The Feldgendarmerie moved their control point further back into the town. We noticed that from then on soldiers came to us, asking for our company command post. In doing so they remarked that nothing made sense any more. This way we acquired a staff corporal and another corporal in our section. The first wore the ribbons of both Iron Crosses next to his Close Combat Badge. He had got as far as Stalingrad and only being on leave from the front had saved him from encirclement, death or imprisonment there.
We learned a lot from the staff corporal and were always asking him what he made of the situation. He reckoned that there was not much chance of a Russian attack as long as refugees and German soldiers in the present numbers were still coming through.[3]
Corporal Hans Arlt was also involved in the preparations for war:
Following my successful conclusion of a course at the Army NCO School at Arnswalde, I was sent to the front together with some other comrades on 26 January 1945 as an RUB [Potential NCO of the Reserve] corporal. We were driven in open trucks to Küstrin-Neustadt in winter temperatures of minus 15 degrees Celsius.
We were assigned to the 2nd Company of Captain von Oldershausen’s combat team [battalion] in Stülpnagel Barracks. A considerable proportion of my platoon consisted of old soldiers who had been on guard duty in Denmark until then. They made themselves welcome to our group with their rich supplies of butter and cheese, but they were not really suited to the coming fighting.
I recall that there was a Feldgendarmerie company in Stülpnagel Barracks.
There were some garages at the rear of the barrack complex that contained large quantities of spare parts for various handguns, and we were all able to improve our personal arsenal by helping ourselves. I too acquired a 7.65mm pistol and obtained the necessary ammunition from the Feldgendarmerie company in exchange for cigarettes. Later a sentry put an end to this self-service.
Our steel helmets were coated with toothpaste for the winter fighting. On 30 January the 2nd Company deployed. Our platoon was located in deep woods outside the northern boundary of the Neustadt near the railway employees’ convalescent home. The position consisted of a row of rifle pits in which we spent the day and night. The frozen earth made digging in hard work.[4]
One early reinforcement to the Küstrin garrison was 17-year-old Luftwaffe-Auxiliary Fritz Oldenhage:
I was born in Stettin on the 7th April 1928. I was conscripted as a Luftwaffe auxiliary on the 5th January 1944, and soon afterwards my schooling came to an end. I was sent to the 3rd Battery, Light Flak Battalion 850 in Berlin and received my first training with the simple 20mm and 20mm quadruple flak as a gunlayer.
Following action in Stettin and its surroundings, for instance with 20mm quadruple flak at the goods station, protecting heavy and medium flak against Anglo-American aircraft, I was sent to Anklam to guard a flying field. There I was trained on the 37mm flak, telephone exchange operating and telephone line construction.
At the end of January 1945 there was a rush to load everything on railway wagons. The over-hasty securing of the guns resulted in one case of the gun barrel coming loose and starting to swing, hitting something like five wooden telegraph poles alongside the track. Only after sending a written message forward by a level crossing keeper were we able to stop the train.
The order to stop came beyond Stargard. The train was diverted under light snow showers and in full darkness. On the 30th January we reached our new goal, Küstrin-Neustadt, and had to unload immediately.
The guns were allocated to various positions within the town area. The first took up position in the Neustadt, immediately north of the extension of Plantagenstrasse. This was shortly behind the entrance to Anger Strasse, where Plantagenstrasse turns 90 degrees south-west as Strasse 39 towards the sewage farm and from there 90 degrees north-west to Strasse 42 and the Cellulose Factory. The second gun must have been positioned in the Neustadt between the goods station and the Engineer Barracks. The third gun went across to the Altstadt and was positioned on the Island north of the Mittelhöfel between Lunette B and the weir of the Vorflut Canal. Its forward observer sat on the southern point of the Mittelhöfel not far from the point where the Vorflut Canal and Oder separate. All three guns had wide-ranging fields of fire. The fourth gun was unserviceable after the railway journey.
I moved into the Cellulose Factory with the battery headquarters. Within a short time I was telephonist on a 20-plug switchboard, runner and cable-layer, which entailed maintaining communications to the forward observer.
I can only describe the factory premises sketchily and with some reservations. It formed a rough rectangle next to the Warthe. Its tall chimneystack was a well-known landmark. The only access was opposite the Warthe. Coming along the river from the direction of the Plantage, as one approached the Cellulose Factory one passed two housing blocks on the left-hand side of the road, the first on the premises of a petroleum company and the second already in the Cellulose Factory complex. A wall about 2 metres high began here separating the factory from the road. Here too was the main entrance with the factory gate. Parallel to the road was a long extended building in which I sat as telephonist at my switchboard. Parallel to this was part of the factory yard, then came a hut and behind, parallel to the Warthe, the big factory building. Another part of the factory yard stretched beyond the eastern gable of the already mentioned building on the access road. Between the Cellulose Factory and the neighbouring ground I can remember a drainage ditch and an open pipeline running towards the Warthe, but I cannot recall the exact details. A hut stood to the right facing across the end of the road. Last used to accommodate prisoners of war, the hut now stood empty, as the prisoners had been marched away. In the short time we were there we saw no strangers, either soldiers or civilians, apart from the refugees on the access road.[5]
Other reinforcements arrived in the form of Panther tank turrets with 75mm guns and their crews. The German forces were struggling to cope with an acute shortage of fuel for their tanks, so the idea had arisen of using turrets on prefabricated wooden frames sunk into the earth to reinforce defensive positions. Officer Cadet Corporal Hans Kirchhof reported:
We were Fortress Gun-Turret Company 12/11 and together with other companies were dispatched from Fallingbostel to the Weichselbogen, Bromberg-Thorn-Graudenz area. Our company consisted of three platoons each of four turrets, each turret having a crew of five men. Our train was stopped at Vietz, as our destinations were no longer attainable with the Russians already operating in these areas, and we were then detailed, a company of twelve turrets each, to Frankfurt, Küstrin and Stettin.
Tank turrets of the Panther series were to be fitted in earthen bunkers with wooden frames and linings previously prepared by the Organisation Todt. The earthen bunkers, however, had first to be built.
One of the turrets had slid off its sledge during the move and had been so badly damaged that it was no longer usable. The remaining eleven turrets went to their allotted positions around Küstrin but even before they could be installed eight fell into the hands of the Russians.
Only three turrets went into action. One was built south-east of the Kietz Gate at the junction of the Chaussees to Göritz and Sonnenburg right on the Oder dyke. The second turret was destined for the Island, between the Artillery Barracks and the road bridge over the Vorflut Canal. The main task of both turrets was to stop enemy tanks that had broken through. I never saw the third turret, so cannot give its exact location, but I think it must have been in the north of the Altstadt.