The weeks passed quickly and in the middle of November we heard the great news that the course would finish on 16 December. The best group of students, to which I too belonged, would be promoted on 1 December to Fahnenjunker-Feldwebel. The majority of the candidates were handed out their uniform chits. My request to Rudi was to the effect that he should obtain a sword, an officer’s belt and a holster, because it looked as if there were not any in Dresden. In actual fact, a sword was never required. In any event, I would only have been able to wear it on very few occasions. My first officer’s uniform I had made by Uncle Rudolf’s tailor. He rejoiced in the cosy name of Trautvetter. For my overcoat and the second uniform I waited until my Christmas leave. I had them made at Splinar in the Theobaldgasse, by the tailor of the Steinbach family. The tunic was of better material, and the overcoat displayed all the skill of a Viennese Bohemian tailor.
Our instructor, Oberleutnant Maltzahn, professed himself to be very satisfied with us from the Ostmark. On the occasion of our promotion to Feldwebel he told us the notes he had made on our assessment. He found me, among other things, ‘very intelligent’. I had never before been praised in that way. It certainly said a lot for his judgement! He himself was of above average intelligence and culture, and in addition showed us a lot of what it means to live like an officer. Our promotion to Leutnant was to take place on 12 December. I announced that I would be arriving home on 16 December, a Wednesday. I asked Rudi to collect me, and I ordered a ‘celebration meal’, of whatever Mother wanted to rustle up. Before then, however, we had the trip to Berlin. There, in accordance with tradition, the Führer was to speak to us in the Sportpalast.
The entire War College marched from the Anhalt Station. We were divided into several groups and went by different routes. On one we passed through a quarter of Berlin which showed city slums that shocked us. The event took place in the Sportpalast. Several thousand young officers were assembled there. At first there was a long wait for Adolf Hitler. After some time it was announced that, in Hitler’s place, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring would speak to us. After another long wait, Göring came hurrying in. He gave the impression that he was under severe psychological pressure which the content of his address underscored. We later found out that it was on that very day that the tragedy of Stalingrad began to loom. It explained why Hitler had not come, and made it disconcertingly clear why Göring praised the death of the Spartans at Thermopylae under their king, Leonidas. ‘Wanderer, should you come to Sparta, tell them there that you have seen us lying dead as the law ordained’. The Reichsmarschall simply substituted the word ‘duty’ for the word ‘law’ and almost punched it at us. ‘As duty ordained, as duty ordained’. At the end of his address we were immediately marched off to the station and straight away began our return journey to Dresden.
It had been the previous day when the names of those who had been promoted were read out in the gym. It began with the members of Infanterieregiment 1 (Königsberg) and ended with those in the Gebirgsjägerregiment who were last in the numerical series. We from Regiment 7, in alphabetical order, were Henschel, Popovsky, and Scheiderbauer. We soon had our turn. Afterwards Wiggerl and I dozed off in a half-sleep of emotions of release and tiredness.
The night before, following an order given by our Leutnant Riedl, we had hoisted ‘the white flag’ on the chimney of the boiler house. To accomplish that, one of our bed sheets had to be brought along, we had to cobble together something to raise it, and the 20 metre high chimney had to be scaled. Since you could climb the chimney on iron rungs on its inside wall, it presented not too much difficulty, but nevertheless it required some courage. It was Popovsky who volunteered to take up the duties of the climbing party and not one of the Gebirgsjäger. It might be imagined that the task would fall more easily to them because of the arm of the service they were in. Oberleutnant Maltzahn was pleased that his group, the twelfth group in the third Inspektion, had carried out the task.
With my promotion to Leutnant I was then to a certain extent ‘grown-up’. I was not then nineteen and would not come of age for a long time. I had already been an Unteroffizier. But then I was capable of supporting myself and was in receipt of a salary with my own account at the Stockerau savings bank. At that time a Leutnant’s salary was 220 Reichsmarks per month. It was a considerable sum for a grammar-school boy, but also for a soldier who had to live only on his service pay and that meant from his additional front-line allowance. In any event, the freie Station was guaranteed. It guaranteed a barracks roof over your head, and military rations that were more or less adequate and digestible for a young stomach. As well as our salary we got a one-off ‘clothing payment’, the enormous amount of 750 Reichsmarks. My kind Aunt Lotte had given me an additional 50 Reichsmarks for my Equipierung, an expression she used from the old Imperial Army. In a letter to Mother she wrote about it and told her, quite touched, that I looked ‘like a young nobleman’. Father, with great seriousness, had written me the following:
…Now you have your own independent profession. This gives you the authority to make your own independent decisions in forming your future life. I most fervently wish you one thing, that it will always be given to you to make use of this freedom in a wise and appropriate way. A great deal is demanded of you for your age. I also hope just as fervently that in the future you may also not disdain the advice of your parents. Of course, the plans and thoughts of parents can also be wrong and we must leave it in the hands of God to whom, of all those involved, he grants the best thought. From my experience, however, I can tell you one thing, that in my life something has always gone awry whenever I forgot, from time to time, to pray regularly. May this never happen to you! Especially in these present times that will bring many serious dangers for you. Don’t forget to pray, and to pray for better days! Perhaps in some way you will have to go through again the whole process of choosing and preparing for a career. I do wish that you might be spared that. But God alone knows. My blessing and prayers will always be with you!
The Christmas leave passed off harmoniously, even if the atmosphere was really not Christmas-like. There was no snow on the ground. I had missed Father. He had been given a short period of special leave from his post because his brother, my Uncle Erich, had been killed in action, on 29 November, by Lake Ilmen in the Northern sector of the Russian front. Thus he was able to visit his brother’s widow, Anneliese. She was in Eisting, near Schwertberg, with her three small children, Theja, Harald, and Ute. He also visited his mother who lived in Hadersdorf-Weidlinggau.
I got angry about grumbling townspeople who were losing nothing and from whose families no-one had joined up, but who still grumbled about the situation. From my class Iwan Wagner, who was also an infantry Leutnant, as well as Erhard Hameter and Friedl Schiffmann, both Fähnriche in the Navy, were all on leave. With Friedl Schiffmann’s sister, Heidi, I struck up a fleeting and short-lived friendship. However, by the summer Herta had turned away from me. Admittedly, I visited the Henk house. When I was visiting one afternoon I left my officer’s cap, overcoat and dagger in the hall. That ‘con-man’ Ewald took possession of the uniform and had his photograph taken, dressed in it, in his father’s studio.