We soon arrived at 9th Army’s assembly point, reported in and received 16 men’s worth of rations and ammunition to divide among the remaining five of us, sufficient to eat ourselves full once more, for we did not know when we would get any more.
Here the extent of the tragedy at Halbe quickly became apparent. Many comrades were missing from our unit, the majority of our company of Panzergrenadiers having been killed or wounded; there was no accurate account.
We were again allocated as tank escorts for the coming march. We were to advance on foot with the task of screening ahead and on the flanks. The men of our little unit could now keep together and keep an eye on each other, as we were now independent and no longer bound to the tanks.
However, we soon noticed that there was no longer a strong overall command. A leaderless mass of soldiers and refugees was wandering through the woods. Military discipline and comradeship had fallen by the wayside. The majority of soldiers of all ranks moved like sheep around and behind the tanks, trying to get aboard whenever they stopped. Just as in Halbe, hits from anti-tank, artillery and mortar fire, as well as the many air attacks, had had a catastrophic effect on soldiers and civilians alike. Each impact cost ten to twenty times the number of dead and wounded as it would have done under normal combat conditions. At first the wounded were tended to and the dead laid aside in the woods, but later, especially at night, this ceased. People became more and more numbed. Hunger and fatigue added to this, and only the fear of becoming prisoners of the Russians drove the soldiers on, regardless of casualties.
This stream of humanity moved not only along the woodland tracks but also left and right through the woods, so that our task of securing the tanks against enemy close-quarter engagement was no longer necessary.
Not from overwhelming bravery, but out of old combat experience, our practice was to use every halt to get further ahead. We knew: ‘He who does not get through the enemy cordon within five to ten minutes once it is breached and uses the gap will get the concentrated fire of the Russian weapons on the breakthrough point.’
This was the motto we kept to, and whenever the call was given: ‘Infantry forward! Tanks forward!’ that was how we acted, whereas, in such a situation, the majority of soldiers of all ranks would often press back into the woods.
The advantage for us was that the way forward was free for the unfortunately few remaining soldiers and ever fewer tank crews. Each tank crew in 9th Army’s breakthrough to the west was putting its life on the line with the danger of being shot up time and time again, and each time had to face up to this and not pull back into the woods.[5]
The survivors of the main break-out group began gathering at dawn around the Massow forest warden’s lodge and continued to arrive in an endless stream of soldiers and civilians. Some soldiers were able to rejoin the units they had become separated from during the break-out. Major-General Hölz, chief of staff of 9th Army, and SS-General Kleinheisterkamp, commander of XI SS Panzer Corps, failed to appear.[6] General Willy Langkeit’s liaison officer from the Panzergrenadier Division Kurmark also turned up and reported that the general’s command APC had been hit, but that the general had got out and gone off in another direction. He had reportedly been captured. Some 4,000–5,000 people had lost their lives during the night and countless numbers were wounded.[7]
The assembly area was made secure while General Busse consulted with the unit commanders over their next move. SS-Major Hartrampf proposed the Wunder forest warden’s lodge, west of the Wünsdorf– Baruth road as their next rendezvous, and that was accepted. Fresh orders were issued and the group set off again.
SS-Lieutenant Bärmann continued his account:
While we were securing the assembly area at Massow, General Busse drove up in his APC. In reply to my question how far we had to go to get to Wenck’s Army, he replied sixty kilometres. Our fuel would not last sixty kilometres, as was the case with just about all the armoured vehicles. He said that when necessary we would have to obtain fuel by force, as the armour had to stay in the lead if 9th Army was to get through.[8]
The usual order of march was armoured vehicles with combat-ready and willing soldiers in the lead, followed by various vehicles carrying wounded, but many reports also say that staff officers with their luggage were near the front. Last of all came the once vast but now rapidly declining number of stragglers and civilians.[9]
Several Soviet attacks of divisional size then caused the German groups to split into two pockets; the first contained those still trapped east of Halbe, and a second, large one was in the Staakow Forest between Zesch, Dornswalde and Radeland. Contact had been lost with V SS Mountain Corps’ rearguard, which was fighting desperately to break out of the reinforced Soviet cordon and in so doing not only inflicted heavy casualties on the Soviets but also served to distract attention from the remainder of the escaping 9th Army. Although the rearguard units managed to break out of the Halbe position, they were unable to break through the Soviet cordon and remained under a hail of shell and mortar fire.[10]
Late in the afternoon the main group reached the Wünsdorf–Baruth road (Reichsstrasse 96) and railway, coming up against another Russian anti-tank barrier on the same line on which Battlegroups Pipkorn and von Luck had foundered three days previously. SS-Major Hartrampf, who knew the area well from his time at the Wünsdorf Tank School, gave SS-Lieutenant Ulan and his platoon of Tigers precise instructions to block the road from the north at a certain point until 1800 hours.
The troops moved off again across the railway and parallel road, but were fired on from their right flank, where they should have been protected by Ulan’s tanks. What they discovered next day, when Ulan rejoined them, was that he had taken up position at the designated point but had then been ordered further north by a colonel, who had appeared out of nowhere and then threatened him with a court martial when he objected, another Seydlitz ploy.
The main break-out group had closed up to the road and railway, where Russian tanks and anti-tank guns now dominated the crossing point from both north and south. SS-Major Hartrampf, who had meanwhile lost his APC, again took over and organized an assault. Some Tigers were deployed to tackle the opposition coming from the flanks, while others plunged across and took cover in the woods beyond before going on to form a bridgehead around the Wunder forest warden’s lodge. Hartrampf got his unit across intact but other units were broken up in their attempts, the survivors crossing individually or in small groups.[11]
Rudi Lindner continued his account:
On the afternoon of 29 April we drew near to a Russian cordon with strong defensive positions on the line of the railway and road between Zossen and Baruth.
Our little combat team worked its way forward with other soldiers under cover of the woods to the edge, where happily the equivalent of the strength of a battalion of infantry gradually accumulated. Our spearhead had been brought to a halt by tank and anti-tank gun fire from the flanks. As our tanks spread out right and left along the edge of the woods and engaged the enemy tanks and anti-tank guns with their guns, we attacked on a broad front. We crossed the railway line and road in bounds and forced our way to the other side under cover of the concentrated fire from our rifles, Panzerfausts and hand grenades into the woods opposite. Once we had broken through and overcome the cordon, we thrust through with our tanks to the forest warden’s lodge at Wunder.[12]
7
Lakowski/Stich,