One night the comforting petroleum lamp in my bunker could have caused a disaster. A platoon runner had inadvertently bumped into it and knocked it over. The overflowing petrol was soon caught by the flame, which spread out over the little table. We had trouble getting the boxes full of ammunition safely out of the bunker, including the box that served me as a pillow, while at the same time extinguishing the fire. Unfortunately my fountain pen, a confirmation present, fell victim to the flames.
On the night of 23/24 June the battalion was unexpectedly relieved by a battalion from 461 and moved into the Nemers sector. The Division was shifted a battalion width to the right, with us thus becoming the right-hand linking battalion. The march of only 10km did everyone good. To be moving, despite the pack and large amount of ammunition that had to be carried, was a refreshing change. The new sector was excellently constructed. The bunkers were deep in the ground and were covered with roofs of thick beams. There were many machine-gun and rifle positions, all correctly placed. The trench was as deep as a man’s height. Only the barbed wire obstacles were incomplete. A road, overgrown with grass, to the remnants of the village of Nemers passed through the main line of resistance in the middle of the company sector. In the middle of my platoon sector was a 50 metre wide area of woodland, with the trench at the forward edge. Tall spruce trees, together with lower undergrowth and patches of grass in between, made the landscape look more like an English park, than something you would have suspected to be in the heart of Russia.
The disadvantage of the sector was a right-angled field, beginning 50 metres in front of the trench. It then extended at that width some 200 metres towards the enemy. On the farther edge of the right angle there used to be sentry outposts, but they were withdrawn because at night they were too much at risk. Whole companies could have slipped into the brush. For that reason, every night, reconnaissance patrols had to go out to check the area.
One night, when I had once again gone round the field, I ascertained that the Russians had settled themselves in the foxholes of our earlier outposts. As we reached our barbed wire on the way back, the Russians mounted a machine-gun attack on the passage through the minefield and through the barbed wire. Evidently they had been observing us slipping through the wire, for the heavy machine-guns, which they must have fixed on the target during the daytime, fired with pinpoint accuracy. We were not able to press ourselves close enough to the ground until the attack was at last over. After calm had returned and we had taken a long jump into the trenches, the runner Grimmig said that it would have been the right time to get a Heimatschuss by raising your hand. He had missed the chance yet again! Grimmig was a Gerhard Hauptmann-type figure who actually did have a grim expression, but was full of native wit, goodness, loyalty and courage. The humorous talk of a Heimatschuss was a manifestation of the so-called innerer Schweinehund. The Prussian Army creation was so splendid because it had such insight into the character of even the simplest man.
My kind Aunt Lotte sent me a whole lot of literature in small Feldpost editions. Apparently, hovering in front of her eyes were pictures of the trench romanticism of the First World War, the ‘good fathers with their front-line beards’, giving themselves to edifying reading by the flicker of a Hindenburg lantern. So as not to upset her, I thanked her effusively, but sent the little books straight home. Certainly, I would have had time for reading, but I did not have the necessary calm. The impressions of life at the front were still too new and too various, and life in the trenches, even in trench warfare, were too exciting for me to be able to immerse myself in reading. Much time was taken up in writing. There was Mother who formed the central core of the family, and Father in France. Rudi it is true, was still at home, but I wrote separately to tell him things that I could not, nor would not, write to Mother, so as not to worry her. But there were also friends and finally the girl. My affection was then fixed upon the Skorpil-Mädi. However, she had soon turned her affections away from me, again, even though I still carried a candle for her.
I shall give a short account of the Skorpil family, with whose son Erhard I went to school. Erhard and his elder brother Hannibal were both killed in action with the Waffen-SS. The husband of the eldest daughter was an Oberleutnant in the Stockerau cavalry. In 1941, he was wounded and fell into the hands of the Russians and murdered in an atrocious way. It became known through his comrades and the whole town knew of it. All five Skorpil children were good-looking. Elfriede, the youngest, was blonde and blue-eyed like the others, and with her long, thick hair was the picture of feminine grace. She was artistic, wrote calligraphy, and played the violin. At that time she did not know whether she should go to the academy of music or the academy of art. She later became a painter.
During our nightly work on the barbed wire we suffered many casualties from mortar fire. We worked on setting up spanische Reiter and trip wires. Accelerated completion of the work had been ordered because of the expected enemy summer offensive. We also had to provide greater security against assault and the capture of troops. The word was that specially trained Russians had been recently creeping through the lines to capture prisoners alive. At least ten men had to work at the same time at any one place, it was said. If not the enemy would grab one or other of them as they were stretching the wire.
The roof of my bunker, with its three layers of beams 1.2 metres thick in total, gave enough protection to be able to sleep in peace. A cannon stove, a nailed-together little table and two birch-wood stools completed the ‘day room’. Behind a stretched piece of thin sacking were the bunks. The current state of trench technology was also displayed in the construction of the wooden beds. As well as the usual planks which had the advantage that you lay level, there was also the wire bed which bore some similarity to a hammock. Particularly nice was my bed of young birch trunks, which dipped way under my weight and feathered like a mattress. Sometimes, when I lay down to sleep after dawn had broken, I even allowed myself the luxury of taking my boots off in order to enjoy my feathery bed even more.
Trench culture also flowered in other ways. On the table in front of the bunker window, situated on the back wall of the bunker, one and a half metres underground, in front of a light shaft half a metre square, ‘Mädi’s’ picture was resplendent. A ‘specialist’ had coloured it by hand, mounted it in a birch frame and covered it with cellophane instead of glass. Nickel, the platoon medic, gave me a home-made watch-hanger. It consisted of a star shell cartridge, filed off flat on the floor, the edges of which had been made jagged and bent round the photograph.
But from time to time the quiet life in the bunker was interrupted. Once the Russians must have seen smoke. They fired exactly 75 shots from a Ratschbum on to the bunker. The shots were all on target. Two of them scored direct hits on the bunker, but luckily did not hurt us.
The Nemers position had the advantage that you could get from the rear up to the most forward trenches without being seen by the enemy. Thanks to that, a warm lunch was actually able to be brought forward at lunchtime. But the Russians must have got wind of the time when food was distributed. On two days in succession they ‘signalled’ with pinpoint accuracy with a mortar. The lunchtime had actually been put back an hour, from 12.30pm to 1.30pm. While the soup was pouring into the dishes, up above there was the ‘glug’ of the mortar firing: ‘Plop, plop, plup, gluck’. For the men who had brought the food, who had already had their portions, the interruption was doubly unpleasant, because with the full canteens in their hands they were additionally hindered in taking cover. If they had spilled any food, they would have had a rough welcome from their comrades.