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We reached the woodland track on which soldiers were emerging from Halbe. I went along under cover of the tanks hand in hand with a soldier, who gave me a lump of sugar, saying that it would calm me.

Meanwhile it had become pitch dark. There was the glow of a fire here and there, so that we could make out the tanks. Before long we came under fire again. The soldier showed me a place, somewhere between uneven ground and a heap of brushwood. The fire-fight intensified. I despaired and began crying for the first time in days. Suddenly the soldiers started running with a loud ‘Hurrah!’ The Russians had to think they were outnumbered. Later came the many wounded, suffering, groaning, calling for the medical orderlies. We were completely incapable of helping them.

The wood came to an end in front of us. Over there in the darkness the soldiers thought was the autobahn. We could hear tanks moving, but no one knew whether they were German or Russian.

So the column wheeled left. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. We could hear some soldiers placing two wounded on a motorcycle combination, but it was no longer serviceable. The stream of humanity would stop from time to time, then move on again.[28]

Another officer cadet from the same regiment as Rudi Lindner reported on events in Halbe that day:

On 29 April 1945 at about midday (the day of the abortive break-out attempt of several units west of us) three four-wheeled scout cars and about the same number of Volkswagen jeeps suddenly appeared before our positions [the sparse screen formed by the 1st Battalion, 86th SS Volunteer Grenadier Regiment Schill] from a westerly direction. Their commander was a young second lieutenant, a Hitler Youth leader type. At first we took them for Seydlitz-Troops and wanted them to disarm immediately, but they identified themselves as a reconnaissance unit of the Friedrich Ludwig Jahn Division of 12th Army coming from the area west of Teupitz. Their unit had become badly disorientated in the last few days and had contact neither to the west nor to the east. By the sounds of battle coming from the east, there must still be strong elements of our own troops around. Their commander wanted to know for sure and so had sent out this reconnaissance unit. Any stragglers were to be brought back with them. The officer had radio contact, so we sent him on to the XI SS Panzer Corps battlegroup, but what happened then remains unknown. During a short cigarette break we learned something about the other divisions [of 12th Army] for the first time. This encounter took place in the woods three kilometres north-east of Halbe, north of the track to the Klein Hammer forest warden’s lodge on the Dahme Flood Canal.

We only hoped that our armoured vehicles would keep on driving west and that at last we would not have to march any more. We came to another road, crossed a railway line and were able to read the name ‘Halbe’ on a road sign. We were making a gentle turn with our tank into the village, when we were suddenly fired on from all sides. Within a few minutes our first three tanks had been blown up. The crews squeezed themselves out of the narrow hatches completely wrapped in flames, like human torches. Everything happened quickly. Flares shot into the air and rifle fire whipped through the dark. Our remaining tanks turned round and as rapidly as it had started everything became quiet. Then suddenly someone shouted: ‘Don’t shoot, they’re our comrades.’

Everyone wanted to move on and pressed into the village street, but heavy rifle whipped into our ranks from the buildings as we formed a perfect target in front of the bright background of burning tanks. Only the trees on the street provided minimum cover from one side. Then shots from Russian anti-tank guns and tanks started coming from the western end of the village street.

There were no officers to give orders in these chaotic circumstances. We had no maps and no plan how to get out of this Halbe mousetrap. At last a sergeant-major shouted: ‘Machine guns and Panzerfausts up front.’

We fired at the windows of the buildings from which we were being fired at and, under cover of our fire, a few grenadiers stormed the buildings. Some dull hand-grenade explosions came from the buildings and we had found our cover. We immediately started moving the wounded off the street into the cellars.

The blazing night was filled with the horrible cries of the wounded, the bangs of exploding ammunition from the burning tanks, bursts of machine-gun fire, rifle shots and Russian gunfire.

We saw a wounded comrade who had had a leg shot off and were trying to pull him to safety by his arms as enemy rifle bullets whistled past. Then one of our tanks caught him with its tracks when it was turning and squashed him flat.

A medical orderly appeared to take over the care of the wounded whom we had carried in and said to us: ‘Make sure that you get through. I’ll stay with the wounded and hand them over to the Russians.’ We silently shook his hand and made our way out of the back of the building, feeling safer when we reached the edge of the woods.

We soon reached the Lübben–Königs Wusterhausen autobahn, which we crossed at about midnight on 29 April. At last we reached the edge of the woods, where we found foxholes that had only been abandoned a few hours before. A small building stood on the far side of the woods – I don’t know whether it was a forest warden’s lodge – from which a white flag was waving. It was the first white flag that we had seen. This apparently idyllic scene was abruptly disturbed when about 30 Russians rushed out of the building to seek cover in the adjacent woods. We engaged them with machine-gun fire at a range of about 150 metres, but what stunned and left us shattered, was a naked and raped girl with a head wound lying about 100 metres left of the building and a soldier in German uniform hanging from a pine tree next to her. We were struck dumb, staring silently at the two dead persons, at the raped girl and the hanging soldier, who looked at us with glazed eyes. We cut down the dead man and went on slowly, each with the firm resolve that it was better to die than to be taken prisoner. We carried on under the cover of the woods as Russian planes crossed over above searching for us.[29]

Horst Wilke confirmed this last incident:

This building in the woods must have been the Massow forest warden’s lodge, which had been burnt out during the fighting. I myself went past there at about 0530 hours on 1 May, and several timbers were still glowing. The track going past it was being used by the Russians as a supply route to the autobahn. The positions were full of dead soldiers and civilians. A bit aside from the track lay a naked girl of about 12–15 years old, and next to her a dead German soldier who still had some rope around his neck. We had a good view of the terrain with the rising sun.[30]

Other units had yet to pass through Halbe. The SS-second lieutenant of Battlegroup Becker continued his account:

We only took up temporary positions on 29 April, but the Russians kept approaching hesitantly. We had captured two machine guns with a quantity of ammunition the previous day, and were amazed that the Russians had mainly German weapons. We went on in the afternoon and reached the outskirts of Halbe. It really was frightful. I have never seen so many dead, though unfortunately most were German. The Russians had dug in their T-34s to try and prevent the cauldron being breached, but we still had some Königstigers on our side, so it was possible to break through their positions. Later, in Russian captivity, we were told that 55,000 Germans and 5,000 Russians fell at Halbe on 29 April.

We were under constant attack from low-flying aircraft, but by 1700 hours Halbe was behind us as we followed an avenue to the west. I was wounded in the left thigh by a low-flying attack, which was no pleasant birthday present, but I carried on with an emergency dressing. We marched on all night towards Beelitz. We came to an artillery range, where there were Russian snipers in the trees. By this time we had been sharply reduced to about seventy men.

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28

Helmut Jurisch in correspondence with the author.

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29

Wilke, Am Rande der Strassen, pp. 65–9.

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30

Ibid., p. 70.