From II Enemy attacking. Barrages on ILONA down 50m and RITTERSPORN 2, for 13 Company.
From II All artillery resources on RITTERSPORN 2.
To 13 Company: on SCHLOSS and 8 Company.
From II ILONA up 200m. Barrages on ILONA and RITTERSPORN.
From II Enemy attacking from east via SCHLOSS (one company). Request running barrages on ILONA and RITTERSPORN.
To II Query: whether one can fire on the SCHLOSS?
From II The SCHLOSS can be fired on. Not too short!
From II What is the situation?
To II 0750 Hold on! How is it, Lieutenant Schöne?
From II Where is barrage on ILONA? Schöne OK.
To II ILONA fired on several times.
From II Prepare barrages on ILONA and RITTERSPORN 2.
To II 0826 Ready.
To II 0910 Is it known that Schöne has been awarded the Knights’ Cross?
To II 0952 Award all those recommended for Iron Cross First and Second Class, also Iron Cross First Class for Christ, Second Class for Hohenstein, Ackermann and Scherzinger.
From II 0957 Why no fire on ILONA?
From II Artillery firing too short. Up 100m.
From II 1000 Enemy in company strength in SCHLOSS. No reserves left to throw them out with. Situation of wounded hopeless. One cellar of wounded in enemy hands in SCHLOSS. Fire support from own arms especially lacking. Artillery radio unserviceable through battery, also Panthers. Transmitting with last battery. Desperately need ammunition, food, batteries, flares.
From II 1100 To Regiment: Recommend Iron Cross First Class for Second Lieutenant Zeller (twice wounded) and Second Lieutenant Plonka.
To II 1103 What are hedgehog coordinates now?
From II 1130 Prepare barrages for ILONA and RITTERSPORN 2.
To II 1130 Artillery fire on ILONA. Give corrections immediately.
From II 1137 Fire barrages.
From II 1142 Fire barrages immediately.
From II 3 salvoes on RITTERSPORN 2, 100m left.
To II Where enemy attack? Give bearing.
From II Enemy attack from east.
From II 1200 Two shots were too short.
To II 1302 Please report whether codes for all radio stations in KLESSIN (apart from the valid sheets for the 23rd and 24th) have been destroyed or have fallen into enemy hands.
From II 1345 When is relief coming? Own artillery especially tired.
To II 1349 Highest Command have yet to give orders.
From II Urgent barrages on RITTERSPORN 2 and ILONA.
From II 1440 To Regiment: Enemy counterattack in northern part.
No reserves available. Cutting off hardly possible. Repeat request of this morning as last possibility. Dead and wounded mounting by the hour.
From II 1510 Direct hit on command post. Fighting to the last man.
From II 1535 Urgent barrages on MARS and RABE.
From II 1549 Barrage on MARS.
From II 1559 Mortars firing too short, up 100m.
To II 1738 The decorations and promotions are evidence to you of Highest Command’s recognition of your exemplary fight. The Division is proud of you. Langkeit, Divisional Commander.
To II How many enemy have penetrated northern and western parts?
From II I cannot encipher as I have no codes.
To II Are the codes destroyed?
From II 1759 Yes.
From II 1810 Request barrage on Schloss.
To II Are there no more codes available?
From II 1822 Correct, none.
At last at 2120 hours the message from Division was passed to Klessin by Regiment: ‘Mission accomplished; fight your way through!’
Captain Böge ordered those men immediately to hand to assemble at the potato store at the western edge of the hamlet with the intention of breaking through during the night as a compact group. As many as possible of the severely wounded were taken along to the assembly point. Meanwhile Lieutenant Schöne took a group to the east to create a diversion and, due to the heavy enemy mortar and machine gun fire, contact with him and his group was soon lost.
Using the cover of the thick smoke and dust of an artillery barrage, Captain Böge’s group reached the hollow southwest of Klessin just ahead of a group of twenty to thirty Soviets and were able to use captured Panzerfausts found in the hollow to blast their way through and reach the unoccupied first and second lines of Soviet trenches. By this time the Soviet troops were fully alerted and using flares and Verey lights to illuminate the breakthrough point, which was brought under heavy machine gun fire from both north and south. But Böge’s men, using the last hand grenades and Panzerfausts stormed the third, heavily-manned Soviet trench and broke through, just 26 of them reaching the German lines.
Meanwhile Lieutenant Schöne’s group reached the potato shed and then followed the track west across the fields for about thirty minutes before they too had to storm the last of the Soviet trenches. Using the last of their strength, some 30-35 men, including some severely wounded, got through to the German lines. Several others were to slip through the Soviet lines during the course of the night and reach the neighbouring Grenadier Regiment 1241.
The Political Department of the Russian 8th Guards Army utilised the victory over Klessin to issue a special pamphlet aimed at the 1242nd with the text:
SOLDIERS of the Officer Cadet Grenadier Regiment 1242! More than 300 German soldiers were surrounded in Klessin. On the 23rd March 1945 the entire garrison was destroyed. No man broke through to their own lines. 75 men raised the white flag and stayed alive. All the others died senselessly.
HITLER IS TO BLAME!
He began this senseless war. He demanded in his orders: “Hold out at any price!”
YOUR COMMANDERS ARE TO BLAME!
They did not withdraw the troops from Klessin when they should have done and then condemned them to death with lying promises. With their futile attempts at relief they sent hundreds of other soldiers to their deaths, as well as squandering many tanks and self-propelled guns.
When the war ended, just part of the front portal of the Schloss remained, together with the rusting hulks of the destroyed German and Soviet tanks. Tens of thousands of mines littered the landscape. The mines and hulks were removed and the remaining ruins collapsed. Later the hamlet was revived with the construction of a row of houses along the Wuhden road and two cottages on the old site.
In 1995 a stone was unveiled in Wuhden commemorating those who had fought and died on the Reitwein Spur, with the inscription:
FIVE
The Bridge at Golzow
HORST ZOBEL (6 MAY 1918 – 3 OCT 1999)
Horst Zobel, as a captain, commanded the 1st Battalion of Panzer-Regiment ‘Müncheberg‘ in the fighting in the Oderbruch. Here he relates his experiences near Golzow as the Soviet 5th Shock and 8th Guards Armies united their bridgeheads, isolating the fortress of Küstrin. Zobel’s newly-formed battalion was under threat of disbandment at the time.
Suddenly the division was allocated a sector of the front and, as the preparations for our proposed disbandment were not yet complete, we were committed intact. At the commanders’ conference at Division, I was able to establish that at least two of my squadrons would be included, although our mixed 2nd Squadron would have to detach its SPG (self-propelled gun) Troop to secure the Küstrin ‘corridor’. It had unfortunately become the practice for the tanks to be split up on the ground in order to reinforce strong points. This tactic had been born out of the necessity of the time, the tanks being needed to bolster the fighting spirit of the infantry, and was known as ‘corsetting’. Only after I had pointed out that the completely flat terrain with its kilometres-long visibility enabled me to guarantee that I would be in a position to repel any attack promptly, were my proposals for deployment accepted. Fortunately, I had enough time to inspect my squadron commanders’ individual areas and to give them explicit instructions before we drove out to our positions on what must have been the night of 20/21 March 1945. That same night the individual tanks were dug in and camouflaged. I was able to assure myself next day that the tanks were superbly camouflaged from view both from the front and above, and that many had a field of fire of from two to three kilometres.