Excerpt from Chapter 14:
It was the second half of December '42, snow was
falling heavily, the night temperature had
dropped to below minus 15 and one could hear the
wolves howling in the distant hills, (probably
trying to get away from the Flintenweiber..) For
some time I hadn't been feeling too well and was
gradually going off my food, which was not
surprising since for weeks it had consisted
mainly of lentils and pork speck. I couldn't
bear the sight of it any more without vomiting
and was thirsty all the time. The Russians put
on more entertainment via loud hailers, sending
over German Christmas songs, heavily laced with
their inevitable 'commercials' imploring us to
surrender, offering us good food and a jolly
good life ever after, with no more hardships and
all the women we fancied.
Late one afternoon a few days before Christmas
the Russian artillery opened up earlier then
usual, slow at first then escalating into
enormous barrage volume. Shell after shell came
howling and screeching in, ripping up snow and
frozen soil. When it stopped snowing, the heavy
guns stopped too and along came the dreaded
Illyushins from the direction of Ordzhonikidze
in the massive Kazbek mountain range to our
left, diving through clouds on to our hamlet and
releasing their rockets. The whirring sound of
shrapnel cut through the air before thudding
into the frozen ground, or into human flesh,
mixed with the screams of death. Bouncing bombs
exploded in mid air, their fragments cutting
deep furrows in the ground. Izbas disintegrated
like matchboxes and burst into flames. Then the
Maxims started up, spitting their explosive
bullets, sweeping from side to side. Bullets
hitting an object explode with a hard sharp
crack. There must have been an unlimited number
of machine guns in operation.
The planes made their last circle then
disappeared behind the low-hanging clouds,
leaving the village ablaze from end to end and a
heavy snow blizzard began to sweep over the
fields obscuring all vision which the Russians
took advantage of. When it lifted we saw them,
white camouflaged shapes had moved out of their
trenches and were advancing across no man's
land. Our gun began strafing them from from
right to left but I was pinned down in the
trench by the incoming mortar bursts, giving me
no choice but to stay with the infantry's
machine gun crew. I clicked the bayonet to the
rifle when I noticed everyone around me had done
so but was hoping the machine gunners would open
fire and the Russian attack would not come. But
they kept coming. There were flashes from
exploding hand grenades and then our machine gun
opened up and our rifles began spitting, sending
those in front of us to ground.
The Russians had made good use of the blizzard
to break through our trench system on the
south-eastern approach to the village and fierce
close-up fighting was taking place. One of our
other guns down the opposite end of the main
street was still in action, judging from the
steady bursts of phosphor tracers. Orders were
received to get our gun pulled out and proceed
slowly along the street, flanked by a platoon of
infantry and since I had no particular function
on the gun the Leutnant in charge of the platoon
ordered me to join the infantry for rifle
support. We concentrated our fire on the burning
izbas along the southern side of the street,
most of which was already in Russian hands. The
whole village was ablaze and it was hard to
distinguish which of the moving shadows were
Germans and which were Ivans. A burst of sub-
machine gunfire hit us from across the street,
from the northern end, indicating the Russian
units must have managed to cross the street in
the general confusion and establish themselves
in the ruins. I hit the snow and waited for the
shooting to subside. Our 2 cm gun aimed its fire
into the hut where the machine gunfire was
coming from and they must have scored a few hits
as the Russians ceased firing. Then our gun
rolled slowly back to take cover behind a
burning izba.
Our platoon got hold of the houses in front but
the battle continued for quite some time with
the Russians coming back, desperately trying to
reclaim lost ground - a house-to-house battle,
furious and without mercy. The platoon leutnant
jumped up the sideboard of the gun vehicle to
let them know the Russians had taken possession
of the house nearest to them and directed the
kapo to put his fire into it. A short burst was
all that was required then we moved in and
repossessed it, making sure the previous
occupants have left. Thus we slowly advanced
along the main street. Orders came to abandon
the village and establish a holding line on the
northern edge and I rejoined our gun crew. Just
after midnight we heard heavy motors approaching
from the south east, sounding like tanks. We
desperately hoped they would be ours and to our
relief as they loomed out of the snow we saw
they were P IVs, (German Panzers) coming from
the direction of Malgobek. They closed in and
began bombarding the village. Shell after shell
was fired into the ruins and a counter-attack by
the infantry before daybreak restored German
possession of the hamlet.
The price had been high. Bodies were lying
everywhere, white parka clad Russians and
Germans alike, side by side, all frozen stiff
and brittle from the early morning winter
freeze. We took up our previous trench line
position again and the Russians returned to
theirs. Nothing had changed but a lot of men had
died, and not many wounded will survive because
of the freeze. On Christmas Day the Russians
again began a furious counter-attack. We stood
our ground for a while but it was hopeless and a
wasteful way of battling. On both sides men were
dying for taking or holding on to the ruins of a
village with no strategic value, perhaps of
sentimental value to the Russians but none
whatsoever to the Germans. We were ordered to
abandon the village and retreat towards
Prokhladnyy, then further back to Pyatigorsk. As
the days passed I gradually grew weaker and
anything I ate didn't stay down long; I was just
thirsty and ate snow by the fistful.
Fieldmarshal Erich von Manstein's relieve
operation into Stalingrade (Operation Winter
Storm), came to a halt a few days before
Christmas because of an Russian attack on the
Italien Eighth Army in the sector north of
Kalach. Von Manstein had to give up a whole
Panzer division (17th) and Richthofen had to
divert two entire bomber wings from his support
operation for the relieve attack, to come to the
rescue of the Italiens. Count G. Ciano, The
Italien foreign minister, inquired of the OKW
whether the Italien troops suffered heavy
casualties; he was told: "None at all. They
never stopped running." Richthofen quite rightly
labelled the whole operation "abandoning the
sixth Army--it's murder." Murder it was but the
Italiens had to be saved!! The one armed General
Hube was somewhat more successful when ordered
by Manstein to make an attempt to break out of
Stalingrad with his diminished Panzers. He
succeeded in joining up with General Herman Hoth
IV Panzer Army on the Myshkova river.
(Thunderclap) in the beginning of January 1943.
The German High Command realised if Stalingrad
falls to the Russians and they managed to break
through along on the northern banks of the Don
river they would then press straight on to
Tsimlyanskaya, Novocherkassk and straight
through to Rostov, a mere 200 miles thus cutting
off the whole of the German Caucasus Army from
the rest of the Wehrmacht. so the order was
given to General von Kleist for his entire Army
slowly to retreat northwards.
Looking south in the direction of Groznyy was a
huge wall of dark, dense smoke blackening the
skyline and obscuring the mountain range beyond.
German Heinkel bombers had bombed the entire
oilfields in that region, setting the wells
alight and into huge uncontrollable fires, the
smoke wall reaching heights above 4000 metres.
Almost a 1000 km north, at Rostov, which was to
be the escape corridor for the entire General
von Kleist's Army Group 'A', Field Marshal von
Manstein with his Army Group South and General
Hoth's Forth Panzer Army were battling enormous
superior forces to keep that narrow sleeve open
for the bulk of the Caucasus Army to slip
through. Russian advance units of the Second
Guard Army had already advanced to within 40 km
of Rostov before being stopped. General
Vatutin's forces even reached Novomoskovs about
30 km from Dniepropetrovsk and Sinel'nikovo 60
km from Zaporozh'ye where Fiel-Marshal Erich von
Manstein had his headquarters. Fortunately they
failed, only just, to capture von Manstein's
headquarters. but we were unaware of all this at
the time.
We reached Mineral'nyye Vody on 8 January. I
stood the early morning watch and became
terribly sick and must have passed out as the
relief watch found me slumped by the vehicle. I
couldn't have been unconscious for long as I
would have quickly frozen to death, which they
thought I had. They pulled me inside the izba to
thaw out and gave me a mirror to look into and I
saw one very yellow face with two yellow/red
eyes. It didn't look like me and I was
horrified. Our gun kapo got two men to take me
to the Battery Command Post and the Commander
ordered his driver to take me to the station
without delay as he understood there was a
wounded transport about to leave - the last
German hospital train to leave Mineral'nyye as
the Russians were just about to close in and the
station would be destroyed. It was 9 January
1943 and Mineral'nyye Vody fell to the Russians
on 11 January.
The train was no proper hospital outfit, just
one long row of goods wagons with no Red Cross
markings at all on the sides or roof. This was
considered better protection as Russia was not a
signatory to the Geneva Convention. A train with
red crosses on the roof became a prime target
for Russian attacks, especially if they
suspected some of their own wounded were on
board. Similarly they would gun down any German
stretcher bearer foolish enough to display red
cross markings on his uniform.
Up front the steam engine belched dirty smoke
and hissed off excessive steam. The medical
officer in charge of the train announced it was
full and he was determined to pull out before
the artillery got any closer, as one hit on the
line and nobody would get out. "Try your luck"
he told the driver, who wasted no time looking
for a space, but just pushed me through an open
door, throwing my rifle after me as I landed on
the coal heap. He could have kept the rifle as I
was in no need of it any more.
The reception inside the wagon was hostile but I
couldn't have given a damn had they thrown me
out as I was too weak to resist anything.
Anyhow, it would have been too late as the train
started to move in rather erratic jerks, causing
some yells, moans and groans from the bowel of
the semi-dark wagon and I realised there were
some badly wounded men aboard, Ivans as well as
Germans. There must have been about 20 of them
on the straw covered floor. A pot belly stove
was in the centre with the flue sticking out the
side of the wagon just under the ceiling and a
large coal heap was immediately next to the
sliding door and was to be my resting place for
the next week or so. The stove was already a
reddish glow and radiating pleasant warmth and I
speculated how much roasted meat there would be
if it tipped over on to the dry straw! Opposite
the coal heap, next to the door on the other
side was a small section screened off with a
blanket, hiding a makeshift seat over a hole cut
into the floor - our toilet for the journey,
though it wasn't of much use as most of us
couldn't walk. Once the door was shut the smoke
of cigarettes made from machorka rolled in
newspaper cones quickly mixed with the stench of
gangrenous wounds and dysentery leaks. A pretty
awful stink but we didn't mind: we were going
home. We hoped...
To my right I looked into a frightened and
agonised face of a huge bearded Mongolian
Cossack whose chest was bandaged with a dirty
blood-soaked wad of wrapping. A bullet was stuck
in his lungs, judging from the caked blood in
his beard and his difficult breathing, but he
seemed to be more frightened of what would
happen should the Russians get hold of our
train: a bullet through the neck - and he knew
it. Next to him was another Cossack, probably
his mate, as both came from the 39th Trans
Caucasian Army. He too was in a bad way with the
upper part of his leg mutilated, probably from
shrapnel. The chances of them both surviving the
trip were slim.
Very few on board our wagon were able to move
about and in the absence of medical personnel it
was up to those few who could to look after the
needs of the rest. Frostbite took its toll. A
wound where frostbite has set in slowly rots
away into dead flesh and gangrene and agonising
death. Food was no problem as most of the
serious cases had no desire to eat, but water
was screamed for constantly. The mere mention of
food or just the smell of it was enough to make
me retch violently but there was absolutely
nothing to bring up. Water was my salvation; I
felt I was slowly burning up inside.
We were heading north-west for Nevinnomyssk and
Armavir, en route to Rostov, if we ever got
there, otherwise some god- forsaken place in the
Siberian taiga with a nice little salt mine
close by for us to slave our days out and
eventually rot away in. But we would all be dead
before then anyhow; I would for sure.
Our destination was Dniepropetrovsk though we
didn't know it then. It took us two weeks to get
there but first we had to get through the Rostov
bottleneck where von Manstein was battling
against enormous odds, (Russian forces
outnumbering Germans 10:1) to keep the corridor
open for Kleist's armour to get out of the
Caucuses. Had it not also been for the heroic
stand of von Paulus's Sixth Army in Stalingrad
probably none of us would ever have got out.
The chances of our train slipping through
Rostov's bottleneck were very slim indeed and
the long journey took its toll. Every time we
stopped, which was quite often, the few medics
aboard made their way from wagon to wagon to
check on the condition and remove the corpses of
those who'd died between stops. They just laid
them out in the snow along the railway line,
perhaps to be collected for burial later,
perhaps not. Their places were quickly filled by
new casualties, picked up on route. The second
night out of Mineral'nyye the Cossack next to me
died, and he was followed by an infantry
sergeant who died from advanced gangrene. The
maggots ate his feet inside his boots. Six more
from our wagon alone were laid out in the snow
before we reached Rostov.
About the fourth day out from Mineral'nyye Vody
the Russians had closed in to within 15 km of
the rail line, between Nevinnomyssk and Armavir.
They kept the railway under artillery fire,
stopping any train from getting through. I don't
remember too much of what happened as I was even
too weak to shift from the coal heap to the
straw vacated by the Cossack, but I do remember
one stop which I think was either Kropotkin or
Tikhoretsk when two nurses came aboard with a
medical officer. They took pity on me and lifted
me on to the straw next to the Cossack with the
smashed leg and gave me some glucose to mix with
my snow water. They also told us to be prepared
for the worst as the Russian Second Guard Army
was closing in on Rostov and were already within
30 km of the city centre. They didn't think our
chances were very good. This was devastating
news as we were stuck on a railway line some 200
miles south of the rapidly narrowing escape
route through Rostov. I hope those nurses made
it north and didn't share the fate of most
German women of medical units who had the bad
luck to be captured and die under the bellies of
half a company of Mongols...
We got just past Kushchevskaya when a couple of
MiG fighters spotted our train and attacked.
They made a mess of the engine and a few wagons
but luckily it was snowing heavily, preventing
them from low flying. The loss of our engine
immobilised us for the rest of the day while
engineers cleared the wrecks and waited for
another engine to be brought from Bataysk when
night settled in. We were lucky the low hanging
clouds kept the Russian planes away but how we
managed to slip over the Don bridge from Bataysk
into Rostov I will never know. It must have been
in the middle of the night and at high speed. We
came to rest early in the morning just outside
Taganrog, some 70 km west of Rostov, on the Sea
of Asov, still some 300 miles short of
Dniepropetrovsk but 600 behind us, and most
importantly we were now on the other side of the
mighty Don, though still a long way from safety.
For the rest of the day we remained on a siding,
ready to make a dash at night for Stalino to the
north west - that was if the Russians hadn't got
there first. They had just taken Voroshilovsk
and were advancing rapidly to Krasnyylurch, 50
km east of Stalino. Our medical personnel on
board did their best to make life more tolerable
by cleaning our 'stables' as much as possible
and replenishing the coal heap. As soon as night
came we pulled out of Taganrog and travelled on
north into uncertainty. We must have slipped
through Stalino in the early morning hours and
reached the junction on the main line from
Gorlovka to Chaplino. From the Gorlovka junction
we were rolling away from the front line so were
then able to travel during the day and reached
Dniepropetrovks mid-morning of the fourteenth
day out from Mineral'nyye Vody. Half our
original complement lay frozen somewhere
alongside the rail line waiting to rot away with
the next spring thaw.