In the dark New Year’s night my thoughts raced ahead into the New Year and what it might bring. The Reich was gripped by its enemies on its Eastern and Western borders. In East Prussia the Russians had touched the soil of the Reich and committed unimaginable atrocities. During my leave, almost daily, hundreds of American bombers had flown over our small town, down the Danube, towards Vienna. Standing at the doors of their houses, many inhabitants had watched the great aircraft taking their course, unopposed, with imposing equanimity. Father, in his Christmas letter to Mother, had told her if the worst came to the worst to stay where she was. Rudi and I had pressed her to flee in any event if the Russians came. We had even put together, for her and for little Liesl, some light baggage for that eventuality. A stroke of good fortune let our Father return home just at the right time. That removed from her the responsibility for taking a decision, and both parents did the right thing in not fleeing.
In Thorn I left the leave train. It was going on to Königsberg. I changed to the passenger train to Sichelberg (Sierpc). There, Leutnant Brinkel the first orderly officer of the Regiment got on. By profession he was a Protestant pastor in Silesia. At midnight he had heard the Führer’s address promising ‘victory to our armed forces’. It was full of optimism.
The railway ended in Nasielsk, six kilometres behind the front. Brinkel and I marched together to the Divisional command post. It was a gleaming white winter’s day. The sun illuminated the Sunday peace and the war, for once, was still. At the Divisional Staff everybody apart from the guard was still asleep. They had been celebrating New Year, and the Divisional Adjutant, Major Östreich, had to get out of bed on our account. He said we could have stayed at home to see in the New Year. That was easily said, my leave ended on New Year’s Eve, and that was when I had to begin the journey. Quite apart from that, I could not have celebrated knowing that the next day I would have to travel to the Eastern Front, for the fourth time. The nearer the front I came, the more I had the familiar feeling of ‘butterflies’.
But there was some compensation in the fact that I was back with the ‘7th’. I looked up Klaus Nicolai. We had a quick welcome nip and went to the bunker of the regimental commander. Oberst Dorn, the Grand Seigneur from the Rhineland, welcomed me to the regiment and informed me that I was to get the 1st Company. The company was at the moment in reserve in the so-called second trench of the extended trench system. The next day it would move back into the frontline. At the 1st Battalion, Hauptmann Fitz and Oberleutnant Küllenberg, the Hauptmann and the Adjutant, welcomed me with a loud ‘hello’. I knew them from the previous summer. Then a runner took me forward and at the Company I was welcomed by Leutnant Martin Lechner who was to take over command of the battalion’s heavy weapons company.
I had become friends with Lechner in spring 1944 in Schweidnitz. At that time he had come from the war school to which he had been sent as an active Unteroffizier with above average potential. He had good manners and you could not see the ‘12-Ender’ in him, even if at the Ersatz battalion he had not had any comrades. I had put myself out a bit for him for which, I noticed, he had been grateful. But we celebrated our reunion with the appropriate drop of the hard stuff. Before that of course we had done another tour of the bunker. I had to see and greet the men. They should get a look at their new ‘boss’ straight away. After that we sturdily went on to have a few jars, because that was still the best tried-and-tested way of getting things off to a good start. Finally Lechner got up and made a speech on the theme that the 1st Company must be the ‘first’ not only in name but also in achievement, something it was now and also must remain in the future. Not quite so awkwardly and seriously as Lechner, I also said a few words to him and to the men of the company. I stressed my pride at now being commander of the 1st Company of our old regiment, and that was the truth.
The next night we moved into position in the Nase von Poweilin. It was extremely unfavourable, because the main line of resistance ran at a right angle, one arm pointed in a westerly and the other arm in a southerly direction. The Russians could come from two sides, in the intersection of the angle enemy fire was possible from three sides. Our neighbour on the right was the 2nd Company, on the left was the Divisional Füsilierbataillon. Only a hundred metres of the trench had been dug out to knee depth, so that during the daytime you could only move through it by crawling.
Because of the way the trenches ran in the entire Nase, the men of the company regarded themselves, in the event of the expected large-scale enemy offensive, as ‘written off’. With almost complete certainty, those in the Nase could expect to be overrun or cut off. As far as anyone could see, there was no way of escape. Fire could come from three sides, attacks from two sides, and to the rear in front of the second line were our own minefields only passable in narrow channels. Whoever survived the heavy barrage before the attack had to face the attack itself. Scarcely anybody would be able to survive that. Because of the minefields and the completely open, gently rising terrain, to retreat did not offer the slightest prospect of getting through in one piece. Thoughts like this I had to keep to myself, and particularly the thought that, if the worst came to the worst, I had only my own pistol to keep me out of the Russian captivity that I viewed with such fear and horror.
During those days, or rather nights, I was continually moving around the trench from post to post and bunker to bunker, in order to get to know every one of the men under my charge. Many knew me by sight, many by name. Actions like Upolosy, Nemers and Raseinen and many others, bound us together. Also I spoke the language of the Silesians, who still formed the majority of the regiment. I was able to converse with them in their local dialect, so that none of them felt that I was a stranger. Soon after I joined the regiment I had learned to speak Lower Silesian and Upper Silesian. Once, on an exercise march in the vicinity of the garrison, an old dear had said to me that I was certainly a Schweidnitzer. Telling her that I was not, I had laughed at her, and she had got angry.
My company troop leader was the young Berlin Unteroffizier Ulrich Lamprecht. He was a student of Protestant theology with the Iron Cross First Class on his narrow chest. Every day he read the book of proverbs of the Herrenhut Brethren. In the days that remained until the offensive, I read the proverbs with him and also the corresponding references from the New Testament, which I had in my pack. Among the runners Walter Buck stood out, He was a 35 year old businessman from Hamburg. He matched the type of the intelligent soldier, who has long since passed normal military age, and who lacked the ambition of youth. He was reliable and did his duty well, as did the other runner Reinalter, a farmer from Swabia.
As in all the earlier trenches, in this trench too some branch trenches led to the separate Donnerbalken or ‘Thunderbox’. It was the one little place where you could be alone at the front. In that quiet hermitage, you could, if it suited the enemy, actually spend the quietest minutes of the day or night. In summer as in winter there was the smell of the chlorine. Then, in the icy cold of winter, strange towers, frozen stiff, stood up in the pit as in a dripstone cave. It was then that I decided, if I was granted a happy return home and had the opportunity, I would somehow sing the praises of the latrines, which I have now done here!