We sat in a heavy silence, dispirited. We talked about it a few more times. I could not get the execution I had seen out of my mind. I saw no chance for safely getting away. I talked them out of it. And so we didn’t run. Erich was killed in battle in front of Kirchhellen. The last time I saw Herbert he was stumbling back from our foxholes, pressing a first-aid package to where his lower jaw had been ripped away by a .50 caliber machine-gun bullet.
My Parents and the Sergeant-Major. Late on the morning of February 23, our company was out on an exercise when a lance-corporal came from headquarters on a bicycle. He brought an order to return. When we arrived I saw my parents standing with the sergeant- major. He waved me over after the company was dismissed. It was near lunchtime. My parents embraced me. The sergeant-major invited them to have lunch with the troops in the mess hall. I was embarrassed at first, but happy to see them. My parents were the only parents who visited the base during our time there. I noticed that my father had put on the small medal clips of his decorations from WW I. The sergeant-major had recognized them. As a favor from one old soldier to another he had ordered the company back to base. It was most unusual. I wondered how our lieutenant felt about this matter. He had not objected. Whatever the reasons, my parents and I were together one more time.
We spent the afternoon in the empty mess hall. We talked but it was difficult. We didn’t say what we really felt. I loved them but didn’t tell them. I couldn’t. I knew it was the same for them. We revealed ourselves only through little gestures. In some way I was remote, already belonging to something else. My father understood, my mother not so much. Still, there was a bond between us that was unbreakable.
Their train to Gerresheim left the Wuppertal-Elberfeld station around 6 P.M. I asked the sergeant-major if I could accompany my parents to the railway. He gave me leave. The way down the road was hard for us. We didn’t talk much. At the station we stood together for a while. I left before their train arrived. I remember their hollow faces, huge eyes, the near desperation on my mother’s face.
The sergeant-major had been wounded seven times. He was a most experienced soldier but a kind man. War had not hardened him. In fact, it had made him soft. He called us kids in his company his Jungens. He tried to be sort of a father for the fathers who could not be there, some already dead or lost in the war. He despised office work and let others run it. He talked to us often, trying to tell us what he had learned that we might live. He was to die among his Jungens on the road to Kirchhellen before the battle, struck down by an artillery shell. Of all the other men I met in positions of command in the Heer, none was remarkable. He was, and I remember him for it, just as I remember the Jungens who died there with him.
Moving Out. On March 3, American troops reached Oberkassel, the suburb of Düsseldorf across the river on the left bank of the Rhine. From that date on, the city lay under artillery fire. German troops had blown the four bridges that spanned the river to Neuss and Oberkassel. The radio reported that the government had declared Düsseldorf a fortress to be held at any cost. We could clearly hear the rumble of frequent bombardments. Had we been sent to the frontline there, we would have understood. After all, it would have made some sense. But it was not to be. Our training continued as if nothing else mattered, as if nothing had changed. Those of us in our battalion from Düsseldorf and Neuss fretted the most about our families, but we all were very much disturbed.
The continuing air war was remorseless. From March 2 to March 18, the RAF and the USAF bombed eleven cities in our neighborhood: Köln on March 2, Dortmund, 3-4, Dortmund and Siegen, on the 7th, Dortmund and Essen on the 8th, Essen on the 11th, Dortmund on the 10th and 12th, Hagen on the night of 15-16. Wuppertal-Elberfeld, although we thought there was nothing left to destroy, was not spared. The cities below us, below Sagan Kaserne, were nevertheless struck again on March 13, this time by the RAF in a daytime raid. We were on a training exercise away from the base. We saw the Lancasters in bright daylight following the Wupper River from the west and unloading over the cities. There were perhaps 80 to a hundred planes flying at a height of 4,000 meters (13,000 feet). We could actually see twelve large bombs drop from the bomb bay of each plane, hear the terrifying sound of their fall and the horrendous impact in the valley. Being on the plateau, we could not see the bombs strike, but we saw the columns of dust and debris rise into the air. The ground we were on literally shook under our feet. We did not take cover. We were not the target. We stood by, observers, frightened sheep.
Five days later, on March 18, our time finally came. Trucks lined up and the order to move was issued. Not for the protection of Düsseldorf and the Rhine but to an assignment elsewhere. We climbed aboard in battle gear. It was clear that our battalion would go into combat. We wondered where, but no one told us. We sat in uneasy silence. There was no escape. What was to come would come, whatever it would be.
At the head of the column of trucks was an open Kübelwagen with the battalion commander, a Major Klocke. We had seen him only a few times during training and he had made no impression on us. With him was a staff officer beside the driver, a lance-corporal. The company lieutenants and the sergeant-major rode with the grenadiers. We took a route in a northeastern direction, evading the large broken cities such as Hagen, Dortmund and Hamm. We took side roads through villages and small towns. We had left in fog but after we passed Dortmund the sky cleared. We had come into a region where Allied fighter-bombers dominated the sky. A couple of times we passed shot-up military vehicles on the road. Travel was slow. Anxious eyes watched the sky. Once, when the convoy had stopped in good cover, a flight of American Thunderbolts, noses painted bright red, swooped over, not more than 300 meters above ground. They attacked a train less than one kilometer away with bombs and cannon fire, leaving the locomotive and a couple of cars a burning mess. We watched with dread. Eventually we arrived safely in a village in eastern Westphalia, somewhere south of Münster. Our battalion was quartered in farmers’ barns. We heard a rumor that an Allied airborne landing was expected east of the Ruhr. There were more troops billeted in villages around us.
On the Road. They kept us in readiness in the village but nothing happened. On March 19 the last mail was delivered to us. How the mail got through from Sagan to us was astounding. There was a last letter from my mother, dated March 12. A word-for-word translation reads like this: “My dear, dear Junge, I will write you quickly a few lines. The two of us here are all right. How is it with you? We have become used to living in the basement. It can be done. At least we are safe from artillery fire. How far is your training? We hope they don’t throw you into the mess five minutes before the end. Be strong and don’t lose your trust in God, my Lieb, then He will help and protect us. So often He has clearly helped us. So, my Lieb, God be with you. His blessings, and affectionate greetings from Vati and Mutti. It is so hard for us that we cannot visit you. But it is impossible. The trains leave from Erkrath and we cannot get there. Adieu, my Lieb.”
One evening, when I was on guard duty, a Yugoslav farm hand stopped and started a conversation. He told me where he came from, and that he had been working on one village farm for all his time as a prisoner of war. He asked me where I was from. I told him. He made a sad face. “Düsseldorf surrendered twelve days ago, didn’t you know?” I said, “No, that can’t be. Who told you?”
“The BBC reported it,” he said.
I showed him the letter stamped March 12. So the BBC lied. Everybody lied. But why had American troops stopped their advance opposite Düsseldorf and not taken the city? Or had they by now? For my parents that would mean the war was over.
On March 25 the order came to move out. On a rainy day with low hanging clouds we walked west-southwest. We walked in full combat harnesses. We carried our individual rifle or Sturmgewehr, ammo, and hand grenades. Each of us also carried extra belts of rounds slung around the neck and metal boxes with ammo for the MG 42s. Every third or fourth kid also carried a Panzerfaust. We wore our canvas sheets as ponchos. Under
the ponchos the gas mask box was on our back. To the belt were attached side arm, ammo pouches, a short spade, canvas food bag, and canvas-covered water bottle. We wore our ski cap-like hats and had our helmet attached to our food bag.
We walked in single file by squad. The MG gunner followed behind the squad leader. Behind the gunner came the guy with the reserve barrels for the MG along with his own weapon. 1st Company was in the lead, followed by 2nd and 3rd companies. We walked in a staggered formation, one squad on the left hand side of the road above the ditch, the next squad on the right hand side, and so on. We kept the road free for military vehicles going in both directions.
We were lucky that day. The bad weather prevented the fighter-bombers from flying sorties in our area. Once we stopped on the road to eat our rations. They consisted of the hard, dark bread baked for the military (Kommiss-Brot) and a sausage of unknown components we called Timoshenko. The word Timoshenko was meant as analogy, referring to a relationship between this Soviet general’s known merciless exploitation of his soldier in battle and a sausage that might contain a component other than of animal origin. Anyway, the term was very widely used. We sat and cut slices of bread and covered them with Timoshenko.
We bivouaked for the night outside the town of Haltern, after a walk of 45 kilometers. We took quarters on farms where supplies reached us with hot food, and cold rations for the next days. All night long we heard sporadic artillery fire from the front to the west. Our squad corporal told us that American troops had crossed the Rhine north of Dinslaken on March 23, that the 116th Panzer Division had fought a tank battle with American armor and was slowly withdrawing east. He added that we were to reinforce the grenadiers of the 116th.
Moving In. In continuing bad weather the next morning we marched on Dorsten, eighteen kilometers to the southwest. There was quite a bit of traffic on the road, trucks, more trucks, a few self-propelled guns (Marder IIIs), and Red Cross cars. Getting closer to Dorsten we twice passed permanent anti-aircraft batteries, one of 10.5 caliber, the other, good old 8.8. We also saw Heer batteries of field guns under camouflage netting.
As we trudged on, once in a while one of our squads started singing, and their songs were picked up by other squads and platoons. Our songs were, “Ja, die Tochter der Navajo…” (“Yeah, the daughter of the Navajos… “) – not exactly a traditional German marching song. Or, “Auf der Heide blüht ein kleines Blümelein…” (“On the heath there blossoms a little flower…”). We sang out of defiance, I guess. Finally, the singing died away and we walked in silence.
What were we thinking? I don’t remember. We had no illusions. We did not expect to come out alive unless something miraculous happened. One kid in the next squad, an ex-Flakhelfer, actually repeated the Latin text of the epigram the gladiators spoke after entering the arena, “Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant” – “Greetings Caesar, those who are about to die salute you.”
It revealed what was going on inside us. Before us was only an end, not a salvation. But we would do what we had learned, and we would release, violently, the turmoil, anger, and frustration penned up inside us.
We saw the smoking ruins of Dorsten from a distance. We learned that the RAF had attacked the city in a daytime raid on Wednesday, March 22, four days earlier. It had been one of many attacks on the medieval town, but this one destroyed what had been left. Hundreds of people were working in the rubble, perhaps trying to rescue some who were buried alive. We marched on in silence. All of us had witnessed similar scenes many times over. Still, this hardly served to endear to us the Allied soldiers we were certain to meet soon. An old man came out and wished us good luck. We asked about fighter-bombers. Yes, he said, they come almost every day, but two days earlier seven had been shot down by light Flak over Marl, a few kilometers to the southeast. Perhaps he exaggerated, but we were glad to hear it.
Farther on, within sight of Kirchhellen, a small town with tightly clustered houses around a church with a high steeple, we passed through a large, open area with fields on both sides of the road. When the leading platoon of our company was perhaps a kilometer away from the town, a low-flying American spotter plane appeared suddenly out of the dreary sky and circled over the battalion. A few of our MGs cut loose but the plane ducked and went away. Our sergeant-major ran between the platoons and shouted for us to hurry to the town. We ran, the other companies following. It did not take long until the first artillery shells exploded in the fields around us. Most by far burst there, but a few hit the road.
Coming under heavy artillery fire for the first time is one of the most haunting experiences of my life. Many years later, after leaving a girlfriend’s house late one evening, I walked at the foot of a brush-covered slope as a party went on above. People must have started to light fireworks. I heard the unmistakable whine of a projectile coming down and threw myself in the dirt for cover. I was wearing my finest suit. As I lay there, I felt like a fool, but my brain had remembered.
That late morning before Kirchhellen is deeply embedded in my memory. We made it into town through the crashing salvoes of enemy shells. We left some of our dead and wounded on the road, our sergeant-major among them. While the barrage continued behind us we went through empty streets. I remember a dead lieutenant lying on his back, both forearms upright, as if reaching for heaven. Our major and two officers stood by the staff car and watched us pass. It was the last time I saw them. A little farther west of town, on a low rise, we dug in on fields on both sides of a road leading into Kirchhellen from the west, 1st Company in the center, 2nd Company to the left, 3rd Company to the right.
An eerie silence fell over us while we were digging. The spotter plane returned. Somewhere from the west of us came the rattle of a Vierling 2cm gun I knew so well. The plane made a quick dive and escaped. Artillery fire opened up on our position. We continued to dig furiously, two-man foxholes, while we were being pounded. Screams. Casualties. My buddy, Ulli, stronger than I, did most of the digging while I lay flat on the ground.
The shelling lasted perhaps half an hour before it stopped. Wounded were carried back. We looked around. From the holes of my platoon we could not see the positions of 3rd Company to the north, nor anything of 2nd Company to the south. They were hidden by patches of brush and trees, and in the south by a rise of ground. Two hundred meters west of us and a little to the left of our platoon was a small farmhouse. In the distance, perhaps 400 meters away, lay the empty revetments of a heavy Flak battery that had been withdrawn a week before. Behind the revetments were a few widely spaced farm buildings. By the road to the right of us sat a disabled Panther tank, one of its tracks blown.
From the farms in the distance we heard the familiar sawing sounds of an MG 42. Silence again. After a while a squad of grenadiers walked casually across the field in single file, passed through south of us, and vanished. Once more the rattle of the Vierling. The sound of tank tracks. A Wirbelwind (a Vierling mounted on a Panzer IV chassis) emerged in the distance and rolled toward us. It swung by the two-man holes of our platoon and stopped. The tank carried on the front the Windhund (Greyhound) markings of the 116th Panzer Division. A few of us walked up to it. Veteran soldiers in heavy overcoats manned the tank. We stood together and lit cigarettes. I looked at the men with envy. How I would have loved to be the gunner on that tank. We talked a little. They mounted and raised their hands and rolled away. Now we were the frontline.
Afternoon, Evening. Nothing happened for a while. We heard the rumble of artillery fire to the north and south of us, but nothing was directed against us. In late afternoon a sergeant saw through binoculars some movement around the Flak revetments and the farms beyond. Perhaps he reported it by radio or a German artillery observer spied it from the Kirchhellen church tower. German artillery let loose and pounded the revetments and the farms. We thought the fire was pretty accurate. It lasted for perhaps ten minutes and left the farmhouses in flames. No further movement was seen for a while. But from the shelter of the revetments a couple of .50 caliber m
achine-guns sent streams of bullets into our position. I was afraid they might be mounted on Sherman tanks. Tanks were our major fear. We sat in our foxholes and endured the punishment. Ulli chewed a piece of bread from our rations. I was too tense to eat.
After a while the machine-gun fire died down. Perhaps they had run out of ammunition. We spied over the rim of our hole. We saw nothing. Dark came. We sat on the bottom of the pit. And then a single rifle shot came from our right. We stood up and looked. We saw many tiny figures running toward us at an angle in front of the burning farms. We could clearly see the men against the fires behind them. Flares went up. All along our line MGs hammered and rifles cracked. Because of the distance our rifles probably did little damage if any, but the MGs did. And then our artillery got into it and sent a barrage in to the attack. The assault faltered quickly.
We were grim, tired, mentally stressed. We felt no satisfaction. Some of those on the other side had died and been wounded. None of us had been hurt during the last 30 minutes. But this was not over yet. This would go on.
Second Day. We dozed the night away in our holes. Artillery exchanges took place to the south and north of us. Before our line everything was quiet. We never saw our company lieutenant. Was he dead, or where was he? We would have liked a friendly word, something reassuring. First light came and we noticed that the field by the revetments in front of the smoldering farms had been cleared of bodies. The ground was cratered but empty. Where was the enemy?
Around midday we suddenly heard the terrible sound of tank tracks to the west and northwest, grinding motors. Hulks of Sherman tanks, colored olive drab, came on the road and over the open field to our right. Many. What should we do? The Shermans rolled on. An explosion close by. The Panther we had believed finished had swung its turret and started to shoot with his big gun. The first Sherman blew up with a tremendous explosion. More Shermans shook violently from the impact of armor piercing shells. They hit with a loud clang. We watched as the Panther shot up a dozen Shermans and the rest pulled back. We were jubilant. Burning tanks everywhere. Ammunition exploded. German artillery hit the road and the farms again.
Flakhelfer to Grenadier: Memoir of a Boy Soldier, 1943-1945 Page 17