The enemy knew that there it would be harder to re-establish connections once they had been broken than it would within a single area of command. The Russian summer offensive was imminent. We were greeted with that announcement. So for formation and training, for getting to know one’s way about, there only remained days, or at most weeks. On 15 June the Füsilier battalion under Major von Garn, deployed in the main line of resistance, had succeeded in shooting down a Russian reconnaissance aircraft. Its passengers had been general staff officers, who wanted to view from as close as possible the terrain over which their troops would attack.
The battalion was welded together ‘in a flash’, so to speak. The work as adjutant was exciting and reconciled me with the fact that for the time being I could not be with my Regiment 7. I was responsible for the preparation of battalion orders, correspondence and personnel matters. But above all, the fact that I was leader of the battalion staff with the orderly officer, the signals staff and the runners, was a new experience for me.
On 18 June an exercise involving the whole battalion took place, in which Hauptmann Muller and I participated on our horses. My Army-issue horse, the white horse Hans, was a wilful chap. It was difficult to keep him within the prescribed distance of half a horse’s length behind the commander’s horse. He had also well and truly stripped me of a waist belt against a wall. In order not to get trapped by my left leg, I had to jump off at the last moment. With that battalion exercise, my life as a ‘cavalryman’, so to speak, came to an end. From then on there was no more opportunity for riding. On 20 June the battalion was moved up to the village of Lowsha along the Vitebsk-Polozk railway line. Then there was no more doubt that the Russians would begin their offensive on 22 June, the third anniversary of the beginning of that campaign. On the evening of the 21st the commander, Hauptmann Muller, invited all his officers to celebrate the start of their new posts. For many, it would at the same time be a farewell.
I quote from the history of Grenadierregiment 7, by Romuald Bergner: ‘The most serious defeat ever inflicted on the German Wehrmacht in the Second World War began on 22 June 1944, as the Red Army began the battle in White Russia’. The fact that the beginning of the operation coincided with the third anniversary of Barbarossa was no coincidence. The date had been deliberately set by the Soviet high command. That reminder of Russia’s darkest hour was intended to inflame the passions of the soldiers of the Red Army and to inspire all the soldiers of the Red Army to give of their utmost. According to the final plan, Bagration, the Red Army was to begin large-scale offensives, following rapidly in succession, in six different sectors. That almost simultaneous large-scale offensive, in six widely separated locations, was intended to split the German defences, to splinter their forces, and to deny them the opportunity of deploying all available troops in a concerted effort to repulse the Soviet attacks.
The historian Andreas Hillgruber has shown that a direct causal connection exists between the collapse of Army Group Centre and the downfall of the Third Reich. On 22 June 1944 the Soviet general attack began against the front of Army Group Centre. In pincer operations the feste Platze of Vitebsk, Orsha, Mogilew, and Bobruisk were encircled. The mass of the Soviet offensive forces, however, struck out further westwards. The catastrophe took its course. In purely numerical terms it had almost twice the impact as that of Stalingrad. The operational effects were a great deal worse.
To the north of Vitebsk, where we were, the Soviets began their offensive in the early morning of 22 June. On a front extending 64 kilometres, the IX Army Corps with Corps Detachment D and the 252nd Infantry Division were conducting the defence. There, eight divisions of the Soviet 43rd Army attacked. To those were soon added the first division of the 6th Guards Army. It was intended to achieve a breakthrough some 25 kilometres wide. Along with the offensive divisions of the Red Army there rolled two armoured brigades into the focal-point of the breakthrough area. The two offensive wedges encountered the right-hand and central sectors of the 252nd Infantry Division. In the course of the night of 21 June and in the early hours of 22 June, the Russians pushed up nearer and nearer to our position. At 4am the enemy’s heavy barrage began and at 4.20am they attacked on a wide front. Breakthroughs were made in the sector of the 1st Battalion Grenadierregiment 7 and the Division’s Füsilier battalion.
As I recall, the hurricane broke at 3.05am, on the dot, just as it had in 1941. The fire was concentrated mainly on the main line of resistance. Only isolated heavy-calibre shells dropped in the village. We had long since left our quarters in houses, and were waiting in the cover trenches beside them. I had been woken by the crash of bursting shells after just an hour’s sleep. That action began for me with a thundering within my skull, weakened by schnapps and tiredness. Towards 5am the battalion received orders to move into the second line, that is, the trench that was planned for that purpose. It was good news, because as soon as the enemy attacked up front, we could expect the fire to be moved to the rear. Then it would be mostly the firing positions, villages, and roads, the position of which had been long established by enemy reconnaissance, that would be under fire.
We moved forward, the bombardment ahead of us and the impacts of heavy-calibre shells behind us. In the event, the Division was divided into two halves. Under its command remained Infanterieregiment 7, the divisional Füsilier battalion, and our 2nd Battalion 472. But of these, the 5th Company deployed on the left, the 1st Battalion, the regimental staff and the whole of Regiment 461 were pushed north-westwards. Even on the next day there was no news whatsoever of the 5th Company. In the meantime the second line had become the main line of resistance and the gap that had opened on the left urgently needed to be blocked off.
Visiting our main line of resistance, Hauptmann Müller and I found an 8.8cm Army anti-tank gun, commanding the road to Lowsha from a clearing in the woods, on which the Russians were bringing up tanks. A T-34 passed by; one shot, and it was in flames. The second followed straight behind it. The next shot hit it, it stopped and from the turret an oil-smeared figure twisted itself out. A third tank came up and drove slowly past its comrades. The number one gunner of our anti-tank gun watched with a tense expression and once again pressed the firing button. Once again the shot scored a direct hit and from the tank the whole turret blew into the air. High flames shot up.
After a short rest of only one hour on the night of the 22nd, and no sleep the next night, on the night of the 23rd and 24th I still did not get a wink of sleep. Our command post was located in a leafy shelter, probably the construction shelter of the Stellungsbaumeister, when the second trench was constructed. In the morning we were still holding on. Then towards noon, as ordered, we withdrew behind the Vitebsk-Polozk railway line. The enemy was pushing up behind us, the railway installations were under fire. Beside the station, where just 14 days before I had alighted from the train, the remaining part of the battalion crossed the line. At the Lowsha station a goods train was waiting with steam up to set off to Polozk. Like a magnet it attracted the Landsers to it. Müller and I, with a great deal of shouting, tried to counteract the signs of disintegration. We just about managed to hold together the remnants of our battalion.