Afterwards we met as often as Gisela could manage it after school. We went for walks together over the ‘Ring’, the former fortress wall, which had surrounded the town and which was a promenade walk luxuriantly overgrown with trees and bushes. Sometimes we went on our bicycles in the late afternoon, out into the May evening. We soon found a favourite spot, a bench at the edge of the woods to the west of the town, where the highway climbs uphill towards Burkersdorf. It was where the park disappeared into the forest and hills beneath the Riesengebirge. At our feet there lay the soft picture of the town, our dear town of Schweidnitz, with its towers and roofs lit by the rays of the setting sun.
Meanwhile, things moved on and the time of my departure for the front approached. During the past months it had become clear to me that I probably would not be satisfied with a career as an officer. If I were to stay in my chosen profession I would at least have to follow the career of a general staff officer. But to do that I would first have to become a Hauptmann. All that would take a long time. For the time being I had to go out to the front line again. I had had enough of the barracks, its many shirkers, and its defeatists.
I wanted to go ‘into the field, into freedom’. I was eager to experience again the camaraderie of the front, the unheard-of experience of community, for which every young man had an especial longing. Out there, and nowhere else, was where I had that experience. For better or for worse you belonged out there, together. Out there, things were right.
I had an additional determining factor. I had won the Iron Cross Second Class, the Infanteriesturmabzeichen, i.e. the infantry assault badge, in silver, and the Verwundetenabzeichen, i.e. the wound badge. But I did not have the coveted decoration of the Iron Cross First Class and a hoped for Nahkampfspange, i.e. the close combat clasp. Without those it appeared to me, you were not a ‘proper’ infantry officer. I had therefore voluntarily signed myself ‘kv’, i.e. fit again, which the medical officer would not have done. Even the fact that Gisela had suddenly come into my life had not been able to alter my decision.
I travelled home once more on the short leave that we received once a month. In my case, since the garrison was over 300 kilometres from my home town, it amounted to four days. I had found a way of making the most of every minute of those four days. I travelled at midnight from Schweidnitz and went with the Ostbahn to Vienna. Then I returned with the Nordwestbahn from Stockerau through Bohemia to Gorlitz, from there I arrived back on the same train I got on in Schweidnitz. On the evening of my departure some comrades and I had been drinking in the Hindenburghof. So I was fairly well oiled as I got on the train. In Kamenz in Silesia I got on the leave train from the front coming from Breslau to Vienna. I was exhausted and tipsy.
In the compartment I fell asleep and wakened with a shock when I heard the guard crying ‘Mittelwalde, Mittelwalde’. Thinking that I had got on the wrong train, I jumped out and asked for the train to Vienna. A Feldgendarme told me that I had just got off it. Back in the train at last I began to think of some way of overcoming my intoxication. I succeeded to a certain extent. When I arrived in Stockerau my school friend Walter Hackl welcomed me at the station. He had already been several days coming at home, on leave from the Afrika Korps. There was a great ‘hello’ and we looked up a few inns in succession and tippled heartily. Then exhaustion overcame me again and Walter finally delivered me home where Mother received me, laughing.
Once back in Schweidnitz I learnt that I was to go into the field with the next marching company. On 4 June, a Sunday, it was time to go. I had assembled the company and a general had inspected it. Purple and white lilac was in bloom, and I had given orders to plunder the bushes by the barracks hedge so that every man wore a flower on his chest. Led by the regimental band, we set off for the station. It was the only time in my entire career as a soldier that I was able to march with a full band. So we went through the Peterstrasse and across the town hall square to the station. I marched at the head of the company.
At a window of her apartment in the Peterstrasse stood Gisela. She came to the station. The company was already entrained, and we were able to speak for a while together. Not only for her but also for me, that farewell was hard. She gave me a book Wer Gottes Fahrt gewagt, ‘Who dares God’s journey’. It had pictures and histories from the house of Flex, at its centre Walter Flex, the poet of the Jugendbewegung or youth movement, who was killed in action in 1918. I stood with Gisela a little apart from the others. There was a fence between us. She was wearing a bright summer dress with a narrow waist. Gisela’s eyes shone moist and we kissed tenderly. To the strains of muss i denn the train began to move. Gisela’s face and figure became blurred to me. Soon I could only see the white speck of her dress and finally even that disappeared. The dedication that she had written in the book read: ‘For lonely hours in the field – from my heart – your Gisela’.
On 6 June we were sitting in the goods station at Lodz, which at that time was called Litzmannstadt. News reached us of the landing of Allied troops in France. Even if we ordinary Landser did not know anything of the wider picture, it was still clear to everyone that by then the war had entered into a decisive stage. However, that it could end with a German defeat was far from anyone’s thoughts. In the ‘travelling community’ of the goods wagon we were temporarily filled with a feeling of special belonging. Once we arrived out there the companionship of the train would be immediately torn apart and we would be assigned to many different units. But at that moment everyone felt the common experience of an unknown, even if distant, danger. After some excited commentary on the news it became quiet and one man hummed a tune. Then one became several and finally every one joined in the familiar old melody:
When the last verse rang out, the modest beginning had grown into a choir. It was impressive how many men knew the words for the second and third verses.
On 11 June we were at our destination. The journey had passed through Warsaw, Vilna, Dünaburg, Molodetschno and Polotzk, as far as a Vitebsk, and finished in Lowsha. The command post of the Division was located there. The allocation of men took place as expected. The Majority of the infantrymen joined the newly reformed third Grenadierregiment of the Division. By then it consisted of regiments 7, 461, and 472. I became Adjutant of the 2nd Battalion, which was commanded by Hauptmann Muller. ‘Pi’ Muller had been among the seven ‘seveners’ who had been convalescing in Freiwaldau. When he found out that I had come on that transport, he asked for me as adjutant. Our 252nd Infanteriedivision, the Eichenlaub or ‘Oak leaf’ Division, was the division located at the point of connection between army groups Centre and North. That meant particular danger, because a preferred target for attack was at those points of connection, where areas of command were separated.