Two days before we were to be relieved, we had found ourselves in a critical situation stemming from a bitter attack on us from the Reds. My squad found itself separated from the rest of the Company as they moved out. Before we knew where we were, the trap closed in around us and we knew that we were left to our own devices, having missed the withdrawal. We had no other choice but to fight to the last bullet. In order to give the impression to the enemy that we numbered more than we actually did, we hopped from house to house, window to window and other positions, firing as we went, in the hope that we could hold out until we were relieved. We didn’t even think about being taken prisoner, of receiving a bullet in the back of the neck, or, even worse, submitting without a fight. We knew that the revenge of those outwitted Russians, having been cheated of success, would have been terrible.
The Company did not forget us however. This time it was another known daredevil, of the same calibre as Kähler. It was our platoon leader Erwin Domke from East Prussia, who came to our aid. He was not going to leave us in the lurch. With a handful of men, this highly-decorated subordinate officer, managed to free us at dawn on the second day. He surprised the sleeping Red Army men with Panzerfäuste, hand-grenades and small arms. Under protection of their fire we could retreat. We lost one of our younger men, a machine-gunner whom we had to leave. But we were able to take Szibulla with us. He had been wounded in the thigh at the last minute. We willingly handed over the position to our relieving troop, without further losses to the 11th Company.
Numbering over a hundred men, we had stormed and held this position for eleven days. We left it without many words, exhausted and sad at the thought of having to leave our fallen comrades behind us. Peiskerwitz had been their fate. Only a few had been spared the hell of it all. We slowly made our way along the country roads, and met many of the company’s wounded at the first-aid station in Trautensee. They included one soldier who, since seeing him last, had turned grey overnight. Separated from his unit and totally alone, he had hidden in the loft of a barn as a band of Russian soldiers made it their quarters. He lay there for the next three days. He had to lie almost motionless for those three days, in the fear of being discovered by them, and in fear of what they would do to him. He watched their totally intoxicated antics through the slits of the loft’s wooden flooring. He had to listen to their singing. The Red soldiers enjoyed themselves for those three days, ignorant in their stupor, of his existence. Finally, they moved on. He was so thankful that they had not set the barn alight, thankful and grey.
We stood once more on the parade ground in Kirschberg, the Regimental headquarters, where twelve days before, we had started our march to Peiskerwitz. Apathetic and freezing with the cold, we let the following proceedings wash over us. We stood with deathly-grey faces, forced to accept how many had not returned with us. The names had no ring to them as they were read out on that occasion. Many, very many, did not answer “here” to their names on being called out, for here they were not. The voice answering with “wounded”, “missing”, or “fallen in combat”, was exactly as lifeless as we felt, for from a proud company of 120 men, only 26 were “here”!
It was on 15 February 1945 that an announcement was to be heard on the radio, with information that the Red Army had been beaten in Lower Silesia. As in Breslau, there had been bitter fighting from our attacking troops. Many were decorated for this feat, with the Iron Cross, or the Infantry Assault Badge. Our company commander shook our hands, without uttering a single word. We were then released to go to our beds, where totally exhausted, we slept solidly for the next 48 hours.
Sometime later we were to be found once more in our old barracks of Deutsch-Lissa, having been brought back to full strength, with new men from all arms of the services. We were kitted out with only the best of equipment and arms, as well as a new platoon commander, Leo Habr. This SS-Scharführer was well-known, an experienced front-line fighter, and one with whom I formed a good relationship, as his second-in-command. This amicable native of the Ostmark left the day-to-day duties to me, but in combat he was an example to us all. Our old company leader Zizmann had been promoted to and had been given the command of the 11th. Together with the new men, we were all posted to Johannisberg, to defensive positions on the western banks of the Oder and only a few kilometres from Peiskerwitz.
From our recent experience, and in our naivety, we were convinced that we could hold the Red Army here too. Having done it once, then we could do it again. What did not occur to us was that then, and now, we had no knowledge of the strategic plans of the campaign as a whole. Because of that, our convictions were to prove to be very, very wrong.
The pattern was the same as before, and we were given quarters in the deserted houses to be found near our defences. There we found to our joy that the larders were full of food. We helped ourselves and for once we altered the tone of our cuisine, which was such a change to the meals from the military ‘gulash-cannon’, or mobile field kitchen.
My platoon-leader and I took a short walk to acquaint ourselves with the surrounding area and found that a biplane had taken a nose-dive into one of the fields. We inspected this ‘sewing-machine’ which had caused us so many pestering moments in the past, and then we found the pilot. Whether he had been flung from the plane or had crawled out of it we couldn’t tell, but we found this red-haired Russian a few metres away from his biplane, dead in the snow. We buried him the next day. As German soldiers, so to speak, we gave the pilot a soldier’s grave, complete with a wooden cross which we made from branches of trees. In doing so, we gave him more than we could for our own soldiers at times, but at that moment we had the time. When the roles were reversed, would this have happened with one of ours? We hoped so!
We could still hear the noise of combat coming from around Peiskerwitz, but in our own sector the enemy was surprisingly quiet. In fact it was a little too quiet on the other side of the riverbank. Red flares gave their nightly performance and lit the heavens. Now and again we heard the faint sound of motors, but the war did not seem to want to have anything to do with us. The longer that situation lasted, the more suspicious we became. Was something brewing that we didn’t know about? Was it to be a nasty surprise? An order came from our company command-post, to send a recce detachment from our right-hand side of the sector, to the other side of the river. Strength of troops, weapons and positions, and perhaps a prisoner for inter rogation were needed. I volunteered, together with our platoon-leader, Leo Habr who came from Bavaria. We were both curious. Apart from that, a boat-trip at night was a welcome change to guard-duty in the trenches.
There was a Volkssturm battalion some kilometres away from us, positioned in the lowlands of the Oder. They were to provide us with a boat. It was also to be our starting point. The battalion’s commanding officer was an older man, a major, who was not enamoured with our task when we reported to him. “One should not challenge the enemy unnecessarily,” was his critical comment. But we needed his support and we argued that the information would also be of use to his sector too. He had no choice but to give us his support and as it was not quite dark enough, we enjoyed a drink in the command post. We left some time later, leaving behind our pay-books, ‘dog-tags’ and private belongings, for obvious reasons. Among the grey-haired Volkssturmmänner who manhandled the rowing-boat to the shore, was a young HJ lad of perhaps no more than fifteen years who wanted to come with us. The planks of the rowing-boat, which was old, seemed to be somewhat porous, but it would certainly bring us three over to the other side of the stream and back. We were rather sceptical as we left the Volkssturm and so were they, as they wished us “good luck with the return”. They themselves returned very quickly to the cover of the command post, perhaps thinking that someone might make the suggestion of sending some of them too!