Our mistrust grew after we had been loaded into the goods wagons and the train had begun to move. It was not westwards or southwards that the train was going but, to our horror, it was going eastwards. Only when we were not far from Minsk in White Russia did it to turn southwards and we went as could be seen from the landscape, through the Pripet marshes. Then we went south-westwards towards Galicia. Lemberg, Kolomea and Stryi were the stations that we reached after many stops, often lasting for hours.
It was in Kolomea or Stryi that a check was carried out of a type that we had not seen before. All the men on the train, each with his baggage, had to parade on the embankment in front of the wagons. Then they had to pull their trousers down, everyone had to turn round and, bending over, present their naked backside to the authorities carrying out the check. The most fanciful rumours rushed in a flash through the ranks, all more so since some poor devils were separated off. People suspected that they had had special tattoos, similar to those carried by the Waffen-SS showing their blood group, although no one had heard of such measures being taken before. Gradually the opinion grew that it must have been a sanitary check. The Russians had been looking for men with crab lice or in any event for men whose buttocks marked out their owners as suffering from dystrophy. It was an unmistakable sign that we were going home. It indicated that the Russians were concerned that their prisoners did not arrive home like walking skeletons.
The mood improved as our train approached the Carpathians. We went on many double bends through green woods and past picturesque villages. In one of those villages, one Sunday, we saw men and women standing in bright coloured costumes in the church square. It was a totally unaccustomed picture of the deepest rural peace. In a high pass we had a shocking experience. Our train was standing beside another one that was heading in the opposite direction. In the same kind of cattle wagons that we occupied there were, in the other train, German women and girls from Transylvania who were being transported to Russia for forced labour. It seemed incredible that we ‘Plenny’s’ were travelling home to be released, whereas those young German women did not know what fate awaited them.
Through the Carpatho-Ukraine, which before the war had belonged to Czechoslovakia and by then had been annexed to the USSR, the journey went further southwards. After Tschop, which in Hungarian was called Csop, the train left the Soviet Union. It was night when we crossed the border. The wagon doors had to remain closed. Scarcely did we seem to have passed the border when from wagon to wagon the doors were opened. But at the first glance out into the darkness of the forest a Rumanian guard could be seen. It was a further step closer to freedom, although we continued to be under Russian guard.
Marmarosch-Szigeth, the Rumanian border town with a Hungarian name, was the destination of this penultimate stage of the journey home. A gigantic barracks area built in the old Austrian style received us. Thousands of Austrians from the former German Wehrmacht and Hungarian prisoners of war were held there. We stayed there for some days. The main purpose of the stop seemed to be relaxation and food. There was plenty of food. It was Hungarians who were doing the cooking, because it was an excellent peppery millet kascha that was served to us. There was a more or less happy atmosphere and you were reminded of Wallenstein’s camp, although there were no camp followers.
The transports of Austrians going home were supposed to depart daily. The first and the second transports had already left. We should have been on a third, but, by way of a last minute fright, we officers were kept back. It was uncertainty, literally until the last minute, that dominated that period of captivity. Carelessly I had done a deal with a Hungarian officer. I had swapped my rucksack, an item of Luftwaffe equipment, for a simple Army haversack and 100 grams of fine cigarette tobacco, because I had thought that I would not need the rucksack any more, and I could carry my few possessions in a haversack. Indeed, apart from what I was wearing, I possessed very little. I had a second set of underwear, a tin of tobacco, my three-year-old toothbrush, my eating irons, and, the most important item, a spoon. Many prisoners carried one in their outside left top pocket so as not to lose it, and to always have it ready. But we had a rucksack at home, I knew. If this had not been the case, it would have been a poor swap.
A fortnight had passed since leaving Insterburg. With the fourth transport, we officers were also allowed to travel. In broad daylight we went across the Hungarian plain through Szolok and Debreczin. Everyone who caught sight of our train, which was not travelling very fast, waved to us. When we stopped, Hungarian women brought to us watermelons in large slices. The pleasure that the civilian population shared with us seemed to us like a foretaste of our reception in our native country. The train remained in Györ (Raab) overnight in order to ensure that our arrival on Austrian soil would be in daylight.
In Raab we also changed locomotives. It seemed to be a first greeting from home when, from there on, an Austrian engine driver drove the train. When the train started off from Raab and the Austrian border was coming closer, the excitement was well-nigh unbearable. We arrived at Nickelsdorf. You could tell that you were on Austrian territory because the second track of the line had been dismantled. That was part of the reparations that the Soviet Union had demanded. Well, that did not bother us. Wherever civilians caught sight of the train they waved to us. It was harvest time and many men and women were in the fields. They stopped their work and waved to us joyfully. It seemed almost too good to be true.
Meanwhile, we had heard that the station at which we would arrive was Wiener Neustadt. There the formal process of release was to take place. The closer we came to that destination, the more emotional did the mood become. It was on the morning of 19 September 1947 when our train reached Wiener Neustadt.
Of the partially destroyed city you could see very little. Our attention was directed to the reception that was awaiting us. Many hundreds of people had turned up at the station. After we had got out of the old familiar cattle wagons, the column formed up to cover the short distance to the barracks in which the Heimkehrer-Entlassungsstelle Wiener Neustadt was located. The way to the barracks was lined by relatives of Heimkehrer or those who hoped to see them. It was clear that many Viennese had come to meet their Heimkehrer. It was shocking that many women and also many elderly men were holding photographs in front of them, and placards on which was written something like ‘Who knows him?’ These were relatives of people who were missing, asking for information, but none of us Heimkehrer had the time to carefully look at the pictures and the names individually.