Then we had an inner defensive ring of connecting trenches between the houses over a distance of about 700 metres, and here in the middle I established my command post. We were on an elevation and about 200 metres east of us the land dropped steeply eastwards towards the Oder. The railway line and station lay beneath us in a cutting running across our front. Küstriner Strasse, as Reichsstrasse 1 here was called, led in a straight line away from the bridge over the railway and past a waterworks across the Oder marshes to Küstrin.
My task was to prepare both these objects, the bridge and the waterworks, for demolition, and to blow them should there be a threat of a breakthrough by Russian tanks. Set back a bit in the entrance to the town, we built an anti-tank barrier and placed two anti-tank guns behind it.
I divided the mortar platoon into two sections and deployed them to cover the eastern and northeastern exit roads. On the slopes along and in front of the railway cutting in our sector were six or eight 88 mm anti-aircraft guns dug in in the anti-tank role. The anti-aircraft gunners gave us an impression of great confidence.
The Luftwaffe were very active on 15 April. No doubt as an adjunct to reconnaissance for the SS unit that had broken out, they flew continuous attacks with so-called ‘pick-a-back’ units, i.e. a fighter aircraft mounted over the airframe of a worn-out Junkers 88 packed with explosives, and releasing it over the target in the enemy lines.[25] Each time there was a tremendous explosion and a gigantic fireball. Each hit was a source of great satisfaction to us.
That these were only drops in the ocean, we could not have believed at that time. Our time was filled with preparatory measures for defence, expecting a major Russian attack at any moment.
At 0300 hours on the morning of 16 April 1945, forty thousand guns opened fire simultaneously. It seemed as if the dawn was suddenly upon us, then vanished again. The whole Oder valley bed shook. In the bridgehead it was as light as day. The hurricane of fire reached out to the Seelow Heights. It seemed as if the earth was reaching up into the sky like a dense wall. Everything around us started dancing, rattling about. Whatever was not securely fastened down fell from the shelves and cupboards. Pictures fell off the walls and crashed to the floor. Glass splinters jumped out of window frames. We were soon covered in sand, dirt and glass splinters. None of us had experienced anything like it before, and would not have believed it possible. There was no escape. The greatest concentration of artillery fire in history was directed immediately in front of us. We had the impression that every square yard of earth would be ploughed up. After two or three hours the fire was suddenly lifted. Cautiously we risked a peep over the Heights down into the Oderbruch, and what we saw made the blood run cold. As far as we could see in the grey light of dawn came a single wave of heavy tanks. The air was filled with the noise of tank engines and the rattling of tank tracks. As the first row came closer we saw behind them another, and then hordes of running infantry.
The first shells had already been hurtling past over our heads for several minutes. With their barrels fully depressed the anti-aircraft guns dug in on the ridge along the chain of hills directed their murderous fire on the Soviets. Tank after tank went up in flames, the infantry sitting on them being swept off. The survivors charged on with piercing cries. The Luftwaffe gun crews were firing into the packs of Red soldiers and the attack began to collapse in front of our eyes. Several T-34s had broken through and were now being knocked out by our troops as they tried to roll up the slope of Reichsstrasse 1 into Seelow. As it became full light, the attack was beaten back with heavy losses for the Soviets.
Now we were in a hurry to prepare for the next Russian attack. Our foremost positions were evacuated and the survivors of our regiment withdrew as quickly as possible to the top of the hill. This had to be done without the enemy seeing in order to surprise him in the next assault. This was successful. Under my direction the waterworks and the road bridge over the railway were blown up, both demolitions going smoothly.
During the course of the morning the Russians increased their artillery support of the land battle with heavy bombers and ground-attack aircraft. They were feeling out our positions on the Heights. All day long we formed a catchment line for stragglers from our forward lines.
About midday a sudden, heavy artillery barrage fell on our positions on the Heights, lasting about thirty minutes and hitting us hard. It was indescribable. Immediately after the bombardment came a Russian attack, this time directly on my company’s positions. A bigger breakthrough could only be prevented by considerable sacrifice on our side. The situation was catastrophic for me. Every fifth man in my company was either killed, missing or wounded, including Staff Sergeant Kühlkamp with 18 men.
About 1800 hours contact with my No.1 Platoon on the south side of Küstriner Strasse was lost. With dusk the Ivans secured the cottages on either side of the street up to our anti-tank barrier.
Then there was another incident on the left-hand side of our sector opposite the railway station. Here I came across a Waffen-SS staff sergeant with some other stragglers that had originally belonged to the Küstrin garrison and were now already in their fourth day of combat since the break-out. They were coming out of the defile that led toward us from the railway station from the northeast and reported that the station was swarming with Russians. This was only 120 metres directly in front of us.
The Waffen-SS men looked completely exhausted, both physically and mentally, and I had to force them at gunpoint to make a stand and accept my orders. I put them on my left flank, and was delighted to be able to make up my losses with these combat-experienced soldiers. Unfortunately, in the haste and excitement of the moment, I did not take down their names and so could not be surprised next morning when I found that they were no longer there. It was if the earth had swallowed them up, leaving a gap in positions that was to prove fateful next day.
Then back to Küstriner Strasse at about 2100 hours. How had the connection to my No. 1 Platoon been lost? I set off with my company sergeant major. We crawled up to the main road then darted across to the side wall of the building opposite. Here we recovered our breath and listened for the reaction to our move. To our horror, we could hear Russian voices in the building where we were standing. Suddenly a Russian hand grenade landed right at my feet. I instinctively kicked it away, and we ran off into the back garden. Following the explosion of the hand grenade, there was a burst of sub-machine gun fire behind us. The nature of the terrain and darkness had protected us. Even using a flare, Ivan could not see us.
A few metres further on we were challenged by our own sentries. There was great astonishment on the faces of our comrades, who were expecting the Russians and not us from this direction. No. 1 Platoon was in good fighting order. The men had blown up the windmill in front of their positions to give a better field of fire. I joined with Second Lieutenant Rebischke in the forcible clearance of the cottages on Küstriner Strasse, which lasted until daybreak. This went quicker than expected, the Russians pulling back without serious resistance.
Shortly after midnight, Captain Rosenke of the 1st Battalion, Panzergrenadier Regiment 76, appeared with the news that we were now directly under his command. From then on we would be called Combat Group ‘Rosenke’ on the orders of the regiment.
In the early hours of 17 April I had things relatively under control once more. Contact on either flank was established, the last fighting strength of my company was about eighty soldiers, and I could pass this figure on to my superiors. What would the day bring us now? Consideration had to be given to the state of our troops, most of whom had now been in action for three or four days. The losses in men and weapons could no longer be made good. It was impossible to relieve our men.
Dawn brought yet another blast of artillery fire, which was supplemented and supported by wave after wave of bombing attacks by heavy aircraft. It was horrific. I was at my command post in the cellar of the same house. At one point there was a tremendous explosion, and the whole building rose and settled down aga
in a little tilted to one side. We found a man-sized hole in the exterior wall opposite, and outside a crater deep enough to have taken the whole house before being levelled off. One petty officer went crazy, started foaming at the mouth, and had to be forcibly restrained.
The artillery fire ceased abruptly. Now the moment had come to get out of the house and occupy our positions. Our main point of aim was toward Küstriner Strasse. The sounds of combat led me to make my way to the northern part of the company sector, which had been quiet until then. Something was wrong here. I was accompanied by our petty officer, Sergeant Lohmann, Lance Corporal Bayers and Corporal Liefke. To our surprise, the positions, partly demolished by artillery fire, were empty. As already mentioned, the Waffen-SS men had vanished. Our No. 3 Platoon no longer existed; Staff Sergeant Kühlkamp had fallen the day before. Our northern flank was open and contact with our neighbouring unit, a Volkssturm company, could not be established. If I was going to save anything, I would have to act fast. Lohmann, Bayers and Liefke were tasked by me to maintain visual contact with Küstriner Strasse, to hold the position and to fall back on the centre of Seelow if necessary, where we could meet up again. I would go with our petty officer and ask our Commanding Officer for the reserve platoon and bring them to the rendezvous.
Now everything seemed to move at the double. Our goal was the battalion command post at the manor farm. Our route took us via the street leading in from Gusow, which, to our surprise, was under direct fire. Then we recognised some T-34s close by and coming toward us. I had not expected to be attacked from the north so soon. I still remember a long white wall about two metres high leading past the knacker’s yard, which gave us cover from fire from the north.
The Russians must have seen us, for the wall received a broadside from the barrels of several tank guns and disintegrated briefly in smoke as soon as I had passed. Our sympathetic petty officer immediately behind me was buried by the wall and disappeared in the smoke. I felt powerless, as if hypnotised, and rushed across Reichsstrasse 1 into the gateway of the manor farm.
The yard was about a hundred metres square and surrounded by barns, stalls and storehouses with loading ramps. Our battalion command post was in the cellar of a storehouse and reached via the loading ramp through a large sliding door. I reached the top of the steps out of breath and called down: ‘Everyone outside, the Russians are here!’ The faces that I saw were apathetic, virtually defeated. The command post as such had already been evacuated, and the soldiers remaining there were seeking shelter and cover from the bombardment. One of the soldiers told me that our Commanding Officer, Colonel Stammerjohn, was dead. This event had caused something of a sensation, paralysing the leadership for a while. His body had already been sent back.
The soldiers came back to life when Sergeant Stein aimed a shot at a Soviet officer as they were leaving the storehouse through the sliding door. Two T-34s were standing in the yard with their engines running and their gun barrels aimed in our direction. The man on the tank with a red band on his hat fell, apparently hit. The shock caused by the Russian presence spread among the men emerging from the building along the ramp. The ensuing unequal exchange of fire caused panic among us, so that my original intention to lead the men back to the centre of town to redeploy them was forcibly abandoned. Meanwhile a third tank entered the yard, and there being no anti-tank weapon ready to hand, the men disappeared. Only Sergeant Stein remained beside me. We went back behind the building to the railway siding where I had arrived seventeen days previously.
There I found three men of my company headquarters, who, knowing what I had intended, and having experienced the collapse of the remains of the company on Küstriner Strasse, had worked their way back through the town to the manor farm. It was a real joy to see them again. They brought news of the wounding of Lieutenant Ludwig.
We moved about 200 metres further south to the Seelow-Diedersdorf railway line. Here our Captain Rosenke (or was it Captain von Wartenberg?) was lying on a mound observing the movement on the battlefield. In fact Seelow had been surrounded and cut off from the north, giving us the feeling that the stricken ship was sinking. From here we could see khaki-coloured figures enveloping and attacking the town. The sounds of combat rose sharply once more in the southern part of the town, and then all was quiet again.
I was given the task of occupying the heights in front of Diedersdorf. Lieutenant Schäfer, badly wounded in the lungs, was led past us by two soldiers on their way to the Main Dressing Station. I was able to speak to him and wish him a speedy recovery. So we pulled back in a sad column under cover of the railway embankment toward Diedersdorf, always with the feeling that Ivan was breathing down the back of our necks. On the next hill Lieutenant Diesing directed us to the so-called ‘Stein-Stellung’.[26] Here I came across a further eight men from my company, making thirteen men in all, the strongest company left in our combat team. Only one man in ten had survived the last 27 hours fit and well.
Late afternoon we received from Major Wandmaker, the new regimental commander, the collective order: ‘All 76th back to Diedersdorf!’
I remember the depression that came over us as we moved back defeated and exhausted through the countryside. The overwhelming might thrown against us had broken our backbone. Our regiment had ceased to exist as a regiment. It was the first time that I had experienced such a loss of self-confidence among our troops, as we recognised our powerlessness against this steamroller from the east. I was reminded of a line from our regimental song: ‘A Hanseatic regiment knows only victory – or death!’
Suddenly we found ourselves in an occupied anti-aircraft position. Two dug-in 88 mm guns, well camouflaged, thirty to fifty metres deep in the wood, with prepared avenues of fire. To our question: ‘What are you waiting here for? We are the last of the infantry – Ivan will be here in thirty minutes!’ came the answer: ‘We still have five armour-piercing shells left per gun, which will get us eight tanks and then allow us to blow up our guns with the last two – then we will come!’ About five to seven hundred metres further on the woods came to an end, and we arrived at our new positions another hundred metres on.
Here, every single soldier was personally briefed and given a specific combat task. In addition, Staff Sergeant Hellbrun was attached to me with several soldiers and we also got the support of three Jagdtigers from a Waffen-SS unit. In this connection, I must recall the unfortunate strength comparisons – what could three self-propelled guns do against the one hundred T-34 tanks we had had constantly in our view for the past two days? Despite the heavy losses we had inflicted on the Russians, reckoning on up to sixty or more shot-up and burning tanks per day, there were always new ones ready to come up against us. It was discouraging.[27]
At last, after two days, we were able to eat again. Everyone remained quietly in his corner. Shortly before dusk we suddenly heard the unpleasant howling sound of the anti-aircraft guns in front of us. This awakened a short and intense noise of gun fire and armour-piercing shells exploding at close range. As quickly as it had begun, the noise subsided again. How had it gone out there in front? To find out and re-establish contact with our anti-aircraft gunners, I sent a scout party through the woods. They reported back about ninety minutes later, with the news that there were seven burning T-34s in front of the woods opposite. A further twenty tanks had turned round and withdrawn out of firing range. Our anti-aircraft gunners were all fine and were calmly preparing their guns for demolition. That our men had not brought back the gunners with them immediately, or provided them with infantry fire cover until they could withdraw, proved to be a fatal tactical error next day.
For once we were not disturbed, the Russians also being quiet, and we assumed that nothing decisive would occur before sunrise. As I had been continuously on my feet for forty-five hours, I collapsed in my trench so exhausted that I slept like the dead. It was already light when I was cruelly awakened. I had slept through two heavy bombardments, so that my men thought I must have been fatally wounded. I had been s
o over-tired that even an artillery bombardment could not wake me. Harsh reality seized me once more.
All were in their firing positions, our nerves stretched to the limit. Suddenly we saw movement in the bushes at the edge of the woods. Figures emerged, and I could see how the Russians were preparing to feel their way forward. When they were about sixty to eighty metres away, I called out: ‘Fire at will!’
Our carbines and machine guns fired at the attackers. After our first or second burst of fire we heard German voices, ‘Comrades, don’t shoot, we are German!’
Immediately our weapons stopped firing. Since I had been asleep, I could not have known that our anti-aircraft gunners had not returned during the night. Between the attacking Russians we could now see some German helmets. For seconds there was a paralysing horror on our side.
Our fire resumed individually, but by now it was too late. The Russian artillery laid a barrage on the railway embankment behind us, as their infantry broke into our trenches. The picture that now plays in front of my eyes, still haunts me in my sleep. Although I had been a soldier for three and a half years, of which seventeen months had been in action with a front-line unit, I had never experienced anything like this, nor believed it possible. Men were fighting with clubs and knives just as in the Middle Ages.
‘I can’t take any more of this!’ I felt like shouting. When I stood up over the trench, a second of panic gripped me and I ran back to the wall of fire on the railway embankment. Subconsciously, I noticed that someone was following me. It must have been only seconds before we were about 50 metres from the railway embankment and crawling up it. Two terrifying explosions immediately behind us forced us against the embankment. Corporal Schröder asked me if I had been hit. Yes, a shot through the right lower leg and a hit in the left foot. For a moment I was unable to get up. Schröder himself must have been in the dead angle from the explosion, i.e. immediately next to it, and so was miraculously unwounded. He seized the initiative and quickly pulled me over the railway lines into cover on the far side.
With Our Backs to Berlin Page 13