the Volkhov. Seizing the opportunity, we began an assault that pressed in around the entire perimeter of the pocket on May 22. By the end of the month, the 58th Division and other German forces had overcome determined Soviet resistance, resealing the Kessel a second time.
As the pocket was reduced in size, bitter enemy opposition persisted, though inside the encirclement, the already difficult conditions for the Red Army troops rapidly became worse. The Soviet artillery still continued to shell us from their positions on the east side of the Volkhov River, but the men within the pocket now lacked the ammunition and other provisions necessary to sustain major combat operations.
In desperation, the entrapped Soviet infantry conducted increasingly suicidal attacks against our positions, under pressure from the Red Army political officers called Politruks. Lacking an adequate supply of rifles for their men, Russian commanders ordered some soldiers to go forward unarmed and retrieve weapons from other troops as they fell. On one occasion, I watched with amazement as an enemy soldier ran directly toward my position without a weapon.
Prisoners reported to our intelligence that special Soviet units with machine guns were sometimes placed behind these hopeless attacks to make sure that soldiers obeyed the orders to advance. The enemy succeeded in organizing a couple of larger assaults that briefly penetrated our front, but most such attempts produced only terrible losses among their troops without accomplishing any purpose. Afterward, their bloated and decaying bodies lay scattered in the open ground just in front of us.
On my return to the front late one morning in June, I took up my regular observation post a few feet to the right of a soldier manning one of the powerful new MG-42 machine guns. Because the MG-42’s exceptionally high rate of fire made it impossible to differentiate the shooting of its individual bullets, the machine gun produced a very distinctive noise, more closely resembling a cloth being ripped than a weapon being fired. Yet, perhaps its greatest asset was that the weapon would nearly always operate reliably, even in muddy conditions like those at the Volkhov.
As was commonly the case, the posted infantryman was unfamiliar to me and we engaged in little conversation, other than to remark on enemy movement. Less than a half hour after my appearance, a Russian attack surged toward our position, moving across the dense brush that occupied No Man’s Land. Instantly, the alert gunner began to pour a non-stop fusillade across our front. Calling back a fire mission, I requested our 75-millimeter guns to drop shells in a curtain roughly 25 yards in front of our position, as close as I dared risk.
With the Red Army troops still closing on our location, I added my MP-40 submachine gun’s fire to the torrent of bullets spilling from my comrade’s machine gun. Despite the absence of any return fire and the lack of any clearly visible targets in the thick foliage, the gunner and I raked our weapons over the entire field in front of us as shells from our heavy guns began to slam down in support.
When the barrel of the MG-42 finally overheated from the relentless firing, the soldier yanked it off and tossed it into a puddle next to us, producing a cloud of steam. Locking a fresh barrel into the machine gun, he started blazing away again. Already, the gunner stood in a mound of empty shell casings.
Perhaps half an hour passed with no let-up in our fire. Upon emptying my third or fourth 32-round clip, I again ducked down behind the wooden walls in order to avoid exposing myself as a target during the 15 seconds it took to reload another magazine into my weapon. At that moment, I became aware that the machine gun had grown silent, but assumed that the gunner was also reloading or again switching the barrel of his weapon.
A glance to my right revealed the gunner crumpled on the ground beside me. A second later, I spotted blood running from a hole in his temple just under the rim of his helmet. The shot that killed him had not been audible in the din of combat, but its precision made it instantly obvious to me that it came from a sniper’s rifle.
There is not much time to contemplate one’s fate in the middle of a battle, but the thought flashed through my mind that it could have been me lying there with a bullet through my head, if I had not ducked down or my submachine gun’s magazine had run out a few seconds later.
Crouching to keep my body hidden beneath the log fortifications, I sprinted over to the next infantry position 15 yards away to alert them to the loss of their machine gun support in that sector. While any regular infantryman would have had to hold his position and continue fighting, my latitude of movement as forward observer allowed me to depart that vulnerable area of the line and escape the fate of my unknown comrade.
On June 28, the relentless struggle at the Volkhov ended in a German victory three and a half months after our arrival. The Wehrmacht’s High Command reported that German forces captured approximately 33,000 Red Army prisoners, 650 artillery pieces, 170 tanks, and 3,000 machine guns. Among those taken prisoner was General Vlasov, who eventually would lead units comprised of captured Russian troops who agreed to fight with Germany against the Soviet Union’s Communist government. Viewed as a traitor by the Russians, he was executed after the war.
The German troops who went through the Volkhov also suffered during the months of fighting. Indeed, the condition of those of us who survived was often little better than that of our enemy captives. My own weight dropped about 20 or 25 pounds to an emaciatedlooking 160 pounds, but many other German soldiers endured far worse health problems.
As I wandered over what had been the bitterly contested area of the Schlauch afterward, only a giant forest of stumps stretched to the horizon where the dense woods had once stood. The Soviet dead, or rather parts of their bodies, carpeted the churned up ground. The stench was indescribably ghastly.
The Battle of the Volkhov had been a terrible struggle in almost unimaginably miserable conditions, but our success reinforced our belief that Germany would eventually prevail in the East. That summer, a new offensive in southern Russia offered us further hope that final victory was not far away.
THE ORANIENBAUM POCKET
July 1–August 11, 1942
On July 1 1942, the 58th Infantry Division was transferred roughly 75 miles northwest to the perimeter of the Oranienbaum Kessel, roughly 15 miles west of our old position at Uritsk. The Soviet troops in this area had been cut off from the main body of Red Army forces further east during the previous summer’s campaign and were now surrounded in a large semi-circular pocket with their backs to the Gulf of Finland.
Although the division occupied roughly 15 miles of the front at Oranienbaum, the general lack of action offered us a relative respite from combat. Just after our arrival, the company commander presented me with the Infanterie Sturmabzeichen commendation for close combat. As was the case with many other medals, this was received for an accumulation of combat service rather than for a specific action.
Although no major fighting took place at Oranienbaum, our heavy guns assisted in repulsing infiltration attempts by squads of Red Army soldiers about once a week. According to captured prisoners, the primary purpose of these raids was to seize one of our highly effective MG-42 machine guns that I had recently witnessed in action for the first time at the Volkhov.
Raiding parties also crossed No Man’s Land from our side, just as at Uritsk. Ranging in strength from 12-man squads up to rare 100-man units, these teams conducted reconnaissance of the enemy’s positions and attempted to capture prisoners for intelligence purposes. When these forays took place, I remained in constant readiness to call upon our company’s guns to protect their retreat in case they encountered trouble. In most situations, this support was not necessary, but our howitzers helped rescue the situation two or three times.
Despite occasional fighting, the two-month deployment at Oranienbaum permitted our division badly needed time to recuperate and receive replacements. Our three and a half months of uninterrupted combat at the Volkhov had been unusual. In normal circumstances, troops engaged in intensive combat were permitted a rest after three or four weeks of heavy fighting.
On a relatively inactive front such as Oranienbaum, troops spent perhaps 80 or 90 percent of their time at the front. Despite rare rotations to the rear, we did sometimes have time to play a card game or write a letter in our bunkers. As in many other ways, our heavy weapons company was relatively better off than a regular infantry company in terms of the proportion of time that we spent on the frontlines versus time in the rear.
On August 1, the army promoted me to corporal (Unteroffizier). A week later, I was awarded the Winter Medal, which we referred to as the “frozen meat” medal, for surviving the bitter cold that had killed so many. More importantly, I was granted a long overdue threeweek leave from duty on August 11.
