Departing Oranienbaum, I set out on the roughly 1,000-mile journey back to Germany. Having last seen my family and Anneliese in November 1940, it was hard for me to believe that I was finally returning. While fighting in Russia, home had seemed a million miles away.
FIRST LEAVE FROM RUSSIA
August 11–August 30, 1942
When we reached the border of the German Reich at Tilsit in East Prussia, the military authorities required everybody on board the train to undergo a thorough delousing. All our clothes and belongings were treated with steam in a large chamber and we took long showers in hot water. Free of all pests, we proceeded into Germany. The sense of relief that I experienced upon getting out of Russia was overwhelming.
When I finally arrived in Puggen three days after my departure from Oranienbaum, my family gave me an even warmer welcome than when I had arrived home the first time from Belgium. After 20 months away from home, my sisters had grown so much that they were almost unrecognizable to me, particularly my 5 year-old sister Margarete. Playing with her was one of the highlights of my time at home.
The welcome and treatment that I received from my family made me feel like a conquering hero. My mother even laid out a spread of specially prepared foods for me in a separate dining room, which the rest of my family envied. During my meals, my sisters sang a plaintive song just outside the door, “Hear our quiet call for pastries for all.”
Even with the large number of German men now serving in the armed forces, soldiers continued to be treated with great respect by the public. Proud of my military service at the front, my mother encouraged me to put on my uniform before we left for a shopping trip in the nearby town of Salzwedel.
Despite their best efforts, it was impossible to settle into the pleasant patterns of life with my family as I had done after the French campaign. When a soldier came home from the war in Russia, he was a different person. At a certain level, the psychological strain of living in constant danger during combat lingered inside me.
Though the old familiar routines of farm labor proved more therapeutic than my efforts to relax, it would ultimately take years to melt away the stress. Beyond this immediate tension, the fighting and killing had also perhaps affected my soul in ways that no amount of time would heal.
While the farm itself remained unchanged from my youth, much had changed in Puggen. By this time, the German government had begun sending prisoners of war and conscripted civilians to work as laborers in the nation’s factories and on its farms to replace manpower serving at the front. Following Poland’s defeat in 1939, several Polish POWs had arrived at our village. These had been joined by a larger number of French and Belgian POWs the next year.
As part of my family’s continued targeting in retribution for its lack of support for the Nazi regime, local officials ordered my father, now a member of the Volkssturm (Home Guard), to serve as a guard for the village’s 20 or so POWs. This duty required him to spend the night at the pub down the street from our house, since the prisoners were locked up at night in the pub’s ballroom.
Since my father was about 50 years old, he probably would have found it difficult to cope with an escape attempt. Fortunately, he generally got along well with the prisoners and never had any problems. One of the Belgian POWs later told my father, “Well, Herr Lubbecke, you will not have to be a watchman very long. In the near future, you will be the prisoner and we will be the guards.”
Under this labor program, the local authorities provided my family with a Polish POW named Sigmund, a factory worker from the Polish city of Lodz. Treating him as they would any German farmhand, my family worked beside him in the fields and never encountered any problems. Though government regulations stipulated that POWs should eat separately from German families, my mother ignored them and regularly set a place for Sigmund at our dining room table.
Eventually the authorities permitted the POWs to live out on the farms, if there was a space where they could be safely confined. Obtaining special permission, my family gave Sigmund a room in the Altenteil (my grandparents’ former home). This positive experience with Sigmund was repeated later in the war with two Belgian POWs whom the government supplied to my family as farm labor. Despite such changes, life in Puggen still appeared almost normal and the war seemed far away for those not engaged in the fighting.
In the middle of my two-week visit with my family, I departed Puggen on August 21 to see Anneliese in Hamburg. Despite the passage of two years since we had last spent any significant time together, our increasingly frequent exchange of letters had brought us closer, though she still remained engaged to the florist’s son.
Arriving in Hamburg, I met Anneliese not far from the florist shop in the Arkade across the Alster River from city hall, where she had been working since leaving her position at the shop in the city’s main train station earlier that spring. In the half a day that followed, we quickly recaptured the intimacy of our early relationship as we talked and strolled around the city. Our time together was everything that I had imagined while I had been frozen in the snow at Uritsk and mired in the mud at the Volkhov.
From the moment I saw Anneliese again, I began to think seriously for the first time that she would make a wonderful wife, even if she was engaged to someone else. Unable to conceal my sentiments, I told her, “I am sorry. I do not want to interfere. But I still love you.” What she chose to do was her decision, but it was important to me that she understood my feelings for her.
Just before I boarded the train to return to Puggen for the remaining week of my leave, Anneliese handed me a gold cloverleaf talisman, promising it would bring me good luck. Placing the gift in the breast pocket of my tunic, I felt confident that it was only a matter of time before we would get back together.
Yet, we both now recognized that a soldier’s fate on the battlefield was very uncertain. Even with the widespread optimism over the German advances toward the Volga and the Caucasus that summer, it was clear that many soldiers would not be coming home to their loved ones.
Chapter 10
THE DEMYANSK CORRIDOR
NOVGOROD: September–November 1942
By the time of my return from my three-week furlough at the beginning of September, part of the 58th Division had been transferred about 70 miles south of Leningrad to a position on the north shore of Lake Ilmen, located only about 15 or 20 miles south of the Volkhov battlefield. When I reached my company, it had taken up quarters in deserted Russian homes on the southern outskirts of the ancient Russian city of Novgorod.
Our mission to help guard the far northern coast of Lake Ilmen against any potential amphibious operations from the Soviet-held eastern shore was a relatively easy assignment. Even if the Russians somehow managed to conduct a surprise amphibious landing in company or battalion strength, the natural defensive advantages of our position made us confident we could easily push them back into the water before they were able to establish a secure foothold. We remained vigilant, but there was little genuine concern about an attack.
On October 15, the 154th Infantry Regiment was redesignated the 154th Grenadier Regiment. This change nominally reflected the augmentation of its overall firepower through an increase in heavy weapons such as machine guns and large mortars. In reality, any increase in firepower could not fully compensate for the regiment’s attrition of manpower that had reduced our overall strength by at least a battalion. Retaining a strong sense of pride in our unit, we saw little significance in the redesignation.
Despite our continued regular training exercises, our assignment to a quiet sector permitted us more time to relax. While the weather remained warm enough, some of us laid beside the shore of Lake Ilmen. It almost felt like
