While I was running back over the level ground, the right-hand pocket of my tunic had been shot through. Even in retrospect, that discovery sent a jolt of horror through my limbs, because in this pocket I was carrying two ‘egg’ hand-grenades! A tank shell had lacerated the company commander’s breeches. A Feldwebel had had a grenade in his hand shot through by a bullet, luckily without it hitting the detonator.
The fire became heavier. It even compelled those who were tired to dig in hurriedly. The hollow at the edge of which we then found ourselves attracted the enemy mortar fire like a magnet. The strikes were good. For us, they were dangerously near. I was still standing in the open. Some 15 metres from me a shell hit a fully-occupied foxhole. A Gefreiter with blonde hair and a chalk-white face was somersaulted by the blast of the explosion some 5 or 6 metres out of the hole. All around the earth was spraying up with the shells exploding. There rang out the blood-curdling screams of a fatally-wounded man crying for his mother. I used to think that was an invention of fiction writers. After a while, in obviously unbearable agony, he looked at Bayer, and cried, ‘Herr Oberleutnant, shoot me!’ Bayer, at other times never at a loss for words, shrugged his shoulders helplessly and turned away without a word.
‘God Almighty, let it soon be evening’, I thought. Unsure, under the stress of being in the thick of events, and under cover in the hollow, I could see nothing of the enemy. In the immediate main line of resistance, 50 metres further forward, I would have been able to survey the ground. I would have seen them attacking and breaking through. I would have been able myself to take aim and fire. But there at the company command post, I was condemned to wait under gruelling fire unable to do anything.
Finally, the decisive attack was made. Three tanks of the types KV 1 and KV 2, the latter 56 tons in weight and armed with a 15cm howitzer, drove up the road and through the battalion’s front. The anti-aircraft guns were gone, the anti-tank unit long since lost. From in front there rang out Urraih. Then, our men were getting out of their trenches and retreating. They could no longer be stopped. The tanks had also overrun the field dressing station where a number of wounded were waiting to be transported away. The tanks then formed up some 200 metres behind the scattering remnants of the battalion. In a triangle on the elevated open ground, each one gave the other cover.
Beside the knocked-out scout car I noticed as I passed, the dead platoon commander of the 7th Company. A man took his pay book and broke off his identification tag. I could see no outward injury on the dead man. It must have been a tiny splinter in the head, or in the heart, that had brought his life to an end. While I was standing by the dead man, suddenly I could no longer see any of my own men. The air was ringing out again with Urraih, the whistling and bursting of the shells and infantry guns. Even the company commander was no longer to be seen. So I hurried after some Landser who were striving to get across a small hollow to a wood, evidently with the intention of getting around the tanks. I caught up with them, and we hurried together along the edge of the woodland to get past the firing monsters. After we had successfully got round them, we reached a river that had overflowed its banks. From somewhere or other bullets crackled in the water.
I began to wade and sank deeper and deeper. With one hand I held my machine-pistol over my head. In the deepest places I had to move as if swimming. Soon I felt the bottom under my feet. Again and again, probably from one of the tanks, a machine-gun spat fire at us. The fellow must be able to see us. What should I do now? Inexperienced as I was, I thought myself to be the only survivor of the company. The men with me belonged to another unit. We decided to look for the baggage-trains, which surely had to be in one of the neighbouring villages.
Night had fallen by the time we found them. The ‘sarge’ welcomed me. There was not one word of reproach. He knew what had happened. I had to make my report. I did so and was secretly ashamed that I had run to the baggage-village instead of looking for my comrades further forwards. The ‘sarge’ left me no time for that. He himself gave me fresh dry clothes and ordered me to sleep in late. The next day at noon I was to go forwards again with the food vehicle. Then he took me into a floor-boarded room in a Russian house, in which nine other scattered men were sleeping. I lay down with them, my haversack under my head, on the hard floor of the farm cottage.
On the morning of 16 August 1942 I awoke from a leaden sleep with the feeling that I had only just gone to sleep. Washing, shaving, the fresh clothes without lice, what a joy! Then I inspected the contents of my pockets. The letters were washed-out, the photographs stuck together and useless. But worse still, my pay book was similarly illegible. Some of my papers, among them my driving licence, were missing. I had just put them down in my gas mask case with my gas mask and then forgotten them when the CO gave the order to withdraw. During the previous days I had not dared to think of the imminent end of my probation at the front. But the fact that the order to return to my regiment came on that very morning was a new piece of good fortune. Then I only needed to report in up front. With that relieving certainty within me, I joined the food vehicle.
The Russians were taking a breather. The company was not even under fire. The command post was based in a house, not in a hole in the ground. The CO was pleased to see me when I reported, and immediately gave notice of departure. He looked weary, and had long stubble. He had once again had ‘uncanny luck’, he said. When he was standing under cover behind a hayrick, a tank shell came through the several metres of hay but was slowed down so much that only its head came out on the other side. There, it was finally brought to a halt by Bayer’s belt buckle. It gave him quite a fright, but nothing happened. It did not explode!
He wished me all the best for the journey home and sent his greetings to the regiment. Then I left. But however depressing the events of the last few days had been, and however much I was looking forward to getting to War College, it was not an easy thing for me to leave the company. It seemed to me undeserved that the Scheisse (I have to use the proper expression for the action!) should be at an end, for me of all people. Among many others, even our old friend Kräkler had been killed. The battalion of more than 500 men had shrunk to a fifth that size. The ‘Sixth’ then only numbered twenty-six men. With such thoughts in my mind I got in to the lorry travelling to the Division. As we were driving out of the baggage-village, rifle fire was cracking behind us into the morass of the road. The road was under enemy observation.
3
October 1942–January 1943: Training courses and promotion
The effects of the Upolosy adventure were with me for a long time. To Rudi I wrote that I had experienced ‘atrocious and terrible things’, but where need was greatest, ‘God’s help was closest’. Apart from a few tiny splinters in my hands, that today I can no longer remember, I told him that I had remained unscathed. Our chaps had said that the battles of the winter had not been as bad as those terrible days. The return from Gschatsk to St Avold took us eight days. I can remember several stops that lasted many hours, first in Vyazma then in Molodetschno and Dünaburg. Only from Warsaw were regular trains running, but we had to change trains many times. In Berlin we arrived at the Silesian station and had to go to the Zoo station. From there a train went to Metz. Our destination was St Avold, where we were given a few days’ leave.