Once more underway, we saw wooden huts along the line, housing armed Wehrmacht guards. We also saw a message for the homebound trains along the side of the track. “Say ‘Hallo’ to the Rhine for us”, was written in black stones. The further east that our train took us, the colder it became, especially for those guards on the running-board outside the compartments, and in the icy wind of the moving train. They were on the look-out for partisan activity. Tracks and bridges were very often mined and so our locomotive pushed a goods-wagon filled with sand in front of it. The theory was that it softened the impact of an explosion and lessened the damage to train and men. Some days before, the guards of a transport train travelling on the same line, shot warning shots into the air to warn the driver of a visible explosive charge. But instead of stopping he accelerated, in the belief that partisans were attacking. Thirty men lost their lives in that explosion.
The extent of what we were to see in Tarnapol was unavoidable. The signs of encirclement and the bloody battle of the summer months were a taste of what was to come. It was almost like seeing a newsreel, with scenes of that legendary battle opening up before our eyes, in all its original bitter and savage reality. There were uncountable numbers of burnt-out tanks and other war machinery. Outlying destroyed villages showed the bitter fighting that had taken place in the area between the Carpathian mountains and the Pripyet marshes.
We then had another break in our journey for no explainable reason. It lasted for three weeks, in Vinnitsa, a middle-sized town in Ukraine. The population was passive and resigned, showing us no hostility. The reason for that undoubtedly was the social misery that they had had to endure under Stalin. One could not fail to see the utter poverty. You were not able to distinguish the men from the women on the streets. They all wore the same grey, ugly, wadded clothes, which they held together with string or suchlike. There were no buttons and no shoes. Leather shoes and fur boots were seldom to be seen. Most wore the ‘local shoe’, made from sail-cloth or raffia. The poorest of the poor had bound a piece of an old car tyre to the soles of their feet. Those conditions were hardly the outcome of the first few months of the war. In a fatal light it illustrated a classless State and was in sharp contrast to the ‘Soviet paradise’ as loudly proclaimed by the Russians.
The lack of housing in Vinnitsa was also very noticeable, as was probably true in the whole of the Soviet Un ton. For instance, we knew of a three-roomed house built in the twenties. The largest of its rooms measured five metres by five metres, in which no fewer than nine people were housed, not all of the same family. They all lived, slept, cooked and ate in that room, cooking on a paraffin-stove. There was a married couple with two small children, a bachelor engineer, a ‘worker’, and an older woman with two unmarried daughters.
Under those living conditions and as the product of the Bolshevik Regime, it is not to be wondered at that sexual morals sank to the lowest imaginable, without boundaries or control. The situation grew out of all proportion. It had its roots in inhumane politics. Year after year thousands of illegitimate children, in exploding numbers, without parents or state to look after them, gradually became a danger to the land and its people. We could assess it for ourselves. The picture was of orphans dressed in rags, without having washed or bathed for months on end, with boils, other skin infections and festering wounds. All of it made a mockery of everything and everyone who possessed a healthy, hygienic and normal standard of life.
In large numbers, those bands of orphans wandered from town to town to beg, steal and rob, in order to keep themselves ‘above water’. Already in 1941, the numbers could be assessed by non-Russian experts at some millions. The state that had caused the catastrophe, sought to solve the problem with a law that permitted youngsters from the age of twelve to be given the death sentence. As a result, the gangs armed themselves and then battled with the police. Such scenes made a very grave impression upon us. It confirmed to every one of us that Communism had to be repulsed at all costs. It also justified our presence in that land.
My friend Robby had a close contact with a Russian family, or perhaps it would be better to say, with the daughter of the family. He was very much enamoured. I had orders to accompany him on his visits and, more often than not, a loaf of bread found its way into the very modest wooden house of the family. That charitable ‘fraternisation’ released a very moving response.
To digress briefly, I would point out that six months later, in the middle of July 1942, and with the advance of the southern army groups, Hitler’s headquarters was moved to fifteen kilometres north-east of the town and on the road to Zhitomir. The new headquarters named ‘Werwolf, was nearer to the front-line and ensured a far more efficient direction and organisation of troop movement, formation and liaison.
Underway, once more, after our stay in Vinnitsa, we journeyed undisturbed, reaching the town of Uman, in the centre of Ukraine. It was not far from the airfield. We were in primitive but warm wooden barracks. Suddenly everything was hurried. Our transport to the front was no longer overland by train, but by plane.
However, bad weather delayed the flights. Day after day we marched with a full pack on our backs to the airfield, but could not take off. As the bad weather cleared, Junkers 52s of the transport squadron landed one after another, on the snow-covered airfield. Marching to the planes, we noticed two wolves, totally unimpressed or disturbed by our presence, until the noise of the starting engines drove them back into the forest.
There was a weight problem to be solved, much to our disgust, by being told that our food rations had to be left behind! We, with our insatiable appetites, were indignant at such a suggestion, and they were not going to do that to us. We solved that problem by making short work of our rations very quickly. Despite the hard and icy-cold sausages we did not give a thought to the weight, inside or outside our stomachs.
Like excited schoolboys waiting to board the bus, we finally took our places in the Tante Ju, Auntie Ju as they were called, the word Tante not always having a nice meaning. We had to sit on our rucksacks. The seats had been removed because of our numbers, but we didn’t mind this lack of luxury for were we not flying at the cost of the State? With their 600PS, BMW star motors, the Junkers prepared for take-off. It was not only the motors that started to throb. Many hearts of us first-time flyers started to beat in time with the engines too. It was a sluggish take-off for a Ju, loaded to full capacity. They headed in an easterly direction, flying over the low-lying clouds at first. Then, in order to shake off any enemy fighters, the formation reduced their height and we crowded at the large portholes.
The Russian Steppes, covered in snow, unfolded like a map beneath us. It was unending. We were astounded at the view from above, seeing dark forests and black craters in sharp contrast to the white snow. Destroyed bridges were clear to see. Now and again, an air-pocket lifted the Junkers, with its thirty metre wing-span, a foot or two into the air. We were like children on the switch-back at the fair. We let out a cry as the metal bird dropped again, like a stone. Unconcerned and naive we soaked up this new experience until, during the course of the hour-long flight, small dark spots appeared in the sky, approaching our format ion rather quickly. Enemy fighters! Then our radio operator rose hastily, and dressed in a thick fur-lined jacket, brown leather cap, goggles, and with a cartridge-belt slung over his shoulders, went to take his position at the rear of the plane, at the machine gun position. It was open to wind and weather. Only then did we realise how serious the situation was. The slow and clumsy Junkers, with a maximum speed of 270 kms per hour, would have been a very easy target for the Soviets. But luck was on our side that day, for suddenly they turned and disappeared into the horizon. We, as flying infantry, somehow had a feeling of being the ‘victors of the air’.