. One ear was gone
completely and the other was a
cauliflower-looking mess. Gradually others came
out, all dressed the same and all similarly
afflicted. We had stumbled on a leper colony and
quickly dismissed any thought of checking out
the rest of the village and retreated down hill,
settling for our usual Bratkartoffeln in recoil
oil and a bite or two of salami.
That night we listened to the purr-purr of the U
V D - the 'night witches'in their sewing
machines, who re-appeared, after leaving us
alone since Rostov. Hearing those engines again
was a bad omen. It meant Ivan was up to
something, which he sure was. Shortly after
midnight orders reached us to move out quickly.
Trapped, encirled Russian elements from the area
of Cherkessk and Kislovodsk were reported to be
breaking out in their quest to join up with the
main body of the retreating forces on the Kuma
river. They had already broken through between
Nevinnomyssk and Mineral'nyye Vody. Oberleutnant
Belling was informed we were to join an 8.8 Flak
unit, already in position outside Nevinnomyssk,
to help contain their breakout.
By the time we reached the Rollbahn it was
already crowded with motorised infantry, Pak
(antitank) units and heavy armour from Ruoff's
17th Army from the Maykop and Armavir area and
Kettenhunde (military police 'head hunters')
controlling the traffic. The dust never seemed
to settle, not even at night and as Langhans
said, the best thing was to inhale as much as
possible, that way we would get rid of most of
it. Always cheerful, was Langhans.
Odd salvos of heavy 152 mm Russian artillery
stationed somewhere up in the hills roared down
on us, probing along the Rollbahn, lighting up
the fields with every explosion. A Luftwaffen
Colonel came by and directed us to join another
2 cm battery waiting for us ahead. We kept clear
of the Rollbahn, as some of the 15.2 shells came
howling in uncomfortably close, exploding with a
deafening 'whoompf' and fireball spewing
shrapnel in all directions, the latter,
according to size and speed making a high or
low-pitched whirring sound before hitting the
ground with a dirt-ripping thud. We passed four
Pak cannons, well camouflaged with branches and
bushes, and some distance behind were the 8.8s
spread out in staggered lines covered under
camouflage netting. The commander of the 8.8
battery, a Major, directed us into position with
the two 2 cm batteries flanking the heavy guns
and told to get out of sight as much as possible
before dawn.
'Morgenrot' and IL 2s together were not a good
omen... We had about a couple of hours to get
dug in before daybreak and all the hell it would
bring from the hills in front of us. Once
daylight came Russian artillery observers would
be able to pinpoint their target with great
accuracy. Until then it would just be random
salvos. We certainly wasted no time getting into
the ground. Ferdl did a good job by turning the
vehicle around in circles with one chain locked
and loosening the ground, which we then packed
in front of us in a semi- circle rampart and
covered the lot with grass, bushes and sunflower
stalks - all very neat we thought. A well-aimed
football would have knocked the whole lot over
but the idea was not to fortify the gun position
but to camouflage it from early detection. Then
we filled all available magazines with high
explosives, with every fifth an armour-piercing
grenade in anticipation of a tank attack, not
that we would have made much impact on a tank's
80 mm armour - that was the task of the mighty
8.8 guns next to us. Our job was to dislodge the
infantry hiking a lift, sometimes as many as 25
or 30, before they dismounted and vanished into
the ground, where a well-aimed 2 cm burst into
such a heap would prove quite effective.
With the firing lever pulled back and a magazine
in the loading block we were ready, awaiting
dawn, and with it the inevitable carnage and
destruction. I just wished we would have a
downpour for hours to transform the ground into
a swamp and everything would have to be
cancelled for the day. But there was not much
hope of that. The sky appeared to be devoid of
clouds from the mountain range to the eastern
horizon, and the stars looked down on us with
perverted pleasure, I thought. The Commander
from the 8.8s came along with Oberleutnant
Belling for a quick inspection of our readiness
and some last instructions for our Kapo. I was
still hoping it was all a false alarm, but
observing those formidable 8.8 guns I knew they
didn't put them there for nothing.
A reddish glimmer on the eastern horizon showed
the beginning of the new day and it wasn't long
before we heard the sound of approaching
aircraft, faint at first then increasing in
volume, and long before we could see them, we
knew they were Illyushins. Then we saw a cluster
approaching in tight formation, 15 or maybe 20,
with their fighter escorts, probably MiGs or
Yaks. We looked for some comfort from where the
big 8.8s were positioned but it wasn't
forthcoming. Their barrels hadn't moved and
their camouflage was still in position and they
had no intention of revealing their positions to
the watching periscopes of the Russian artillery
observers. "Women!" Langhans was thinking aloud.
"The hill is probably full of them," was his
assumption. "Nothing more ferocious than a woman
behind a rifle," he continued his train of
thought, to no one in particular. "Should you
ever get captured by those Amazons the first
thing you have to do is cut your penis off and
hand it to them... If you don't, they sure do it
for you," he added as an afterthought. The way
he said it he didn't expect a reply, so we just
kept thinking about it...
The Illyushins were closing in overhead and we
watched their circling manoeuvres before coming
in to dive. Black streaks shot out from their
wings as they released the rockets, followed by
the familiar whooshing screech and whoompf,
whoompf as each hit the ground. We breathed
again; they could have come down on us, but we
were still invisible and they had found a better
target. "Do they really do that?" asked Hans.
"Do what?" asked Jurgen. "What you said a while
ago, cutting the penis off?". "Well, you'll find
out if those 'Flintenweiber' get hold of you,"
he replied. "I have seen it myself!" Actually,
as the war progressed and some 18 months later I
witnessed that horrible deed myself. Such things
aren't mentioned in history books as all the war
crimes were invariably committed by the
vanquished, never by the victorious Allies...
Yellow-red fingers stabbed into the morning sky,
coming from the hills, followed by the eerie
wailing noise of the Katyushas. We dived
overboard and scrambled under the chains when
the rockets came howling in in bunches of eight.
A battery of six of those launchers could
deliver up to 72 of 132 mm missiles almost
simultaneously, but like the Illyushins, they
weren't meant for us this time. A Panzer unit to
the right of us copped the lot. The Ils must
also have scored a hit where the German tank
units stood because smoke was rising, followed
by a fire ball and huge explosion.
A Russian Maxim machine gun opened up from the
hills with its slow tak tak tak and was
immediately answered by a much faster German gun
from the infantry unit dug in to our left.
Russian artillery fire which had concentrated on
the Panzer formation veered to the left, probing
with its shells, trying to find the machine gun
position. Our heavy artillery joined in from
somewhere behind us, we could hear the shells
passing overhead with a friendly
whooshing/gurgling sound indicating they still
had a long way to go before finding their target
and we watched them hitting the hills a few
moments later with an enormous greyish- black
mushroom cloud. We hoped they had found and hit
the terrible Katyushas.
It was then that we saw the KV's, brown monsters
of some 45 tons dead weight coming out from the
tree belt, half hidden by the tall sunflowers,
with some sleek-looking T34s among them, about a
dozen or so. Our artillery got their range with
a few well-placed salvos and we wondered why our
Panzers hadn't moved in yet. Perhaps they were
waiting for the artillery to stop or maybe they
were letting the Russian tanks go past and then
go after them? It was well known that a German
Panzer IV was disadvantaged in a frontal attack
from a KV tank with its far-reaching gun and
heavier foreward armour plating. The most
effective way to stop a KV dead in its track was
with an 8.8 gun, if the gun could get in first.
A well-aimed shell at the proper range can enter
one side of the tank and go straight out the
other. We concluded they were leaving the
monsters to the 8.8s. Actually I was too scared
to conclude anything; subconsciously I gripped
the magazine, in an urge to hold on to
something.
Our artillery was doing a good job; two Russian
tanks were burning and the rest were spreading
out to minimise risk of more hits. I was
petrified and was sure all my mates were too
though none showed it. If the tanks opened fire
once they spotted our position it would
certainly be all over in a very short time. I
wished we could have stayed with the lepers.
Slow death from leprosy would be preferable to
getting ripped to pieces from an artillery
shell, I thought. They kept coming, and still
the 8.8s remained behind their camouflage
netting. Two more tanks got hit, this time by
the PAKs we had passed on our way along. The
infantry riding the tanks had left their
chariots and were scattered around the sunflower
field seeking protection. "Keep a watch on them;
they will probably be on us before the tanks
are," said Langhans, adding, "they can dig
themselves into the ground with their bare hands
better than we can with a spade - and stop
shaking your knees, you only wear them out."
Langhans was hiding his own fear and did it
masterly.
The gun turret of the leading tank was moving in
our direction, homing in on our position. I
crouched a bit lower on my knees, awaiting the
inevitable yellow flame crashing from its
barrel, and took a deep breath, what I thought
would be my last, but... too late for that
Russian monster! Our four 8.8s pulled the string
almost as one and the shells left their long
barrels with an ear splitting supersonic crack
and ripping shock wave, followed almost
instantanously by the sound of impact when steel
met steel. An ear-shattering explosion split the
air as the leading tank's turret was ripped off
its body and thrown into the air and two more
burst into flames. Langhans tapped Jakob on his
helmet, the sign to hit the firing pedal and for
me to keep feeding the ammo into the loading
block while Ludwig crouched on my left, handing
me the new magazines.
The base of the barrel started to change colour,
from black to blue to red. It was time for me to
change it and this time it was difficult as
Ferdl couldn't drive to a safe position. Thirty
seconds in front of the armour plate was enough
to reduce me to a sieve - and that rotten driver
(Ferdl) wasn't even in his seat! I figured he
was flat on his belly under the vehicle.
Couldn't blame him really, he was too valuable
to be exposed to unnecessary danger! I wished I
could have done the same but I wasn't so
valuable... Luckily I had some protection from
the smoke from the burning tanks in front. The
8.8s continued firing relentlessly, knocking out
a few more KVs and the smoke made it impossible
for the Russians to concentrate returning their
fire. However, they did score a hit on the third
8.8 to our right. A couple of machine guns
opened up from somewhere to the left. Ludwig
handed me a new magazine then suddenly stood
upright, looked at me with wide open eyes then
slowly sank to his knees with a stream of blood
coming from his mouth. A bullet had hit him in
the back and exploded in his lungs. Poor fellow,
he never knew what hit him. The stare he gave me
was a last flicker of utter surprise, or perhaps
it was a desperate look for help...
Our artillery had now stopped. The Russian tanks
were turning back, leaving it to their infantry
to cover their withdrawal. Our Panzers then took
up the pursuit and the infantry on our left rose
up to attack but the Russian infantry had had
enough and what was left of them surrendered. We
considered ourselves pretty lucky to be alive,
though it had been rough on Ludwig. Langhans
broke off the bottom half of Ludwig's 'dog tag'
(identification marker) to take to the CO at the
Command post of the 8.8s, together with his
report. He returned with orders for us to
proceed towards Mineral'nyye Vody Field Hospital
to deliver Ludwig for burial. No doubt in due
course his parents would receive the usual
letter 'One of our best' gave his life fr
den Fhrer,
Volk und Vaterland, or something to that effect.
Thousands of such letters must have been
delivered every week.
Behind the 'Schlachthof' in Mineral'nyye Vody
Russian prisoners were busy digging more holes
behind the rows of crosses of yesterday's
'best', for the ones who would come in today,
like our Ludwig. They would come in every day
with frightful regularity until the field
hospital would shift to a new location and then
start all over again. And why one had to die to
be regarded as the 'best' was not the easiest to
understand.