So we went on further and must have gone quite a distance before we suddenly saw two Stalin tanks standing side by side blocking the street. We crouched down and fired Panzerfausts at them but, as I feared, they failed to penetrate the frontal armour and we could not tackle them from the side, so this only served to wake them up. Then we came under fire from sub-machine guns from two windows, which we soon silenced with Panzerfausts.
We beat a hasty retreat and had just got round the street corner as the tank guns opened up. I made a note of the name of the street so that Mrugalla would not have to look for himself, but in fact we were on the wrong course, as I later discovered.
The main Russian attack was coming from the Schlesischer Station and so went past us. Why the Russians attacked from there I later learnt from Soviet military literature. General Bokov, the political commissar to the 5th Shock Army, whose commander Colonel General Berzarin was appointed City Commandant that day, wrote that the army had captured, together with its ammunition, some heavy German siege artillery of the Thor type in Silesia that had been used in the siege of Sevastopol. These mortars were mounted on railway wagons adjusted to the Russian gauge and, according to Bokov, a track had been adjusted to this gauge as far as the Schlesischer Station and they started firing their bombs into the centre of Berlin on 25 April.[47]
When we got back to the Police Praesidium and I reported back to Mrugalla, he was already preparing to move out his battalion, having received new orders to defend the Schlesischer Station. He gave me the order to set up my mortar platoon – I would know better where than he – in support of his battalion. He gave me a company of Volkssturm in support as he knew how much mortars could fire, and they could collect mortar bombs from the Reichs Chancellery so that I could provide a proper barrage, as he put it. I accepted gratefully, as we only had one set of ammunition with us.
The Hitler Youth boys were also there, asking to go into action. As I now knew that Mrugalla would not think of establishing a proper screen behind which I could operate, I was in desperate need of infantry cover and so reluctantly took on the Hitler Youths. These boys were well equipped with automatic carbines, goodness knows who had arranged that. In comparison, the Volkssturm only had captured French and Italian rifles with hardly any ammunition for them.
So now I moved along between the raised stretch of S-Bahn track and the Spree with my headquarters section, the Volkssturm commander and the runners, as well as the two Hitler Youth leaders, toward the Schlesischer Station.
At the Jannowitz Bridge S-Bahn Station the track was about ten metres up on an almost vertical structure of hewn sandstone blocks. Just beyond the Jannowitz Bridge I found the place I was looking for. The massive S-Bahn elevation was hollow like a kind of casemate with some concrete steps leading down inside. I wanted to set up here in a dead angle of the casemate, where the artillery could not reach me, only high trajectory fire, for which the Russians had more than enough stuff. Their 120 mm mortars, for instance, against which my 80 mm mortars were nothing.
I summoned my platoon, and the Volkssturm men knew where to find me with the ammunition.
My platoon arrived and started setting up. With one of my section sergeants who was assigned as forward observer, the signallers and the Hitler Youths that had arrived meanwhile, we went along the tracks to the Jannowitz Bridge Station. I looked for a good location for the Hitler Youth to set up a defensive position. I found one but, as I was to discover, not as good as our mortar position.
With the forward observer, the signallers and four Hitler Youths, who wanted to protect the observer, we went some distance toward the Schlesischer Station. I found a tall building from where the observer would have a good overall view. The signallers paid out the telephone cable and I went back to my position.
We soon had communication and the forward observer started calling for fire, although he still did not have a proper target. He reported that the Russians were sticking up a red flag every time they took a tall building, but that most of these flags were promptly being shot down again. Then the Volkssturm came over the bridge behind us and delivered about five hundred mortar bombs. Now we had what we needed and could start.
Then the forward observer called. The enemy were advancing in a dense group supported by tanks. We began peppering them and when one thinks that with practice a mortar can have as many as ten bombs in the air at one time, one can get some idea of the fire-power of these six mortars.
A mortar bomb normally makes a hole about two hands wide upon impact, but on a roadway it makes no hole but breaks up into tiny splinters that riddle human targets like a sieve, and there must have been fearful casualties among that dense mob of advancing Russians.
When the Volkssturm came with a second load and saw our barrage they quickly put their bombs into the casemate and vanished. This was quite right, for it was a hot place to be. Then the forward observer called for us to stop. There was no longer a target. The surviving Russians had fled for cover.
My men now thought that they had earned a rest before the next engagement, and I agreed with them. They had acquitted themselves very well in their first action, and I dug out some tobacco for them. Nevertheless, I told them not to stand around in the open but to take cover in the casemates, thinking that we could expect some retaliation for what we had done. But that it would be so bad, I had no idea.
So I was standing outside alone with one of my NCOs when I heard a noise that I recognised as the discharge of numerous artillery pieces and the dull thump of heavy mortars. I quickly grabbed a mortar and took it under cover. The NCO promptly followed suit as the storm burst over us.
We raced down into the casemates and not a second too soon. Then it hit. Our eardrums were nearly displaced with the din of bursting shells. I had never experienced anything like it. How long the barrage lasted, I cannot say. It could have been seconds or hours. We sat or lay there with the anxious feeling that it would never end, unable to communicate with each other because of the din, each man isolated within himself.
When at last we could go outside again, the sudden silence came like a pain to our ears, and the sky had darkened with the fumes from the exploding shells still hanging in the air.
I first looked at our mortars. Only the two that we had taken inside remained serviceable, the rest being nothing but torn and twisted metal, and that after only our first time in action. Our communications were also lost, the telephone cable having been shot through in several places.
I had the two surviving mortars set up roughly and shot off the remaining ammunition blindly. I did not want to stay here, but to withdraw over the Spree, so sent a runner to recall the forward observer, if he was still alive. I went forward myself to see how the boys were and how they had got on under fire.
When I reached the Hitler Youth position, it was a shattering sight. One could say that there was not a single stone left standing on another. Everything had been churned over several times by the artillery fire and the boys shredded into small pieces. I looked on with the tears running down my face.
I reproached myself for having accepted the boys’ offer, when I should have remained firm and sent them away. But my self-reproach came too late, as they too firmly believed that they could do something for their country. Their mothers would wait in vain for their return. I could not inform them of their sons’ fate, for I did not even know any of their names.
Now the forward observer returned with his four Hitler Youth volunteers. The barrage had passed right over them, leaving them unhurt. They too started crying when they saw what had happened to their comrades, but when I hoped that they had had enough, they said to me, still crying: ‘Sergeant Major, this makes us even harder. We want to stay with you until the last!’ What can one say to a boy like that? They were twelve to fifteen year-olds. Today’s youngsters would never believe what their predecessors had to put up with.
47
8 The Thor mortar was of 600mm calibre with a 5.07m barrel, weighed 120 tons, and could fire 12 shots per hour up to a range of 6,800m. According to General Bokov, writing about General Bezarin’s 5th Shock Army, elements of which stormed the Schlesischer station, they also had 2,000 guns and mortars of 80mm calibre and over with orders not to spare the ammunition, for they had just received 2,000 railway wagonloads. The Schlesischer station is now the Ostbahnhof.