It was no coincidence that this very small sector was chosen for a victory. It was confirmed by the Polish military historians, Rysyard Majewski and Teresa Sozanska, in the book, The Battle for Breslau. They reported that the ‘Hitlerites’ of this unit, the battalion commander, two company leaders and 70% of the men, paid their penalties inside an hour’s battle. This book written, of course, from the Russian point of view, quoted that Colonel Schavoshkin had taken care that Hitler’s birthday had been a very noisy celebration. Not for the first time, we were sent to relieve the now-depleted Regiment Mohr, for they were transferred to the southern sector, which appeared to be quiet, for the moment.
The weather on 20 April, was ‘royal’ weather which helped the growth of the plants, shrubs and tree blossom in the desecrated gardens of the city. It was 25° in the shade and spring was not going to be deterred from presenting her blooms and blossom, albeit somewhat early in the year. The lilac was in bloom, spreading its perfume into air polluted with smoke and gunpowder. The flowers forced their way through the raped earth together with the weeds. The shrubs in the gardens were now a blaze of colour, red, white and apricot, forcing their faces through the rubble to the sun. It did the soul good to stick one’s nose into the lushness of blossom and perfume, freely offered, forgetting if only for a minute, the odour of war.
Since the middle of April, our battalion had been engaged in the sector of the Andersen, Steinover and West End streets, in very tough fighting. From the Kipke brewery in the south-west, we were ordered to Striegauer Platz. There is a report about the defence of this section of the city, also from a Polish author, from whom we were to learn many years later that our opponent was the Soviet Lieutenant-Colonel Malinin and his unit. The author quoted from Malinin’s own vastly exaggerated description of his engagement with “a very strong company of tough Waffen SS”, who were “equipped with the very best of weapons, i.e. hand-grenades and bazookas”. That version of events appeared in their 6th Army ‘front’ newspaper. Either the exaggeration was deliberate, or his memory a little foggy. I remember very well who the better equipped were. The mass of new equipment, left behind after their withdrawal, showed that for every new and shining brass shell-case, still warm to the touch, there were just as many empty vodka bottles, the backbone of every good Russian soldier. Perhaps one was his. But the well-equipped were most certainly not us. This made the success of our counter-attack even more surprising for us.
Only minutes later, our opponents had re formed once more, just a street further on. They were hiding behind broken walls and in bombed cellars, waiting to ward off a further advance from us. We, the 11th Company were the spearhead for the battalion and we dug in waiting for further orders. Darkness fell, and suddenly the ‘fortress-brides’ appeared with canisters of hot soup and a brew of coffee. They appeared, smiling proudly, their unkempt hair tucked under steel helmets and, far from elegant, dressed in military trousers which were much too wide for most of them. But they were happy that they had found us. At the risk of losing their lives, those Amazons had followed us at a distance and impressed us by their show of guts, loyalty and comradeship. They showed that they were made of much stronger stuff, than being there for a flirt or two. It gave us courage and it pained us at the same time when thinking of their personal fates if or when we suffered defeat.
Composure and endurance had been shown by all the troops in Breslau. Those two human constituents are not innate, they have to be learned. We were spurred on nearly every day with first-hand experiences of personal fates, which brought anger when someone we knew was involved. The personal fate of such as a young comrade from the Rhine, brought us to the edge of frustration, thick-skinned as we had become. Our long-awaited post had been delayed for a long time, not surprising under the circumstances. The joy of receiving a letter from his girlfriend, his bride-to-be, was great indeed. He had proudly shown me a photograph of her. She was fresh, she was pretty and photographed in her labour-service uniform, astride her bicycle. His happiness overflowed at the thought of seeing her again, but three days later he was dead. We had had a night visit from the Bolshevik infantry. The next morning, we found him with his distorted face in the rubble, but he had not died from his splinter-wounds. He had been shot, in the back of the neck. The long-awaited letter, now stained with his blood, was taken by one of his comrades. Whether he outlived the war, to take it to his comrade’s girl friend, and inform her of the last few days of his life, is also unknown.
We had now been under siege for three months. One day, one of the messengers from the supply unit brought us news that our troops were fighting “for Berlin”. No one, but no one in our besieged city, so far away from our capital, had reckoned on this. We simply had not envisaged an end to the war, and most certainly not at the end of the month of April. Our own situation had not given us time for thought of anything outside of the city, except for fleeting moments and then without up-to-date military information. Why should we? We were stunned with this information and alarmed. The Red Army had still not achieved the success of Breslau’s capitulation, after three months of aggressive defence measures from our side. Therefore to hear that in between times they had reached Berlin, after we had engaged, in part, the best of the Red Army troops, was devastating for us. And when Berlin fell?
From the military point of view, we had no cause at the moment to give up the fight. But the situation back home gave us our first serious doubts as the first cracks appeared in our ability to hold on. However, what should we do? Firstly, we had given an oath, one which was ‘holy’ for us. Secondly, we would rather die than be taken prisoners, at least not by the Reds. Added to that, we dare not think of the terrible fate of civilians, such as that they had already faced in East Prussia and Silesia. We dare not give up. However, for most of us this latest news could not be ignored. It was clear to us that the final battle for the fortress was very, very near.
In the military reports of this time, in what was now stereotyped repetition, it was stated that our,
troops in Breslau had bravely fought off renewed attacks from the Soviets in the southern and western sectors of the front. It was an example to us all, in view of the fact that they moved fast in face of overwhelming superior masses of material.
Since Easter we had had cooler weather which, on 27 April, returned to the former beautiful Easter weather of 25° in the shade. We had a balmy, cloudless night with full moonshine. The moonlight and single flashes of muzzle-fire lit the sky. We could see through paneless windows the towering ruins making a bizarre and ghostly scene on that relatively peace fulnight. But it was suddenly and repeatedly shattered, by exploding bombs of a heavy calibre. The enemy artillery took no consideration of their own troops, who were lying on the opposite side of the road to us.
We could not seal off the front-line, broken at Posenerstrasse, the enemy having barricaded themselves into unusual corners. For this particular night, I decided against using double guards here and there, and posted half of our squad with machine-guns and a good stock of hand-grenades, on the main line of resistance. We could determine if Soviet shock-troops were sneaking up on us by using the rays of the searchlights.
We could hear machine-gun fire from somewhere, as well as single shots from a rifle. Both were designed to keep us awake, and to keep us from our well-deserved sleep, meaning that we should not be fit for the next day’s battle. In the diary of the Wehrmacht, the report for 28 April read, “In Breslau, the Soviets were successful in breaking through our front in several sectors”.