Meanwhile, the speed of the Allied advance through France and into Belgium forced a sudden evacuation of her field hospital in Genk on September 8, 1944. In the chaos that followed, the medical personnel had to make their own escape.
After hitching a ride to back to Germany, Anneliese received a temporary leave from her nursing duties. Because of the air raids on Hamburg, she went to stay at my family’s farm in Puggen until she was called back to service.
About this time, refugees fleeing the Soviet threat in the east and the bombing raids on the larger German cities began to appear in Puggen and other rural areas in greater numbers. My family welcomed distant relatives into our home from all over Germany, but there were also many strangers who knew no one in Puggen. Perhaps because of my family’s long antagonistic relations with the Nazis, the local authorities assigned 20 or so of these refugees to our farm.
Every unoccupied room in the house was turned over to the refugees. Lacking enough beds, my family piled straw for the guests to sleep on. To help meet the need for food, my family even butchered some of our pigs. The presence of refugees placed an especially heavy daily burden on my mother, who worked hard to make sure that everyone was provided with cooked meals and other basic needs.
Despite my family’s lack of Nazi sympathies, my sisters were pressured to attend regular meetings of the Bund Deutscher Madchen or BDM (League of German Girls), the Nazis’ female youth organization. In what apparently was an intentional attempt to prevent the girls from attending church services, the BDM held these sessions on Sunday mornings.
While my sisters were on their way to a meeting in a neighboring village late in the war, a low-flying Allied aircraft suddenly appeared and began strafing everything on a nearby road, causing my sisters to spring for cover in a ditch. There were similar stories of Allied fighter planes breaking away from the bombers to attack people working in the fields. Although the rural areas in Germany escaped the Anglo-American bombing raids that targeted cities, even there residents did not completely escape death from the sky.
On both fronts, the war was drawing steadily closer to the Fatherland and no one would be left untouched.
Chapter 15
RETREAT INTO THE REICH
“FORTRESS MEMEL”
October 5, 1944–late January, 1945
Upon being issued orders to retreat from Latvia to the German port city of Memel on October 5, most of the regular infantry from the 58th Infantry Division headed by truck to Riga’s harbor and then set out aboard ship on the short sea voyage down the Baltic coast. Before their departure, Lt. Col. Ebeling assigned me temporary command of all the 154th Regiment’s horse-drawn equipment, of which my own heavy weapons company comprised only a part.
Directed to deliver the detachment to Memel by road, I led the three-mile long column out of the Riga area on a 100-mile trek to the southwest. During the first part of the march, Soviet aircraft made frequent strafing runs that forced us to scramble for cover off the road, but the raids diminished once we left the area around Riga.
When our slow-moving procession had traveled a little more than halfway to Memel, a Red Army thrust reached the Baltic Sea ahead of us, blocking our planned overland route to the city. New orders redirected me to lead the column toward the German-controlled port of Libau in northwestern Latvia, from where we would sail down to Memel by ship.
Riding my horse Thea out in front of our column soon afterward, I heard a voice from behind me ask, “Where are you going?”
Caught off guard, I spun around to see an officer’s staff car moving just off to the left side of my horse. Inside the vehicle sat Field Marshall Ferdinand Schorner, the commander of Army Group North.
Startled by his sudden appearance, I nonetheless managed to snap off a salute and reply, “Libau, as far as I know, Sir.”
Schorner had a reputation for ruthless discipline and for making surprise appearances all over the front. The story went that when his driver made some error, Schorner ordered him to stop and demoted him right on the spot. The next time the driver did something that pleased Schorner, he again ordered the car to stop and promoted him back to his original rank. Fortunately, I avoided the Field Marshall’s displeasure and was ordered to continue with my mission.
Our column finally reached the harbor in Libau on the afternoon of October 15. Using cranes to hoist the heavier equipment, everything was loaded aboard ship in a matter of hours. Evacuating by sea that night, our blacked-out vessel hugged the Baltic coast on the roughly 35-mile voyage south. Behind us, the trapped divisions of Army Group North would fight on until the end of the war.
In the morning, our ship docked in “Fortress Memel,” as Nazi propaganda referred to the city in an effort to inspire its defenders. We were now under the command of Army Group Center and back inside the territory of the Greater German Reich, about 25 miles from where the 58th Division had begun its advance into Russia three and a half years earlier.
By the time we arrived, our battered regimental infantry had already helped to repulse a number of fierce Soviet assaults against Memel. Forced to rely on only machine guns and other light weapons to this point, they urgently sought the fire support of our heavy weapons. Within a few hours of docking, our company’s guns and other equipment had been unloaded and we set out for the frontlines six or seven miles from the harbor.
After passing through the edge of the city, we immediately deployed in position behind the infantry, firing a series of ranging shots to establish our zones of fire. Attacks struck our position the next day, but no major offensive followed. In the ensuing weeks, the Red Army mounted only company and battalion-sized operations against our defenses, and even these grew increasingly intermittent.
Though it usually stayed fairly quiet in our sector, Russian assaults elsewhere around Memel pushed the German lines slowly back toward the city during the following weeks. Despite persistent enemy pressure, most German units in Memel were soon transferred southward in response to more urgent crises. In the end, only our division and the 95th Infantry Division remained to man the city’s defenses, but that proved enough to hold it.
While the Red Army’s high command had other priorities, they may also have concluded that dislodging us was not worth the cost, just as we had eventually given up trying to eliminate the isolated Soviet pocket at Oranienbaum on the Gulf of Finland. A cornered enemy fighting for their lives is tough to overcome.
Throughout the siege, I occupied a bunker halfway between the frontline and Memel, while the rest of the personnel in my company were stationed at a farm a mile or two closer to town. With its civilian population evacuated to the west, the city itself became a virtual ghost town.
During one of the breaks in the fighting, I entered a nearby vacated home where I savored the luxury of a bath for the first time in months. In another of the abandoned residences, an officer in our regiment had found a shotgun. He would occasionally loan it to me so that I could hunt jackrabbits, which our company cook would convert into a delicious meal.
About nine o’clock one morning, I was still resting in my bunker after a late night when Lt. Col. Ebeling unexpectedly appeared at the entrance. Still not dressed, I sprung out of my bunk and saluted, but he did not appear impressed. My relationship with our regimental commander was good, but it was embarrassing to have been caught sleeping at such a late hour in the morning.
Around this same time, a more serious incident occurred. Since the men in my company had not fired their rifles for a while, I decided to find a suitable area for them to conduct target practice. A hill located near our company’s billet on the farm seemed the natural choice. The fact that the bunker housing the regimental
