I do not think Lt Trapp ever spoke to me again and, thanks to the Russians, there was no shortage of action to hold our attention. I was occupied on my gun-carrier and he dealt directly with his NCOs. It was also not long before the Russians brought about the final parting of the ways between Lt Trapp and me.
I never came across “my captain” again, so I do not know what role, if any, he might have played in my transfer. It seems inconceivable that he could have got me out of the suicide squad, especially so quickly, or that he would have even decided to try. Whatever happened, I did return to my unit, I am still alive and so the episode will always remain a mystery to me. The significant date of the morning when I reported back to my unit was 15 October 1944. During the next night there was a major alert and all hell broke loose. The Russians had completed the build-up of their forces and at four o’clock in the morning on the 16 October they launched their awaited offensive.
It was just eighteen hours earlier that I had boarded the van to leave the suicide-squad; if another day had elapsed, my luck would finally have run out.
12
CAUGHT IN A RUSSIAN PINCER MOVEMENT
The 16th of October heralded the start of a two-week period of bitter fighting with no respite for either side. My division, as part of the 3rd Panzer Army, faced a seemingly impossible task as Russian forces fanned southwards to attack us in the Russ-Kuckernese area. This constituted part of a pincer movement designed to capture 2,500 square miles of German territory. If this move had succeeded, not only would one German army have been encircled, but all civilian inhabitants and refugees in that area would have been trapped with no hope of escape.
On being roused by the general alert at 04.00 hours that morning, it soon became obvious that something very big was in the air. The Russians kept up a continuous barrage of heavy shelling for several hours and supplemented it with air strikes against our lines. This military action was clearly on a more massive scale than I had hitherto experienced and there was a new dimension to the way the ground now trembled beneath my feet.
The Russian action had begun about two hours before sunrise and I had to operate in almost total darkness. My ears were numbed by gunfire and shells exploding and I had to rely almost totally on my ears for trying to sort out what was happening around me. During previous action in daytime, experience had taught me how to keep my bearings, but circumstances had now changed. On top of this the noise of flying shells and of echoes was different during night compared with daytime.
I have sometimes been asked whether I was very frightened when I was on the front and my answer was always, “No, I was not really afraid.” Although it is often said that only a fool or a liar would claim that he was not afraid, many soldiers will give a similar answer. I agree with what I have read that soldiers in infantry units are the most likely to experience fear. The more prolonged exposure to enemy fire, from both long and short range, the claustrophobic influence and horrors of trench war-fare and the heavy casualty rate must have a highly demoralising effect on soldiers. The situations confronting other branches of the services can seldom be as bad. This would also seem to be confirmed by a British study of sample cases which showed that casualty rates and desertion in infantry companies ran at four to five times the army average.
My situation was different, even though death never seemed to be far away. Luckily, I was never involved in hand-to-hand fighting or attacked by soldiers at short range. This would have been a frightening experience and one that I was grateful to have been spared. My main danger usually came from shells and I could predict their point of impact fairly accurately from the characteristics of their whistle. If I expected a shell to land close to me I could only duck low behind whatever protection might be near me and hope for the best.
I think the fact that we were never short of ammunition and had fuel to give us high manoeuvrability, was the main source of reassurance for me. Being on the move almost daily gave me an impression of “freedom” and of not being stuck in a spot waiting to be killed. The reason why I felt no fear in the “suicide-squad” must have been based on my sixth sense which had not given me any message of impending death. Somehow I never thought about becoming afraid. Since I do not consider myself to be a brave person, the explanation must have been my preoccupation with the present. To me, the future was as unreal as the past.
The idea of deserting never entered my head even though there must have been occasions when I experienced extreme anxiety. I certainly never considered crossing over to the Russians and could not have run away from my responsibilities. More than ever I saw it as my duty to help prevent a total collapse of the Front and to stop the Russian armies from storming into Germany. According to various reports I have read, desertion was never considered a problem in the German army.
It is curious how at times of great danger, the mind often latches onto some trivial happenings around one and relegates the noises of warfare to the subconscious. Lying on the ground while taking cover from shell-fire, I remember becoming absorbed in a beetle’s attempts to climb onto a stone. Movements of other insects, flowers and blades of grass also attracted my attention. Emerging unscathed after intense shelling I have found myself worrying about whether a bit of butter I saved for my evening meal had survived. I recall many such trivia to this day, whereas I probably could not remember details of some of the military action as soon as it was over. Such are the vagaries of the human mind, but similar instances have been well documented and what I experienced was quite usual.
I have sometimes wondered what my attitude to serving in the German army would have been had I known the truth about the concentration camps. That the population at large could have been ignorant of the facts is generally met with absolute disbelief outside Germany, but that is exactly the way it was. People just did not know about these things and I have since had nothing but confirmation that this was so.
Had I known what I know today, I do not think that I would have behaved differently because the war was in its final stages and the days of the Nazi regime were numbered. Among other priorities, the saving of the lives of refugees and German soldiers would have been at the forefront of my thoughts. Of course, it would have been different and I would have had a problem had I been called up at the start of the war.
There is one other point that has intrigued me. The Nazi fixation about purity of an Aryan nation was well known in Germany, but I never heard of the expression Master Race until after the war. Undoubtedly it was used somewhere by extremists in word and print, but I would certainly not have forgotten a word like “Herrenrasse” once I heard it.
After my battery had survived the shelling during the early hours of 16 October, Russian Il-2 planes stepped up their attacks, but we were able to effectively beat them all back. The following night we moved to a new position, as we did on the next night again, but each time we dug our guns into good and well-camouflaged positions which we managed to hold without suffering any casualties. These nightly moves reduced our time for sleeping, but the longer autumn nights gave us more time for rest than we had got previously.
While operating in the Russ-Kuckernese area our main task, apart from holding back the Russian armies, was to keep a channel open through which fleeing refugees could safely travel. Every day I saw refugees on the road and their situation was hopeless. At their rate of progress, how many of them would be lucky enough to escape being overtaken by advancing troops? Already we heard reports that straggling columns had been fired on by Russian planes.