‘Nobody can convince me that any non-infantryman can imagine what is taking place here. Think of the most brutal exhaustion you have ever experienced, direct burning sunlight, weeping sores on your feet – and you have my condition not at the end but at the beginning of a 45km march. It takes hours before your feet become insensitive to the painful wounds at each step on these roads which are either gravel or sand at the edges.’(19)
Numerous factors accounted for this remarkable stamina. Service in the Hitler Youth and Arbeitsdienst often included long route marches. This was also an age when everybody walked. Boys walked to school and adults to work. The transport and communications revolutions of the late 20th century had yet to come; people were fitter and psychologically disposed to walk long distances to work or for pleasure. None the less, this does not prepare the body for the brutal forced-marching required in war. Some motivation would have come from stoic veterans of the previous French campaign. It was clear that sabre-like Panzer slashes across the Low Countries could be blunted by prolonged heavy resistance or indeed snapped off if over-extended.
One such event had occurred at Arras on 21 May 1940 when a determined British flank attack had taken advantage of a developing Panzer-infantry gap. Panzer advances were dangerous because they unhinged the defence after plunging into the depth of the enemy hinterland. They ignored threats to the flanks because the enemy was more concerned with the vulnerability of their own and the rear. Terminal lethality in German Blitzkrieg terms was conferred by marching infantry. It was their fighting power which ensured eventual annihilation and a decisive outcome. Veterans sensibly assumed casualties might be reduced if the momentum of the advance convinced the enemy further resistance was pointless and surrender. Infantry following close on Panzers sensed that the nearer they were to the Panzers the less fighting would be required. With luck, the tanks would do it for them. This was motivation indeed. ‘A powerful and shocking impression was left by our Panzers and Stukas from the destroyed armies on the follow-on march routes,’ declared Harald Henry, marching toward Mogilev in the central sector.
‘Huge craters were left by Stuka bombers always precisely accurate along the edges of roads. Their air pressure had lifted the biggest and heaviest tanks in the air and turned them over. Our Panzers had settled the rest after the surprise bombing attacks, and we marched for 25km along a scene of unbelievable destruction.’(20)
‘As we march the enemy continues to withdraw eastwards,’ observed Leutnant Heinrich Haape with Infantry Regiment 18. ‘It seems as if our battalion is never to catch up with him.’ The monotony of the march transcended everything, even the approaching horror of combat. So far as Haape was concerned, it appeared ‘as if our war is to be an uninterrupted marathon march to the Urals, perhaps even further’.(21)
‘These marching hours were endless,’ declared Harald Henry, marching on to the Dnieper river, ‘25 or 30km alongside smashed and burned out tanks, vehicle after vehicle, onward past skeletons of totally shot-up and fire blackened villages’. He had a sensitive eye for the incongruous picture of tiger-lilies blooming in the gardens of gutted buildings within ‘black and ghostly surrounding walls’. These forced marches were no victory parade. They were a remorseless brutal and physical ordeal required of the infantry to keep up with the Panzers. Casualties apart, they exerted their own psychological toll. ‘One breathed in the distinctive characteristic smell this campaign had already permanently etched on my mind,’ admitted Henry, ‘a mixture from burning, sweat and horse carcasses.’ Strong sunlight swiftly transformed bodies into grotesque black shapes.
‘The most dreadful [sight] was the horses completely bloated and eviscerated, with their intestines spilled out and muzzles bloodily torn off. Overall there hung the stench of destruction: a disturbing mixture of the abattoir and putrefaction pervading the air with a stagnant decadence over our column. The worst was a pig gnawing with noisy relish at a horse carcass, because we realised the logic of the food chain meant we would one day taste some of this horse flesh ourselves.’(22)
Slowly but surely the massed German infantry formations closed up on the Panzer advance. ‘We are happy, we can laugh at the dust, the heat, the thirst – for only another 30km marching lies ahead,’ declared Leutnant Haape. ‘Our vanguard and the Panzer units are already involved in heavy fighting.’ There was to be a battle. Resistance on the east bank of the Dvina river was stiffening by the hour. ‘At last the war is waiting for us!’ proclaimed Haape exuberantly.
‘The column swings cheerfully along the road. There is point to the marching, and the objective is only a few kilometres away.’(23)
Closing with the enemy, the realisation that one must kill or be killed was a different and more emotive experience for the infantryman. ‘As a soldier in action,’ remarked Leutnant Hubert Becker after the war, ‘I know that others will die, that I might die – might get killed at any moment.’ Individuals mastered pre-battle fears in their own intensely private way. ‘Killing,’ Becker explained, ‘that word, was never used; it was never a topic for us.’ Nevertheless it had to be faced.
‘During attacks, when the Russians charged or when we advanced, we would be extremely fearful and uneasy. One didn’t know whether one would survive the next minute.’(24)
The physical burden was part of this psychological pressure. Infantry soldier Harald Henry’s experience was typical. Having marched 25km by day, he spent the night standing guard with other members of his infantry section in a soaking meadow. His following day was ‘also very demanding’. There was a few hours’ rest during the afternoon before marching resumed to an objective 44km distant. When at midnight a halt was declared, they were fired upon as they rested. This resulted in a series of manoeuvres and countermarching for two and three-quarter hours, having discarded packs, so as to attack the enemy. ‘But for me,’ said Henry, ‘that meant carrying a 30lb ammunition box.’ A largely uneventful night action ensued, following the collateral damage produced by fighting up ahead with an occasional burning tank lighting up the night. They did not close with the enemy, but did expend a lot of nervous energy at the prospect of doing so. Henry complained:
‘The effort required for this attack with its rapid advances was immense, and now, with dawn coming up, the second part of our 44km long stretch lay before us. I was totally drained and worn out with absolutely no reserves of strength remaining.’(25)
The burden on motorised infantry units, far ahead with the Panzers, was no less unremitting. They had to drive constantly, fight a containment battle, then continue the advance with the same bleak prospect of relentless meeting engagements. These produced a steady, but increasingly apparent, casualty toll. Haupt-sturmführer Klinter, commanding a motorised 3rd SS Division ‘Totenkopf’ platoon near Daugavpils, recalled Russian infantry attacks at 05.00 hours, following an eventful night. Countless figures in earth-brown uniforms surged toward their position ‘like an avalanche – or more accurately like an unstoppable stream of molten lava’. Artillery support was not available; there had been no resupply of shells.