Stalin’s strong arm, the T34, surprised and fascinated the legendary Panzer General, General Guderian. With its low silhouette, it melted into the battle area very well. The track, which was half a metre wide, ‘tramped’ through the toughest bog, while the German Panzer IV with its 36cm, protested and stopped. The Russian tank was strong and robust but manoeuvrable. However, above all else, it moved over snow and soft ground without any problem. It was the best construction of its time. Not even the ‘Panther’ or the ‘Tiger’, which came off the production line a year later, could compete. The T34, with its 45-60cm-thick plating, and its high performance was unmatched.
Like David with his sling, we, as infantrymen, had to deal with Goliath using other methods. When in the trenches we were surprised by such opponents, we simply let them roll over us. When we emerged whole from that exercise, we then had to deal with their accompanying grena diers. We had to try to destroy the ‘giant’ from behind, and in close combat. With nerves of steel, combined with mortal fear, it often worked. But often it was under very heavy losses.
All of the divisions, corps and armies of the Waffen SS were commanded by the Armed Forces. Although they were not one iota better equipped than the Wehrmacht units, a top performance was expected from them. They were used as trouble-shooters mostly, or as ‘firemen’, who extinguished the ‘fire’ and saved whole sectors of the Eastern Front. Enormous losses were the price. “Half-way through this war, a third of these classical Waffen SS divisions lay under Russian soil, and this organisation was burnt to cinders”, to quote Heinz Hohne in his book, Der Orden unter der Totenkopf.
It wasn’t any different for us. Some very hard weeks lay behind us, as gradually the winter began to lose its grip. The countryside was still white, but the temperature became bearable. At the end of January and beginning of February, the long-promised winter clothing arrived from home. It included fabulous fur hats, padded jackets, thermal boots and warm woollen pullovers, as well as balaclavas knitted in haste and faith, by the girls and women at home. But all of it arrived far too late.
In his diary for 23 February, General Halder, Chief-of-Staff wrote, “today was especially quiet”. Perhaps it was in the HQ in East Prussia, but certainly not in our neck of the woods. It turned out to be an especially bloody day, with the Red Army attacking our lines with everything they had. It was also the day that my friend Robby Reilingh was very badly wounded. He had been messenger on that day. In the very same moment as our Sergeant fell, quietly, from a shot through the heart, a mortar exploded somewhere near me and I heard him call my name. He managed to smile weakly at me as I reached him, but quickly ignored my attempts to console him with the assurance that he would now have home-leave. It was very important to him that I promised to see his parents and family. He was in severe pain and I could do nothing for him. The whole time, mortars were exploding and machine-guns clattered around us. It was awful. He was taken out of the line of fire and laid on a straw-covered sledge. As he lay waiting behind a bank of snow, to be transported away with other wounded, I covered him with a thick blanket to keep out the cold, pulling it to his face which, in between times, had turned to yellow. I firmly believed at this point that I would see Robby again. He was taken away but not before I recognised an expression that I had seen many times before on the faces of the dying. It was the expression of disbelief, of non-acceptance of what was to come. All had worn this ‘astounded’ expression.
It had pained me to see him go, but all hell was being let loose and it was a question of survival. All I could do was to pray, from the bottom of my heart, that he pulled through and that we meet again. Later, we had to change our positions. We were made to rest at a first-aid station, run by the Wehrmacht, in some outlying huts on the roadside. There the wounded and ill waited for further transport. It was warm inside, which did us all good. “We had a chap here with the same accent as you. Are you Dutch?” I was asked by a Medical Sergeant. I was happily surprised. Was it Robby? I asked for the name, for perhaps it was him. “He’s lying over there” I was told. When I looked to where he was pointing, it was through the window, and outside. “No one could have lived with the load of shrapnel that he had inside him”, he told me, not unsympathetically, “and he was very brave”.
I stood for a long time at Robby’s freshly-dug grave, not that there was much to see of his last resting place. It was no more than a snow-covered mound by the roadside, in that unending Russia. I do not know how long I stood at his inconspicuous grave, fighting with the reality that I would not see him again. The grave was simple. The cross, which was made of birch-wood was also simple, and so was the inscription. It was basic. Only the minimum of words had been used. It said nothing but that “SS Schutze Robert Reilingh fell on 1 March 1942”.
The German Red Cross informed his family in June, with the sober information, German Red Cross Area 15 File num. 1 Advisor (VK) Reference number 8245/42 Subject: SS Schutze Robert Reilingh. Reference our letter of 9 June, Professor Dr. Parade, Sun Str, Innsbruck. “The German Red Cross regrets to inform you from information received, that on 1 March 1942, at 4 o’clock, SS Schutze Robert Reilingh, died from wounds received, in the main First Aid Station, in Sossna. His burial place is to be found, some 200 metres east of the school in Sossna, on the Moloarchangelsk—Droskovo road. We assure you and your family of our heartfelt sympathy. Heil Hitler T German Red Cross Area 15 Executive/Advisory Dept.
To this day I still have a duplicate of that letter sent to the family. Only after months, was it possible for me to fulfil Robby’s last wish. On my first leave home, it was to his parents in the north of Holland that I went immediately. It was not an easy duty, to deliver Robby’s last greeting to his parents and his brothers. I could not have been given a warmer welcome by his family, in their magnificent villa, not far from Groningen. Everything that they had hoarded for him, including precious things which were seldom to be found at that time, were shared with me.
I was their guest for several days. I had to repeat over and over again our experiences together. In those few days the first great love of my life was to develop with Robby’s sister. It was a mutual attraction from the beginning, and continued in the form of letters, and a short leave, now and again, that one had as a soldier.
Robby’s death seemed to be the start of tragedy and suffering for his family, which had been a happy one till then. Less than a year later, his father was murdered, actually assassinated, cycling home on his bicycle. He was shot in the back, in what could have been described as ‘peaceful’ Holland. As the former General Consul in Liberia, this father-of-four was known for his German sympathies, and as a member of the NSB. It cost him his life. Towards the end of the war, such acts of treachery increased. Then, in turn, they resulted in reprisals against the said ‘sinners’ by the occupying forces.
The activities of the underground, even in the Soviet Union, was an incredible phenomenon of the war. Thousands of Russians, Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians, Crimean-Tartars and Georgians worked voluntarily as Hilfswillige or Hiwis, for the German Military in rear-area positions. They did so to free themselves of the yoke of Communism. But there were just as many partisans working for the Soviet Union. Those bands of ‘fighters’, Bandenkdmpfer as they were called, fought without mercy, on both sides. They were illegal fighters, according to the Hague’s State War Commission decree in 1907, fighting without uniform, without visible sign of rank and therefore not ‘recognisable’.