again.
Before entering a military academy back in Germany, officer candidates had to fulfill a short tour of duty in charge of an infantry squad. On September 18, I was assigned temporary command of a squad of about a dozen soldiers in one of the regular infantry companies, comprised mostly of men from the Hamburg area.
Removed from my familiar role and comrades, this new assignment placed me in a role for which I felt unprepared, among soldiers I did not know. Naturally, I greeted the task without much enthusiasm, but accepted it as a necessary step in the process of becoming an officer.
Larger events soon took us into action. Intelligence in early October revealed that the Soviets were massing two armies before the German front at Nevel, located about 150 miles south of Leningrad. As the junction point between Army Group North and Army Group Center, it was a particularly vital sector of the front.
Responding to this imminent threat, the high command directed additional forces to the Nevel area from across the northern front, including the 58th Division. Together with the rest of the 154th Regiment’s infantry, my squad spent October 2 to October 6 aboard trains on a circuitous 300-mile journey south from Oranienbaum.
The expected Russian offensive commenced on October 6 and quickly broke through at the seam of the two German Army Groups. The newly arriving 58th Division played a key role in halting the enemy’s advance just north of Nevel, but its hastily organized counterattack was unable to regain control of the town.
When the train carrying my infantry squad and other elements of the 154th Regiment reached the Nevel area, we joined the desperate fight. After the infantry company’s commander outlined my assignment on a map, I met with my men to explain what we could expect as we moved into our frontline position. “Listen closely, this hill ahead of us is under Russian fire. When we reach the top of it, the Russians will be able to see us. Get over the top and onto the other side where we’ll have cover again.”
Shouting, “Auf gehts!” (“Let’s go!”), I led them forward. Advancing over the treeless crest of the hill, we immediately encountered machine-gun fire and dashed for cover at the bottom. Given our vulnerability in this situation, I was relieved to execute the mission with only one wounded man.
Upon reaching our frontline, I instructed my squad to dig trenches and haul up logs to create a rampart. In the midst of constructing these defenses, a group of several German Stuka dive-bombers appeared up in the sky.
With sudden alarm, we watched as they began to plummet toward us. Gaining speed in their descent, the sirens mounted under their wings screeched louder and louder. The planes were coming right at us! Only at the last minute did they veer off to deliver their bombs on an enemy target about 150 yards to the front of our trenches.
A short time after we took up our post, a flock of sheep wandered into the No Man’s Land running between the German and Soviet lines. In the fading light just before sundown, one of the men in my squad brought down one of the sheep with his rifle. Once it was dark, a couple of my men hauled the lamb back into our lines, where it was skinned and roasted over an open fire. Having gone without fresh meat for a long time, we all savored a rare feast of mutton.
Our satisfaction did not last long. Apparently, the meat was cooked inadequately. Everyone in my squad soon began to experience stomach cramps and had to run for the bushes. At the end of my own two-week bout of diarrhea, I swore an oath to myself that I would never touch mutton again.
Because of casualties suffered by the infantry company’s officers in the intense combat, I was shortly assigned the command of a full platoon of roughly three-dozen men. Lacking bunkers in which to take shelter, we huddled in our holes in the already freezing weather.
During a firefight on October 12, a bullet passed through the left arm of my overcoat. While only slightly grazing my skin, the injury nonetheless required me to seek first aid and bandages from our medic, temporarily pulling me off the frontline.
With a brief moment to contact Anneliese, I penned a letter. The following line conveys the extent to which my feelings for her sustained me. “It is because of your existence and love that life in combat here on the Eastern Front is made bearable.”
After a couple of days back up at the front with the infantry platoon, new orders arrived on October 16 reassigning the infantry command to someone else and directing me to remain in the rear area. Running increasingly short of officers, the army perhaps took this measure as part of its larger effort to ensure that officer candidates would not die in battle just before returning to Germany for training at one of the five Kriegsschulen (war academies).
Though my brief stint in command of regular infantry troops proved a positive experience, there had not been enough time for us to develop any sort of bond. While the troops treated me with the respect due anyone superior in rank, they were otherwise indifferent to me.
Likewise, I felt little personal attachment to them and missed my old comrades back in the 13th Company. Working as a forward observer gave me a greater sense of responsibility, knowing that the whole regiment was depending on my skills to provide them with fire support from our heavy guns.
On October 17, I received orders from Col. Behrend to attend a ten-day course. Conducted a few miles behind the frontlines, it was designed to help prepare officer candidates who would soon be entering a Kriegsschule. Having obtained the official status of Fahnrich (junior officer candidate), I finally departed Russia on October 31 for the long train trip back to Germany.
PARTISANS
To defend against attack by Soviet partisan forces, the front and rear railcars of the train were mounted with light anti-aircraft guns. Although sabotage of the railroad tracks along our route delayed the trip a couple of times, we otherwise crossed through occupied Soviet territory without encountering significant partisan activity.
Despite the interference with its logistics that the German Army faced from enemy partisans, most of the time our division did not have much difficulty obtaining supplies at the front. The worst supply problems had actually resulted from the weather during the bitterly cold winter of 1941–1942. Since that time, the Wehrmacht had succeeded in adequately meeting our needs for food, ammunition, and other essential supplies. Even letters and parcels from home arrived promptly.
Although we did not notice any change in the availability of our supplies at the front, soldiers returning from leave in 1943 began to report that the partisans were becoming a significant problem in rear areas. They eventually grew so powerful that the German Army deployed whole divisions behind the lines to conduct counterinsurgency operations to secure the rail links to our army at the front. Even with these efforts, the partisans frequently succeeded in disrupting our rail network and impeding the movement of troops and supplies.
Up at the front, we placed a large part of the blame for the growing problem with the partisans on the brutal way the Generalkommissariat (Nazi political officials) ran the occupation behind us. These Nazis in the Generalkommissariat were known as Goldfasanen (Golden Pheasants) because of the golden brown color of their party uniforms and their arrogant and corrupt misrule.
Most of the German soldiers around me felt a deep bitterness at the suffering that these Goldfasanen intentionally and unnecessarily inflicted on the Soviet civilian population. This ideologically inspired cruelty led many of the occupied peoples that had once welcomed us as liberators to shift their support to the partisans working for a Communist victory.
RETURN TO GERMANY
October 31–December 7, 1943
Because my orders did not immediately require me to report to the 58th Division’s reserve base in Oldenburg, Anneliese and I had made plans to spend four days together in St. Peter-Ording, in Schleswig-Holstein, where she had been posted as a nurse. On November 3, I finally reached the small town and took a hotel room.
