The Seydlitz-Troops were particularly active during this phase, as in this account by an unidentified soldier:
Near Sperenberg a second lieutenant suddenly appeared near me and wanted me to go and speak to his general. We were just about to make an attack, and some T-34s had been reported, when the second lieutenant said to me that we should stop the attack and fire three red flares. He had a flare pistol with him. The general was wearing camouflage uniform without badges of rank. When I went up to him and enquired his name and where he came from, he said that he was General Eckert and that he came from Führer Headquarters. I told him that we were continuing our attack and would fire no red signal rockets. He ordered the attack broken off, but then a Russian shell exploded nearby and he was killed. I checked him over: grey trousers, camouflage jacket, no medals or badges, no papers. I took the flare pistol from the second lieutenant and told him to bury his ‘general’. He was a Seydlitz man.[25]
Despite the additional commitment by the Soviets of 71st Mechanized Brigade from the Wünsdorf area, 68th Independent Guards Tank Brigade from the Horstwalde area, and 117th Guards Rifle Division from Luckenwalde, the main German group was only checked briefly between Sperenberg and Kummersdorf Gut. By this time any formal command structure in the break-out groups had ceased to exist, but these desperate German troops maintained their successful efforts until nightfall that day, having overcome three Soviet cordons and covered about 25 kilometres, nearly half the way to Beelitz.[26]
Some, like Major Brand’s 21st Armoured Reconnaissance Battalion of 21st Panzer Division, were less fortunate, as he reported:
About 2,000 leaderless officers and soldiers had tagged on to the battalion, together with the same number of civilians of all ages and both sexes. Renewed break-out attempt early on 29 April. Success near Halbe at first, with the Russians withdrawing with heavy losses, but at the bridge where the road crosses the autobahn west of Halbe, the whole unit fell into a Russian trap. Hundreds of dead, semi-demented civilians, frightful state of affairs. Three fatal casualties in my own command vehicle. Control was lost. Women raped to death by Russians from a nearby camp lying in the woods and on the roads.[27]
But the horror was not yet over at Halbe. Erika Menze from Märkisch Buchholz, then seventeen, was one of the refugees who tried to get through Halbe that day:
On 29 April there was nothing to remind us that, according to the calendar, this was a Sunday. We hardly thought at all. Climb up on the truck, down from the truck, take cover. One was just moving and acting automatically. Sometimes I thought to myself: ‘Don’t get wounded.’ There were already many wounded soldiers sitting and lying on the trucks. We reached just short of Halbe on this terrible Sunday morning of 29 April.
Again and again we had to take cover in the shallow ditches on the edge of the woods. The mud splashed so! Then things quietened down a bit. We looked up and saw clearly where we were. Off to the right the tall buildings of the post office and railway station. On the left the wood, where the Poliklinik stands today. In front of us the road that leads to Märkisch Buchholz on the left and goes straight ahead across the railway lines into the village.
I don’t know by what miracle we had remained unscathed until then. I don’t know now how I got across the railway lines at Halbe station. What I saw was horrible. The tanks rolled down Lindenstrasse covered all over with wounded soldiers. One fell off and the next tank rolled right over him, squashing him flat, so that the next tank rolled through a pool of blood. There was nothing of this soldier left. It happened in seconds.
I had to take care where I lay. The pavement near the Drassdo Bakery was covered in corpses, all German soldiers. Many more dead were lying alongside the houses, stacked up at an angle, leaving no cobblestone or piece of pavement uncovered. I had to pass over these dead soldiers, their heads yellow, grey, crushed flat, their hands yellow, grey or greyish-black, only the wedding rings glimmering gold or silver. A horrific scene.
At last I reached the home of the cobbler Luban. This far and no further. It must have been about noon, for some women had cooked some cabbage soup and we each got a large cupful. But that was the end of our longed-for respite.
Two Russians came to the cellar entrance and explained to the inhabitants that the Germans were attacking again and that we all had to leave the cellar. I grabbed my food bag and we left the cellar one after the other. I saw the Russian soldiers for the first time at the house door.
We all ran across the yard and behind through the garden into the open field, where there was a stack of logs several metres long. I lay down there on my back, not moving an inch. Then all hell broke loose.
There was firing over us, behind us and beside us, all kinds of small arms fire, the bigger stuff not so close. One got used to the sound of firing and explosions from the bigger weapons.
But what came next was not possible to make out. Heavy weapons were roaring and Stalin-Organs were mentioned. Heavy and light machine guns were rattling and tracer bullets whistled over us. ‘Don’t move! They’re firing at anything that moves’, a woman near me cried out. This lasted from early afternoon until dusk. The barrage must have lasted six hours. The woman next to me was wounded twice, her brother-in-law too. They comforted each other as best as they could.
After hours of bombardment, it became quieter. During the bombardment we had seen many shot-up ruins collapse.
Night began to fall. A Russian took a large glass of what looked like sugar or semolina from a handcart standing not far from us. I thought, so he comes and helps himself and we have to stay still. But he only looked very shyly towards us. He needed it as much as we did. As we looked back there was no horizon to be seen. Everything was covered in smoke. We all tried to stand up, then noticed how cold we had become.
German soldiers came and hurried us up. The Russians had been driven off and we should get away quickly towards the autobahn. But going on again with them was nonsense, carrying on in the hell of the pocket. We had long been encircled, as we discovered months later.