The captain was immediately excited. ‘Where is it?’
‘At the bottom of the lock!’
But this did not put the captain off. Next day he turned up with a towing vehicle and recovered the tank.
Shortly afterwards the divers were called away and our sappers had to continue on their own. The base of the canal was protected against the explosive charges with a home-made apparatus consisting of a steel hawser with weights towed by two boats.
At the beginning of March the Varta had spilled wide over its banks, the fast current forming many whirlpools. Nevertheless the sappers went on clearing the channel. On the 13th March the boat containing Major Boltov and his sappers was driven by the strong current on to a destroyed bridge, hitting it. The men fell into the ice-cold water. Comrades in the rescue and mining detachment under the deputy battalion commander for political work, Major Beumelstein, hurried to their help. In doing this the major himself fell into the water and had to take an icy bath.
Immediately behind the clearing team came the ships and boats of the Dnepr Red Banner Flotilla. They continued on to the Spree River and took part in the battle for Berlin. The armoured gunboats achieved considerable success, being armed with multi-barrelled weapons. They later enabled our troops to make a quick forced crossing of the Spree. The boats were also used for reconnaissance and transporting men and equipment. Our Guards Engineers also played a part in the sailors’ achievements.
Once the water route to the Oder had been cleared, our 8th Battalion was given a completely new task. The sappers had to make floating mines to go down the Oder into the Oder Harbour. The task of constructing these floating mines was given to Captain Melamed and several sappers.
Captain Melamed set up a research station on a little lake where he blew up captured steel pontoons, as next he had to establish the approximate weight load suitable for speedboats and other small craft. After several attempts the men decided upon a weight of 10 kilograms of Trotyl. The explosions thus produced were sufficient to severely damage the boats.
Meanwhile the battalion’s field workshop was fully occupied. Various floating mines with wooden casings were built there. Some were equipped with FTD apparatus with which the mine could be fired by radio, others had clockwork or chemical fuses. Apart from this, the mines had contact fuses that immediately detonated when the end of a wooden pole hit the ship’s side.
The prepared mines were carefully released into the water under cover of darkness from a destroyed bridge. A gentle push and the mine slipped off noiselessly into the stream. They were still safe, as the electrical fuses had not yet been set. Only after a certain time, when the mines were sufficiently distant from the bank, were these engaged. Our sappers constructed the various safety devices, most being electro-chemical. After a certain time the acid ate away a copper wire, thereby closing the contact to feather-weight pressure, the ignition only being activated when the fuse was disturbed. Sometimes the mine was only activated when a pin was pulled out by a line.
One night I watched the floating mines being launched. They were released at intervals of two to three minutes. It was pitch black. Only to our right were there flares going up near Stettin occasionally. Now and then the searchlight of a German warship tore through the darkness. Time passed slowly. A good hour had gone since the launching of the first mine. It could not have reached its target.
Suddenly the darkness was lightened by a glaring light. ‘Damn it!’ swore Lieutenant Colonel Pergament. ‘The wind drove the mine on to our own bank.’ He had hardly finished his sentence when another explosion followed. A little later two further mines went up on the river bank. ‘We are out of luck; the wind is blowing from the west.’
Then came a long interval. It was almost dawn when there were two explosions out there in the harbour. That could have been German ships.
We obtained better results with winds coming from the east or the south. Then the mines were carried quickly into the harbour and our observation posts registered their explosions.
Naturally it was difficult to estimate enemy losses from our mines. But we established from our observation posts that the enemy lost three ships and a loaded barge, a mine-sweeper was badly damaged and two bridges destroyed. Far more important than these losses was the uncertainty our floating mines caused among the German sailors. The shipping traffic in the harbour was destroyed.
Unfortunately we sometimes had to wait several days for favourable winds. During one of these imposed breaks Colonel Leontiev, the deputy brigade commander for technical equipment, visited the battalion. He suggested Lieutenant-Colonel Pergament should occupy himself seriously with ‘Sapper Artillery’. During the offensive our troops had captured artillery ammunition of all kinds of calibres that could not be used by our artillery, so our sappers decided to organise their own sapper artillery.
At this juncture Major Boltov, who had cleared the canals with Captain Budko’s company, returned.
‘Right, comrades, get busy with the captured shells,’ proposed Leontiev. The colonel issued general instructions. Construction and fitting went to the officers, NCOs and sappers of the company. The best ideas came from the platoon commander, Lieutenant Alexandrov.
On the west bank of the Oder the enemy had gone over to the defensive. For the first barrage 200 captured shells of between 150 and 211 millimetres were assembled; explosive, splinter, shrapnel, fire and smoke shells. The sappers had dug launching ramps out of the earth and laid each shell on a plank 4 to 6 centimetres wide and about 50 centimetres long. On the plank they fastened an Ammotol explosive charge, over which a second plank held the base of the shell. Instead of the head fuse, a 75 gram Trotyl was inserted in the shell body. Every shell had two electronic fuses. The first, with immediate ignition, sat in the Ammotol explosive body, the second, with a delay of 3 to 5 seconds, in the hole in the shell head. Two batches each of 100 shells were prepared in this way.
Towards midnight the enemy began expanding his defences on the west bank. We heard voices, the blows of axes and the rattling of metal. Towards 0200 hours, when the work on the west bank was in full flow, the command to fire was given.
Flames blazed up on a width of about 500 metres. 200 shells of varyingly set explosive timings flew in the enemy direction. Some exploded over the water, but most burst over the enemy trenches, a fire storm falling on the west bank. Flashes of explosions, crashes, smoke and dust! The losses could only be assessed with difficulty but were certainly significant.
In contrast we could reckon our losses exactly. Our specialists were so engaged with their task that they had not reckoned with the weight of the propelling charges of almost 1.5 kilograms. That was 300 kilograms for 200 loads. The detonation shock waves damaged several positions on our bank and severed telephone cables. Also the rifle company commander’s position collapsed in which Lieutenant Alexandrov was located with the firing controls. Fortunately all got out with minor bruises.
On the 12th March the 5th Shock Army had taken the town and fortress of Küstrin after a short but devastating artillery preparation. Ten days later it attacked out of the Kienitz bridgehead north of Küstrin, as did the 8th Guards Army from a bridgehead south of the town. After some bitter fighting they joined up west of Küstrin, confining the remains of the enemy garrison to the suburbs and Oder Island.