For a few days Oberleutnant Gräbsch took over command of the staff. He was an extremely ambitious, impersonal and unfriendly man in his early thirties. By profession he was an optician from Beuthen. When he left, I took over command of the staff.
At that time an armoured train used to travel on the railway line near the State farm. It was said to have been captured from the Russians in the 1941 advance. Certainly, I had no idea how that train was adjusted to run on European gauge tracks. It was equipped with German anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, and it was interesting to inspect it. But it was no place to be for an infantryman. We did not feel at all happy in such a steel coffin. We preferred a trench in the womb of Mother Earth.
The front was on the move again. We knew that because the roads in our sector began to fill with baggage-trains. The baggage troops were supposed to carry in their vehicles only things that were important for the war effort, such as ammunition, food, and fodder. But I saw a lot of other things that the ‘high-ups’ were still bringing with them. There was upholstery on lorries with women sitting on top. Their ‘lordships’ could make themselves really comfortable again at their next location. They had everything you need, was man braucht, as the song goes.
For a long time there had been much air activity. Enemy bombers, fighters, and reconnaissance aircraft were hampered by a few aircraft of our Luftwaffe. It was said that Novotny, the fighter pilot, my fellow-countryman from Vienna, was in action in that area. If it was he, then on that day I saw three aircraft shot down by him. It was the day on which we left our cottage in Lyadi. Schenia and her mother, the warm-hearted, artless woman, had tears in their eyes when we said farewell.
The withdrawal of the front pushed my trench construction staff ahead of it. In the villages there began a fight for quarters. Sometimes I had trouble in claiming a room just for my staff activities. I could find no other way of doing it than to scatter maps over the entire floor of the room in order to distinguish the importance of our work from that of the various baggage units. Only when up against a main dressing station, the place where a regiment’s wounded were treated, did I, quite rightly, have to give way. But I was more than a match for other lines of communications units in asserting our importance to the fighting troops. The people from the bakery, workshop and other companies could sleep outside in the fine summer weather or, if it rained, put up tents. But I could not have my trench diagrams prepared in the rain.
Line by line, trench by trench, I laid them out. Our civilians had to almost double their daily output. One officer after the other was taken away from the trench construction staff and went back up the line. I was then the specialist for observation positions and artillery gun positions. Often I only had time, as I stood in the vehicle, to ‘draw’ the line of the trench, using the wheel tracks. The trench was then dug out following in my track. My ‘eye’ for the terrain had become so sharp that even with such provisional procedures there were never any ‘blind corners’.
The roads that I encountered on my journeys around the terrain were the routes of retreats, with all the signs of retreat. Abandoned vehicles, carts with broken wheels, destroyed equipment, bomb craters, shrapnel and many dead horses lined them. There were horses with bloated bellies and glassy eyes and their cadavers spreading a pestilential stench. In Russia, 2.7 million horses were deployed by the German Wehrmacht. Of those, 1.7 million fell victim to the war. They too we considered to be our comrades. Many of us were cut to the heart when a horse was wounded and, gripped with deadly fear, it faced the bullet that would put it out of its misery.
From then on, each day I expected an order dissolving the trench construction staff. Everything was, in a way, flowing to the rear. Land and people seemed to be on the move. The front, the lines of communication, and parts of the Russian civilian population were flooding back. Other civilians were setting off eastwards again. Evidently they wanted to walk through the lines, or take cover and let the retreat pass them by. When a couple of women from the Baubataillon wanted to stow away, the Musikfeldwebel fired a couple of times into the air, whereupon the Mankas hastily turned round and told their ‘guardians’ they were sorry.
6
Autumn/Winter 1943: Company commander, the Russian offensive, wounds
On 20 September the order finally came dissolving the Stellungsbaustab. What was left of it went back to their units, and the Baubataillon set off again westwards. On the way to the front, at the Division and at the regiment, I heard news. Losses had been heavy. Oberstleutnant Nowak had taken over command of a regiment in another sector. Ours was under the command of a newly arrived Oberstleutnant Dorn, a Rhinelander. Hauptmann Krause, previously commander of the 11th Company, had taken over command of 3rd Battalion. Nowak had called him and Hauptmann Hentschel, who both held the German Cross in Gold, the Korsettstangen des Bataillons, the battalion’s ‘corset stays’. I took over command of my 10th Company, in which in the summer I had been a platoon leader. But there were only a couple of men left from that time. Hauptmann Hentschel had been killed in action, Oberfeldwebel Palige and the grim Obergefreiter Grimmig had been wounded. Even my ‘glowing eyes’, Hauptmann Müller, was to meet a hero’s death in his ‘splendid Orlog’, as he put it. More than the other pieces of Job’s comfort, however, I was saddened by the news of the death of Walter Henschel, who was killed in action on 5 September.
How proud Walter was, when in summer 1942, after his probation at the front he was the only one of us to go back home with the Iron Cross! The EK had compensated him for a great deal of disadvantage and injustice. He had put up with much during his time as a recruit, by laughing and clenching his teeth. He was not a good looking chap, but was of small stature, and always held one shoulder and his head somewhat crooked. He had a round face with prominent cheekbones and acne. What most caused him to be made fun of, were his large sticking-out ears. ‘Walter, lay down your ears’, or ‘Henschel, just see that you keep your glider’s wings under your steel helmet’, joshed his comrades and instructors. From exaggerated ‘snappishness’ he spoke quickly and indistinctly. That way of speaking sometimes degenerated into mumbling, and that brought him further reproval.
With such physical characteristics he was bound to create a negative impression, which as a rule was bad news for any soldier. That was the case with Walter. He attracted the jokes of his comrades and the lightning bolts of the instructors. But at the same time he was the best lightning conductor in diverting them from us. The high point of the harassment, which he bore with apparent calm, happened one Sunday. Since his uniform had not been in order, from reveille onwards he had to report every quarter of an hour to the Unteroffizier vom Dienst, i.e. the duty NCO, alternately in marching kit, in walking-out uniform, and in sports kit. At the time we gave him all the support we could, helped him change and distracted him so that he did not burst into tears. Then, after lunch, the Leutnant relented and let him off the remaining parades. But Walter, even without our moral support, would certainly not have come to tears. He did not feel himself that he was being harassed, just as we others would not have felt harassed if it had happened to us. He bore unpleasant things because it was part of the job.