None of us, apart from drivers and co-drivers, were associated with any particular truck, so we took it in turns going on runs and if more than one truck was used we all worked together to the finish. The average time taken to load or unload a truck was about twenty minutes, so there was a total of forty minutes of concentrated labour involved in each run with a spell of rest while we were travelling. Our work load varied from day to day. If there were many changes in the Front-lines we could be on the go all day, whereas on other occasions we might have three to four runs taking up about half of the day. We varied the number of men on each run to suit the load to be carried.
One of the main advantages of being with the transport unit, apart from being driven everywhere, was that we were almost invariably accommodated in deserted buildings and did not have to sleep in the open. We were still in the depths of winter and it was extremely cold, but we now had warm and dry shelter at night-time; the food was good and the supply was reliable. Occasionally, we came in for a special treat. Because of the fast retreat of the German army and the panic exodus of civilians, large central food depots had sometimes been left behind still stocked with tinned foods of all description. There were preserves of meat, vegetables, fruit, dripping, soups and jams and many other things. We were occasionally allowed to pick up certain items to supplement our rations and I remember often feeling it was like Christmas as I walked among shelves loaded with a variety of goodies from which we selected our allowance.
Of all the men in the transport unit, there were only four whom I remember well. The driver of the Alfa Romeo was Ober-Gefreiter Hensel, a very thin, fair-haired man. I never saw such wizardry in truck driving as he demonstrated over and over again when flicking his huge vehicle across an impossible terrain. At night he had the eyes of a cat. Aided only by the useless pin-pricks of light from his blacked-out headlamps, he often kept his engine at full throttle as we thundered along narrow roads. I forever marvelled at his skill and would have been absolutely terrified out of my wits if I had not had such utter faith in the man.
His co-driver, Gefreiter Detlev Hansen, was an amiable slim man from Hamburg who used to wear an informal black seaman’s cap, a type that was very popular in his home town. Of course, he put on the standard steel helmet whenever we drove into a battle area. Though we were a well-disciplined unit, there was a more easygoing atmosphere than had been the case in my previous units.
Ober-Gefreiter Heisig was another man I remember well. At about thirty years of age, he was the eldest. Heisig came from the eastern part of Germany and spoke with a heavy Slav accent. He was of very stocky build, quite a rough diamond and given to a constant use of Polish swear words. I can still hear his “psiakrew pieronie” or “pieronie, pieronie” (“blood of a dog” and “dog, dog”) spoken in his gravelly voice at every opportunity, but he was good-natured and always managed to enliven a situation with his witty comments.
The last man I remember was Gefreiter Willy Gerkens, who came from a small farm south of Bremen. Willy was a bit of a dreamer by nature and full of plans for what he was going to do when the war was over.
My transport unit, which I joined in the middle of February 1945, was based north-west of the town of Lauban, which itself was about eighty miles west of the city of Breslau. Russian forces in the county of Lauban were massing for a drive aimed at Saxony and, once again, it was the Panzer-Corps Grossdeutschland and Göring and the Division Brandenburg, which were involved in attempting to stop the breakthrough. Despite the usual numerical superiority of the Russians, their aim was successfully thwarted by the German forces over weeks of bitter fighting.
During this time our runs went off fairly trouble-free, but not without danger when we came under fire from planes or artillery. In these situations it was the skill of Hensel and the other drivers that saved our lives many times when they managed to get the trucks into the shelter of a wood in the nick of time. Another hazard they avoided was getting stuck in slush, or bogged down in the rough ground we often had to cover.
There was one particular instance when Hensel clearly saved the lives of all of us on his Alfa Romeo. We were driving along a snow-covered road at high speed late one evening in an area supposedly free of Russians when we suddenly ran smack into heavy fire from ahead of us and it seemed as if it would only be seconds before we were all dead. However, undeterred by the fact that we were lumbered with a heavy trailer, and that the fields on either side of us were several feet lower than the road itself, Hensel swerved off the road sending truck and trailer flying through the air.
Even as we landed in the field with a sickening crunch that knocked all the breath out of my body, Hensel had engaged a lower gear and we were churning through the snow in a wide arc gathering speed all the time. Fate was on our side when Hensel managed to find a spot that he could charge and get us back onto the road in a manoeuvre that all but overturned us. It was also our good luck that from the moment we left the road the Russians had stopped firing at us. Maybe they could not believe their eyes or they were spellbound by the incredible sight of our splendid Alfa Romeo truck and trailer sailing through the air. The way the Alfa Romeo responded to the demands made on it and never broke down, is a testimony to the great engineering product that it was.
The speed with which we did our loading and unloading in a battle area played a significant part in our ability to get out of danger quickly. We enjoyed a great team spirit and there was never an occasion when anybody tried to get out of doing his share of work. A lot of our runs took place during daytime, but there were many times when we had to bring ammunition and supplies to batteries which had been cut off by Russian units. In those cases we travelled by night, but frequently ended up running the gauntlet when the Russians saw us and opened fire.
We always used the most suitable trucks depending on the weight of a load and conditions we could expect to encounter. On night runs we set off well after dark and drove on a mixture of roads and tracks, across fields or through woods and usually criss-crossed along a pre-determined route. Sometimes we got through the Russian lines undetected. Other times we had to change plans repeatedly and try different routes. Other times again we had to give up and go back to base when it was either getting too near to dawn or too dangerous to try again. Riding on the back of a truck I was always unprotected. If any shooting started, I could only lie down flat and hold on for dear life if I did not want to be thrown off as the driver began swerving or accelerating to escape the Russian fire. We always had our rifles with us, but it never became practical to use them.
Unloading at our destination was usually done at a gallop so that we could quickly start on our return trip, but sometimes, when it got late, we had to wait for the next night to go back to base. Whenever that happened we gave our beleaguered mates whatever help we could by joining them in the defence of their position and doing guard duty for them. They had invariably gone through a rougher time than we had; they were exhausted and undermanned, so it was natural that we should help out, however briefly.