When my division arrived on the scene, we took up our position with the river Narew on our left flank and the SS Panzer Corps on our right. Wave upon wave of attacks were launched on our lines and once again the days were dominated by the crescendo of guns in action. Over and above, the ear-splitting crash of shells intermingled with the noise of Iljushin-2 planes swooping down, bombing, strafing and discharging their rockets.
On this occasion I saw many German tanks in action, mainly the Panther with its distinctive long barrel, and the heavier Tiger. Although I was never one to wax enthusiastically over military matters, I was constantly thrilled by these enormously powerful, steel monsters as they rumbled along majestically with unhurried ease. The presence of these German tanks, more than anything else, made me feel safe and protected. Whenever I came across one that had been destroyed, I felt a deep sense of sadness as if I had lost a dear friend. To me, the tanks became almost like living beings. Of course, though our light Flak guns could cope with dive-bombers and light armoured vehicles, we would have had little chance had we been attacked by heavy tanks unless we managed to disable them with a good shot in their propulsion system. This explains why I was able to view Russian tanks with relative equanimity once German tanks were around and why I developed such a sense of profound gratitude for their presence.
During those days I found myself faced with an unexpected dilemma. The attitude of my commanding officer, Lieutenant Trapp, was highly puzzling. Any time the battery was in action there was no problem, but once things quietened down in the evening and we began to put our equipment in order, I became increasingly aware that something was wrong.
On regular occasions the Lieutenant would walk from gun to gun, taking in the condition of the equipment and observing us at work. Whenever he stopped near me I could sense a growing irritation in him, but then he would abruptly turn on his heel and walk away without having said anything. During my training in Holland, and ever since, I had never had a problem with dexterity and I could match the fastest among us when it came to chores around the equipment. So what was wrong?
What made the matter more puzzling was that neither Schlemm nor my present chief gunner, who more than anybody else depended on my efficiency, ever criticized me and seemed perfectly satisfied with my performance. I suppose that nowadays a soldier would request an interview, or get on to his immediate superior in a situation like this, but in my army days that would have been almost unthinkable.
It would have been good to be able to consult my parents about all this, but what a forlorn hope that was. I had often thought of my family over the past months and, above all, longed to be back home again, but I was never actually homesick. Anything not associated with my immediate activities assumed a sense of unreality and I avoided prolonged thinking about it to avoid getting morbid. The German army provided a very efficient mail service and I exchanged letters regularly with Erika, my Aunt Helen and the Soukals, but, although I loved getting these letters, I never brooded over them.
All in all we remained in our present position for two weeks and continued to rebuff every Russian attack. I saw no sign of the Polish population in our vicinity; intensive warfare had become the daily norm and local residents must have fled the scene. It was only in the past months that I had sometimes seen adults and children at their farms, or working in the fields.
I thought there was something depressing about the farms. Even allowing for the fact that Poland had been overrun five years ago, and was still under military occupation, I thought the general standard was very low. Everything looked untidy; equipment was rusted and usually in bad condition and there was mud everywhere. It would be wrong to compare Polish conditions with the exceptional tidiness of the Dutch, but I must confess that I had never seen farms which were as dreary and neglected as those that I saw in Poland and I was familiar with small farms both in Germany and in Ireland.
Considering that up to two thirds of Poland’s pre-war population had been engaged in agriculture and 54 per cent of the whole country was under tillage, it was disappointing that the areas I saw left such a bad impression on me. A likely explanation for these conditions could be found in the high percentage of absentee landlords, as well as the fact that farms are often less tightly run in systems where labour intensiveness is high.
Towards the end of September 1944 the expansion of the Division Göring to a full panzer-corps, consisting of Division 1 and Division 2, began. This was a considerable undertaking, especially in the final stages of the war, and it was not fully completed until Christmas 1944. Units from training establishments were taken over to make up the numbers and they naturally lacked Front-line experience. This in turn led to a temporary weakness of the divisions. I became a member of the Göring Division 1 and remained with it until the end of the war.
The training facilities in Holland were retained, with a large number of troops held there in readiness. It is remarkable that as late as January 1945, there were also 8,000 troops held in readiness in the Panzer Corps’ Reserve and Training Brigade in West-Prussia. Retraining schools for officer-candidates and NCOs were also still being set up.
By the first days of October, a degree of stability had been achieved north of Warsaw. Suddenly we got orders to pull out of our positions and move by rail to a new trouble-spot about sixty miles south of Warsaw and near Radom. Together with another group of self-propelled guns we were given a train to ourselves. The train was made up of flat-loaders to take the self-propelled guns with their attached trailers and the supplies trucks associated with the gun-groups. There were also about twelve enclosed railway-wagons each of which had already been loaded to a height of one metre with boxes containing heavy shells and various other ammunition.
This was my first experience of transporting guns by rail and I was amazed to hear that the total embarkation time would be only fifteen minutes. The exercise turned out to be much simpler than I had expected and Lt Trapp barked out his orders in quick succession so that everything ran smoothly. The twelve enclosed wagons were all together at one end of the train and removable bridging plates had been provided between adjacent flat-loaders. The end of the train which had the flat-loaders was driven onto a siding which ended in a loading-ramp. It was now just a matter of each self-propelled gun and its trailer, as well as the trucks, driving up the ramp and along the train using the bridging-plates to get from one flat-loader to the next one. As soon as each vehicle arrived at its destination, the bridging-plates were removed and clamps were attached to the flat-loaders to act as chocks so that all vehicles would be firmly held during the course of the train’s journey.
We soldiers were accommodated in four of the wagons and a layer of straw had been put on top of the ammunition boxes to give us some creature comforts. The wagons were marked in the usual manner, “40 MEN OR 8 HORSES”. By the time the last vehicle had been made fast, all soldiers were aboard and the train moved off promptly. Army units in transit are always very vulnerable to attack by enemy aircraft and it was essential that not a minute was wasted.
It was a pleasantly warm autumn day when we set off. The soldiers in my wagon pulled open the sliding-doors to the fullest extent and we crowded around the opening to get the maximum benefit of fresh air. In typical fashion, some of us sat at the edge with our feet dangling in space, while others crouched or stood behind.