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However, nothing could daunt him and, as soon as he had received his order, he flung himself upon the gun as if to wrestle with some monstrous brute. He heaved and pushed and tugged, attacking the gun from different directions so that soon he was panting and perspiring heavily. Unfortunately, in his eagerness, he sustained a nasty gash to his right lower arm from a sharp corner of the gun mechanism. I do not think he was even aware of his injury. He bravely battled on to the end when he stepped back, grinning triumphantly, while his injured arm was now bleeding quite heavily.

It was at this stage that Lt Trapp appeared to lose his senses. He stared at Wagner for one moment, as if mesmerised, and the sight of Wagner’s blood seemed to drive him berserk. Whirling round he strode towards me, his face and neck had by now assumed a deep purple colour and I thought he was close to having an apoplectic fit. Screaming at the top of his voice, he began to rave at me, “THERE YOU ARE, STIEBER, DID YOU SEE THAT? THAT IS THE WAY TO DO THE EXERCISE. WAGNER DOES NOT GIVE A DAMN, EVEN IF HE LOSES AN ARM, AS LONG AS HE GETS THE EXERCISE DONE QUICKLY!”

My immediate reaction was one of outrage. I would have dearly liked to retort that, in the first case, I would be a fat lot of good in the army if I was running around with only one arm. Secondly, I had done the exercise in less than half the time that Wagner had taken. Of course, it would have been the height of folly to talk back to my commanding officer and, anyway, nothing would have forced me to say anything that would have hurt Wagner’s feelings. So I remained silent and just looked back at the Lieutenant, who was now fighting to regain his self-control. The expression on his face showed that he was not succeeding very well and after a few tension-laden moments he abruptly cancelled the rest of the exercises and ordered us all to dismiss. I was now really in trouble; Lt Trapp would be unforgiving and any hope of an understanding between us was well and truly dashed. Over the next hours he did not show up and I was still shocked by his complete loss of self-control and the intensity of his outburst.

I was a bit surprised that none of my mates made any remark to me about the incident, even though I was on excellent terms with every one of them. They just behaved as if nothing had happened and went back to their chores. Maybe they were scared of drawing Lt Trapp’s wrath on themselves if he got wind of their discussing the matter with me. For my own part, I decided to say nothing to them. I would not have put it past the lieutenant to report me on a trumped-up charge of inciting others to insubordination if he had found out about it. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but I was determined to keep a clear head and to act prudently. Since I had full confidence in myself and did not want to have any blemish on my official army record, I decided to let the matter go, but from now on to be doubly on the alert.

It was not until a few years later that I developed a greater understanding of Lt Trapp’s behaviour and how my calm manner must have increased his feelings of insecurity. Maybe he felt insulted by the apparent ease with which I mastered his beloved guns instead of showing more respect for their “awesome technology?” I can also understand how social background could have been a factor and that Lt Trapp would have had a much greater kinship with Wagner than with me. If I had had the maturity of more years I might have thought of purposely making mistakes and introducing some blunders into my activities so that Lt Trapp could have cursed me to the heights and got rid of his tension. Instead, I was innocently doing the very opposite by trying to be perfect.

What was left of the morning passed quickly and soon we were tucking into our lunch and savouring the unusual experience of sitting down at table to do so. One of our drivers told us that good progress was being made in the workshop on our three self-propelled guns and we should have them back by late in the evening. There were no tasks laid on for the afternoon, so I decided to go for a short stroll outside our barracks. I was unconcerned about setting off on my own because I had not heard of any case where German soldiers had been attacked by the Polish civilian population. I saw many men, women and children about and got the impression that nobody had yet fled the area.

Turning a corner I was amazed to see what looked like a group of attractive women with apparently rouged, prominent cheekbones and wearing Asiatic-type army uniforms. They were armed with rifles and long curved swords and a number of them were sitting on strong, wiry ponies while others were standing beside them. I did not want to stare, but was nevertheless highly intrigued by this unusual sight. Hearing their voices and taking a second look I realised that these were men. They were, in fact, Kalmucks, a tribe of Mongol people who lived in central Asia. This was, of course, the explanation. Kalmucks often fought in Cossack regiments and were known as extremely brave warriors and daring horsemen. Being of short build, usually under 5 feet 6 inches in height, and having almost doll-like, flat, round faces with very soft features, it was small wonder that I had first taken them to be women. This impression was strengthened by their pink, seemingly hairless faces. I thought their uniforms were very smart. They wore long silver-grey coats with shining leather-ware and on their heads they had grey fur hats with a flat red top which was emblazoned with a cross-shaped decoration. All the soldiers were of perfect build and bore an air of proud self-confidence.

Soon after the start of the campaign against Russia, large numbers of Russian prisoners of war volunteered to fight with Germany. They came mostly from areas which were opposed to the Bolshevik doctrine on political, religious or historic grounds.

Despite German party-political opposition, the use of active Russian volunteer-units spread and they repeatedly got honourable mention in military reports over the German national radio. They were particularly successful because of their knowledge of land and language, and also in deployment against partisans. Some of the most fanatical units were Cossacks from the rivers Don and Kuban who had an old score to settle with Bolshevism. The Kalmucks I saw were quite possibly members of one of these famous Cossack cavalry regiments.

By the middle of 1944 there were a total of 300,000 Russian volunteers in the German army. All volunteers fought bravely right up to the end of the war. Although it became obvious to them that Germany would be defeated, there were no desertions. After all, where could they go? It was a tragically sad end for so many brave men who were at heart Russian patriots who loved their country and hoped to see it freed from a ruthless regime.

It was late afternoon when our other three guns were returned to us from the workshop. However, our destination was now altered; and with the situation in East-Prussia deteriorating daily, we were being sent back to the northern section of the Front. We would again travel by train, but this time it would be at night and we were unlikely to suffer the same fate as on our last journey.

Lt Trapp appeared on the scene that evening, but he did not look my way and acted quite normally. Once again, embarkation proceeded smoothly and soon we were on our way.

What was different about our new assignment was that, so far, we had been fighting the Russians on Polish ground; now we would be defending our own country against the mighty Russian steam-roller and against a ten to one superiority.