We tramped a mile lit by flares and streaked with white flashes. The road was narrow, but still more or less intact, except for a few shell holes. The first vehicles drove full speed down that infernal space. The Russians had not yet had the time to adjust their aim, and their shells fell beyond us. However, their second round was more successful. Two trucks were hit dead on, and disintegrated. Two more, although they were mangled and torn, got through to less dangerous ground. The wreckage of the first two obstructed the road, and we were sent to clear it away. Ivan was now quite close, letting us have it with grenade launchers and peppering us with machine-gun fire. Despite our intense terror, we tried to keep on firing back as we climbed the slippery banks of flying gravel. The ditches where we might have found shelter had been mined; we were caught in a trap we had prepared ourselves. Several of our men fell, their arms flung outward and their eyes fixed for the last time on the dark, tormented sky. While we waited, our small band clung to the possibilities of survival. We waited beside the first two vehicles which had been wrecked and were obstructing the passage. All around us, Russian grenades were exploding, illuminating the darkness. A Russian quadruple machine gun was spraying the edge of the ditch, which was luckily somewhat higher than the road.
The Russian gun swept much of the wreckage from the road, jarring the shattered heaps further into disintegration with each salvo. Beside these fragments of metal, which had lost almost all their shape, lay two men in their ragged uniforms — men who, like us, had believed in a way out, and were now eternally at rest.
We would have to clear the road of the wreckage which still obstructed it, but anyone who stood up would probably be hit. Once again, Wiener, the veteran, emerged from our petrified group. On his knees under the flying bullets, he hurled a grenade at the first heap of metal and blew it from the road. The second wreck went up the same way. The third — a three-and-a-half-ton truck — required four grenades. Unfortunately, the wounded men inside the truck were blown up too — but that’s war.
Toward midnight, at the height of the storm, two-thirds of our men were back in Memel. The command had become aware of our enterprise, and had provided covering fire. In a state of exhaustion, we arrived at the rear of our entrenched camp. Inventory of the missing was taken outside, among the ruins of a bathing establishment. Then, in the perpetual roar of noise from the front, we settled down and tried to sleep, even though the circumstances were so heavily against it that the attempt itself was an act of heroism.
The next day, toward eleven in the morning, when we had finished eating the rations distributed before the offensive, we were sent back to posts which had to be defended. In our dramatic situation, our rest periods could not be of any greater duration. Civilians continued to embark, despite all the risks this entailed.
Seas were running high, and all the buildings were covered with frost. Their human complement were waiting to leave from the jetty. Although the waves sprayed their bluish faces, there wasn’t the slightest murmur of complaint.
Our troops continued to deny the Russians access to the town and its immediate surroundings. The possibility of evacuation by sea represented such a lifeline that a maximum effort was mounted to make it possible for us to hold on. Food, munitions, and medicines were sent in. On certain days our hammering from the Russians seemed to be diminishing, and despite the cold which grew daily more intense, life seemed easier. We didn’t realize that the Soviet armies were concentrating their efforts farther south. Königsberg, Heiligenbeil, Elbing, and then Gotenhafen were increasingly threatened.
The problem of refugees, as I learned later, was ten times greater in those places. The Russians abandoned Memel for the moment to cut further into Prussia, where they were met with desperate resistance. However, they swept it all aside. The three powerful Soviet armies which had entered German territory possessed means infinitely greater than those remaining to us. In addition to this, they were inspired by savage feelings of vengeance. The tortured population of Prussia were indelibly instructed in what this meant.
Elsewhere, scattered through the population, were Lithuanians, anti-communist Russians, Poles, and even English and Canadian prisoners, who shared our fate, even at Memel. The general terror of Russia superseded all national divisions and differences of opinion; it was a brute fact — simple and unassimilable. When no other course was possible, everyone fled — even the English and Canadian prisoners. The likelihood of being distinguished by the Russian assault units was too doubtful. Women of all ages were exposed to another form of outrage. The number of people evacuated by sea must have risen into the millions.
The veteran had carefully set up his F.M. in the ruins of a house whose walls rose no higher than three feet from the ground. From time to time he brushed the snow from the breech with the back of his hand, which had turned gray from repeated frostbite. Since our last attack to the south of the town, the veteran seemed to have regained his calm. The nervous excitement which affected all of us no longer seemed to touch him. He no longer took part in our desperate discussions, and seemed to have separated himself from all our sufferings. The war, the cold, and all the other horrors which plagued us no longer seemed to touch him. His manner was strange and we wondered about his frame of mind.
However, that morning, his F.M. had saved us from a Russian patrol which had become particularly interested in our group. Twenty Russian bodies lay stiffening in front of the Volkssturm truck which continued to function despite the fact that one of its back wheels was a thick log wedged against the chassis — another of the minor miracles of Memel. Then the Russians had sent a 50-mm. bullet under its hood, finishing off the two old men dressed as soldiers who sat in the cab. Hours later the damned thing was still blocking our view. The Russians had tried to use it as a shield to get close enough to wipe us out with grenades, but Wiener had riddled them with enough fire to finish them off too. Speed had been the critical factor, and Wiener had simply been the quickest. Now he sat in silence, wiping his gun as if it were a precious jewel. The rest of us — Hals, Lindberg, two others, and I — remained sitting in nervous agitation behind our cold, gray weapons, fully aware that they were no longer enough to guarantee our safety.
I had at my disposal three Panzerfausts, and the new P.M. which the Volkssturm had recently distributed — an extremely effective weapon which combined features of both the F.M. and the old P.M. I also had a small magnetic mine, which gave my stomach an extra turn. At Memel we each carried enough of an armory to ensure a quick death — with all that load, there was no question of getting away quickly.
We were to hold our position for about two more weeks, fighting off more or less soft attacks every forty-eight hours. Our rear was no great distance from the front, which made it possible for us to rotate our rest periods at reasonably frequent intervals, and rest in a manner which was more or less refreshing. Not far from us, beside what was left of the street, was a signpost stating that we were five miles from the coast: the last five miles of our retreat from the Don — an almost incredible sweep of over a thousand miles, much of it on foot. As the veteran sometimes jokingly said to me: “The same route your great-grandfather took with Napoleon, my boy. You might think of it as a family affair, if that’s any consolation to you.”