That was how the regimental history described the start of the day. As I recall, the neighbouring sector on the left was under heavy fire. The commanding high ground to the north of Gross-Wollental lay behind us to the left, and fell into enemy hands. The battalion, that is, our 15 men, received orders to re-take the high ground. First we had to pull back a little to strike. Then we moved up to where the artillery positions were, in order to be able to move in a semi-circle round the high ground that had been lost. In the meantime the enemy were giving the terrain a vigorous pounding with heavy weapons. In particular they fired on the farmhouses that lay on their own. They rightly suspected firing positions to be there. They had also spotted our movement while we were approaching the open heights. At the last farm at the foot of the heights there were field howitzers under trees that were firing on them.
From the enemy positions came the thumping of the mortars. All round we could hear shells whistling towards us and exploding. From early morning I had felt, ‘in my water’, a sense of apprehension. So I was almost relieved when what I had dreaded actually happened. I had thrown myself to the ground. But I jumped up too soon, in order to move towards the house, thinking there might be better cover there. I must obviously not have heard the mortars fire because of the sound of the explosions. The severe pain of a considerable flesh wound in my left buttock forced me to the ground. I painfully crawled towards the house. I felt a lack of air that worried me. I knew I must have been shot through the lungs. One of my runners dragged me into the house where I was laid down on a bundle of straw. A medic from the artillery bandaged me up. I was taking shallow breaths, gasping and struggling for air.
The best chance of getting to the rear and to a dressing station was to go on the artillery food vehicle. It had just arrived at the firing position. It was to take me with it. But it took another quarter of an hour that seemed like an eternity, until it was ready. Then I was lifted up on to the little wagon. The loading area was too small to lie down, so I had to sit up with the driver. But I hung rather than sat on the driver’s seat, at the same time clinging on to the driver and to an iron armrest. A wild drive began. Enemy aircraft flew over us. The driver could not risk using roads and lanes. The horse was galloping in terror. The wagon bumped and tossed across country over meadows and fields, furrows and trenches. It was sheer torture. At the staff of another unit the driver unloaded me. A doctor gave me a tetanus injection. Sometime later I was loaded up into a Sanka i.e. a medical vehicle. After an absolutely endless journey I arrived at the field hospital section of the 35th Division, our neighbouring division.
There, in a small village school, the wounded as they arrived were laid on bundles of straw. A medical officer sorted us out according to urgency, not according to rank. All men are equal before God and before the court, but also before the surgeon’s knife. Of the two schoolrooms, one served as an operating room, the other as a preparation room. In the latter I was undressed and, by means of injections, somehow stabilised. Scarcely had the surgeon finished with one man, than he got to work on me. Half on my belly and half on my right side, I lay on the operating table. It was only a local anaesthetic under which the operation was carried out. The doctors asked me questions and forced me to answer them. Meanwhile, I could hear my breath bubbling out of the entrance wound, and could feel them working to close it. How long that lasted I have no idea. According to what they said, they were doing plastic surgery on my skin. The effect of the anaesthetic had already begun to wear off by the time the larger shell splinter from my behind and another lodged immediately next to my spine, were taken out. The Staff Medical Officer, Dr Brunn, asked whether I wanted to throw the shell splinters away. I replied, ‘Too bloody true’. The scars would be mementoes enough for me. The shell splinter in my lungs I would carry for the rest of my life.
After the operation I was moved into a small room. In one of the two beds was the man wounded in the stomach, who had been operated on before me. I was able to have a closer look at him and to recognise him. He was the commander of the reconnaissance battalion of the 35th Infantry Division. He was a Major and a holder of the Knight’s Cross. From time to time we spoke to each other. But I had the strange thought almost immediately that there was little hope for him.
Even so, they also seemed to consider me to be a serious case. The Major and I were nursed by a particularly capable Obergefreiter medic. On his tunic was the Kriegsverdienstkreuz First Class, which testified to his quality. Every quarter of an hour, I estimated, he came back into the room and administered injections in my upper thigh. During the two days I spent there, I must have had, I estimated, getting on for 80 injections. For years afterwards, the area in which they had been administered above my knees was numb.
The following night the Major reached the end of the road. He was increasingly struggling for air. It seemed to me that he had a heart attack. The medic came with Dr Brunn and they brought an oxygen machine but could not help the poor man. I was then alone. But I was myself too weak to be significantly affected by the death struggle of my comrade. The following day the medic told me that the previous night an armoured breakthrough had been made. The enemy tanks, he said, had come very close, and they had feared that they would have to let us fall into Russian hands. According to rumour, the two chaplains from our Division, the ESAK and the KASAK, i.e. the abbreviations for Protestant and Catholic ‘anti-sin guns’ had been ‘snatched’.
On 8 March, after four days, I was at last transported away. A medical motor vehicle drove me and other wounded men to a station. It must have been the one at Preussisch-Stargard, where we were put in cattle trucks and laid down on straw. During the loading process some wretch of a medic stole my pistol. That filled me with the overpowering fury of the helpless. I was glad that immediately after I had been wounded I had, at his suggestion, handed over my watch to my runner Franz. In Danzig, Sankas took us to the Technical High School in Langfuhr. It had been set up as a military hospital. At first I lay with about 50 other seriously wounded men in a large hall. I was in a pitiful state, because I was getting no air. After a short examination, I was immediately taken by porters into the operating room. The porters were French prisoners of war obediently doing what was expected of them. From the map case, which had not been stolen from me, I brought out my remaining cigarettes, that I certainly no longer needed. Gratefully, I gave them to the Frenchmen.
The operating room resembled a gigantic human abattoir. A haze of vapours of blood, pus, sweat and filth, from the dressings and disinfectants filled the room. On several tables operations, amputations, and dressings were performed. A doctor had just finished the circular cut around an arm, then began an upper arm amputation. All that I saw, though only half-conscious. Acting as theatre nurses were Dutch medical students. Doubtless, they were ‘compulsory labour’, and were getting some dreadful practical experience. I had to place my arm round the neck of one of these kindly and helpful nurses. Dizzy and weak, no longer used to sitting upright, I had my lungs tapped. An increasing lack of air, and the unbearable smell, had made me so apathetic that I scarcely noticed the short, severe pain when the doctor inserted the cannula. The intervention produced an aspiration of 700 cubic centimetres. It was no wonder that I had feared I was slowly suffocating. I was then able to breathe again during the following two weeks. The next aspiration produced another half-litre of fluid. After that there were only 20 cubic centimetres. Eventually the interventions were no longer necessary.