By 11 February we had spent three days and three nights in the woodland and in the snow. We had been without a roof over our heads and without sleep. On the first day the Russians were still trying to advance into the woodland, but then had given up. I had not heard for quite some time the rattling and twittering of infantry weapons in the woodland. Sometimes, when a ricochet whistled into a certain corner of the woodland, it sounded just like singing. ‘The little birds in the wood, they sing so wonder-wonderfully’ was the line that occurred to me, in romantic longing. But it was not at all romantic just very serious when one of the ‘singing’ bullets slashed open the flapping leg of my winter trousers. In snowy hollows we tried to snatch a quarter or half an hour of sleep. We did not manage to sleep for longer because, as time passed, the cold, 10 degrees below zero, penetrated our ragged uniforms. In my case there was the added misery that my feet, which had otherwise been warm with walking, threatened to freeze to the soles of my boots. They had turned to ice.
On the evening of 12 February we crept into the Mischke forester’s house. It was the only house for miles around. At night it was packed full of soldiers from various units. Following Hauptmann Wild’s orders I tried to get my people, insofar as they were not outside on sentry duty, together in one room alone. My attempt failed. So I had to go round trying to free up at least a few corners of rooms for us. It was important, because the forester’s house was on the front line in our sector. At any moment an enemy assault unit could attack. To be able to repulse it, the unit commander had to have his people together at all times ready for combat at the shortest notice. That, however, was not guaranteed if the members of a large number of different units were lying about, mixed up in the numerous rooms.
In the very first room I met resistance from a Feldwebel. The men around him, apparently his people, made room to a certain extent willingly, but he on the other hand remained lying down. I spoke to him sharply and gave him ‘as an officer the direct order’ to get up immediately and to leave the room with his people. He remained unaffected. ‘I will give you two minutes. If you have not obeyed my order by then I shall shoot you!’ I did not wait to see the effect of my words, but went to Hauptmann Wild, to report the incident to him. Wild sat in the light of my tallow candle, not looking up, and said drily: ‘Do what you want’. ‘Herr Hauptmann, I just can’t simply shoot the man!’ I exclaimed. But Hauptmann Wild, the brave man, the fatherly comrade and the pastor, seemed to be at the end of his strength. He did not express an opinion and he took no part in what was agitating me. He shifted on to my shoulders the responsibility for deciding and acting, and once again replied tonelessly and apathetically, ‘Do what you want’.
Irresolute and uncertain I turned back, fearing that the chap would still be lying in his corner. That was in fact the case. I could no longer restrain myself. Stirred up to the highest degree, I shouted at him: ‘Get up immediately and leave this room, or I shall shoot you on the spot!’ Inwardly I was trembling. I wondered whether the chap would obey this order. While my trembling fingers were reaching for my holster, another Feldwebel, one of his comrades, intervened to calm and to placate me. Even his words, that the man who was refusing to obey my orders was a tried and tested and excellent soldier, I turned against him, saying that in that case he should know all the better that he had to carry out my orders like any others. But even as I was saying this, and as the Feldwebel had pointed out to me, I felt that the behaviour of the man refusing to obey my order could not have any rational cause. He was completely exhausted and at the end of his strength.
What would have happened, if I had shot the man? Nothing would have happened. As in earlier retreats and crisis situations, it had become the duty of senior officers to use weapons in cases of refusals to obey orders. They could shoot the offender immediately and without a court martial. I was therefore, formally, completely within my rights. The facts of the case clearly attested to a refusal to obey orders. Moreover, my commander had expressly given me a free hand. The order was in fact completely well founded. But what were those men doing in our sector? Were they men who had been scattered or were they deserters? To establish which it was, I was much too agitated and did not have the time. I had only time for the shot that would re-establish discipline and order.
But I did not fire it! The man was almost as exhausted as I. Probably, just like me, he had not slept during the previous days and nights. He had most likely been overwhelmed by a physical, mental, and spiritual exhaustion that left him no longer in control of his actions. It would have been the same for me, if I had not been an officer, if I had not had to be a leader and if the enormous agitation about the inconceivability of this refusal to obey orders had not then overwhelmed me. A remnant of common sense within me restored my sense of proportion. I gained enough control over myself to be able to ponder whether the insignificance of the case was worth his death. Was it right that my order should be carried out by that man? So I came to the conclusion that I should not allow myself to be guilty of his death, even if I was in every respect justified in doing so, even if it was my duty to do so.
I walked out into the dark of the February night. I was oppressed by the dichotomy of feelings of defeat that my formalistic spirit had suffered. But I was also glad of my victory over that spirit. For one trembling moment, I had held the life of that man in my hand and nearly destroyed it. Outside, the Feldwebel comrade of the mutineer joined me and said that I was ‘a fine man’. He seemed suddenly to trust me, because he had recognised me as a fellow countryman. Then, in all seriousness, he proposed that I should travel to Vienna with him. He had, he said, a motorcycle and sidecar, his unit had been wiped out and he had had ‘enough’. With me as an officer, he said, we would easily get through the Feldgendarmerie checkpoint and through the Heldenklaus. I was speechless. Should I now have this man arrested, taken away, and shot? I shook my head, uncomprehendingly, without saying a word. He disappeared.
15 February is the date of my last letter to Mother that actually reached her, in which it says:
The past four weeks have made inhuman demands on us. We continue to be in the hardest action on a Soviet bridgehead south-west of Graudenz. Enormous physical exertions through snow, rain, cold, marches, all combined with the most intense moral stress, have almost completely ‘done for’ us few, who are still left from 14 January. But the good God in heaven has been so clearly protecting me. In the meantime I have been wounded for the fifth time, apart from that wound in 1943 which was only slight. Daily events have been a strain, the like of which did not even happen in the summer of 1944. It was in Döberitz that I last had my hair cut. Since 14 January I have not cleaned my teeth. I have not had a shave for a long time. You will be able to imagine how attractive I look. But we want to keep on holding out, if it leads to everything being better in the end, and then it means that we can all meet again happily in our homeland. Hopefully Rudi will get out of East Prussia in one piece! On the way I met people from his Ersatz unit from Rippin, including an officer cadet colleague from Hilversum... I am writing this letter in gloves... Yesterday, with the first post since New Year, I received a letter from Father and two from Rudi. Tell Liesl thanks very much for her good wishes on my birthday.