their tanks by surprise, and that would mean the loss of the bridge. So I was actually pleased that I had this inner conflict about the orders given by Division to hold on to this present position to the last man. Orders of this kind were not unusual at this time.
With these orders – perhaps it was meant as a small sop – I was also permitted to hand out the awards given for the day before. (Experience had shown that awards should be handed out as soon as possible after the event concerned because, firstly, it gave pleasure and had a greater educational effect; and secondly, because decorations had unfortunately often arrived too late. A posthumously awarded decoration can no longer be regarded as a reward, only as a nice gesture.) So I called the tank commanders concerned to come to the rear of my tank and climbed out myself. Even this slight movement must have been spotted by the Russians, for I had yet to pin the Iron Crosses on the commanders when two shells exploded right and left in front of my tank, so close that the blast threw us to the ground. It could have been a disaster, but fortunately no one was hurt.
At dusk the Russians attacked with tanks again, but it was not difficult to repel their attack. Then it was dark at last, and we were just thinking that we had made it, when such a ferocious barrage from weapons of all calibres clattered down on top of us that it was simply impossible to take. As the shells burst with showers of sparks and flashes of light all around us, everyone sought to reach open ground with their tanks as quickly as possible. The crews had held out bravely the whole day long, but what came now was more than they could bear. Had it only been an artillery or mortar bombardment, we might perhaps have held on, but the rockets and the flat-trajectory tank and anti-tank shells forced us to flee from the orchard. We had clearly identified that the Russians, under cover of this terrible bombardment and the darkness that had meantime overcome us, were aiming to take over our positions with their tanks. But even if we had lost the orchard, I wanted at least to prevent the bridge falling into Russian hands. I therefore formed up my tanks immediately around the bridge. The shells continued to shower down on the orchard, then it quietened down again. Before it became completely dark, I formed a semi-circular defensive belt behind the orchard and looked forward to a quiet night, although this position would be untenable next day.
We would have to throw Ivan out of the orchard again. About midnight I obtained two sections of infantry under a staff sergeant from the infantry commander to carry out a reconnaissance in force. Beforehand I had brought my tanks close up to the orchard to provide covering fire for the infantry should they come into contact with the enemy, When everything was ready, the infantry set off. We stared intently into the darkness, the gun layers having their eyes pressed to the optics, ready to cover the infantry with fire at any moment. This intense concentration lasted a quarter of an hour, and then another quarter of an hour, without anything being seen. Then suddenly shadows appeared right in front of us that immediately identified themselves as our scouts, and to our great surprise, the staff sergeant reported the orchard free of the enemy. It would seem that the enemy found the situation too critical for them in the dark and had withdrawn back to their start-point. Nothing could have pleased me more. We immediately reoccupied the orchard, and then had peace for the remainder of the night. Even the following morning passed without incident. The Russians had apparently decided that further attacks on that position were pointless.
At about midday on 24 March I received orders for our relief. We were to return to the tank field workshops, while our position would be taken over by another unit.
Once the relieving commander had been briefed on the details of the hand-over, I drove back to Division, where the Intelligence Officer (Ia) told me of two Russian radio transmissions that had been intercepted. In the first the commander of the sector opposite the orchard had been rebuked for not pressing home his attack. In the second the sector commander reported that he had counted eight dug-in Konigstigers in the orchard, against which he could make no progress. This was too much of an honour for us for, firstly, we only had five tanks in that position, and secondly, we had absolutely no Konigstigers with us, and we were certainly not dug-in! But we often got similarly nice confirmations of success from Ivan over the radio.
Zobel lost his 2nd Squadron to the Kustrin Garrison. On 16 April he had his two remaining squadrons deployed behind the Hauptgraben water obstacle east of Seelow, where his battalion claimed over 50 Soviet tanks destroyed that day for a loss of four; the four that he had sent forward to support the infantry being knocked out in error by the German anti-tank gun screen. Having been outflanked on his right he withdrew his battalion that night to replenish in the woods behind the Stein-Stellung. Again on the third day of battle the battalion claimed to have destroyed another 50 Soviet tanks caught in the flank advancing north of Trebnitz. The battalion then covered the retreat to Berlin, where it became involved in the defence. Zobel was promoted major on 20 April and then led the breakout to the west over the Charlotten Bridge into Spandau (see With Our Backs to Berlin) on the night of 1/2 May. When the last vehicles ran out of fuel, they abandoned them and continued on foot. Unable to swim, Zobel nevertheless got across two rivers, ending up naked on the west bank of the Elbe, where he persuaded a mayor to provide him with civilian clothing and a pass stating that he was ‘visiting his pregnant wife in the next village’. Armed with this, he traversed American-occupied territory until he found his wife working for the British in Braunschweig, where he joined her as an interpreter, never having been taken prisoner.
In due course he received an invitation to join a German team to help train the Egyptian Army, which he did until another letter arrived inviting him to help found the Bundeswehr. On his way home he learnt of the defeat of the Egyptian Army in the Six Days War with Israel, in which virtually all the armoured troops he had helped train had been wiped out.
Zobel subsequently became a full colonel and Inspector of Panzer Troops in the Bundeswehr and, after his retirement from active service, went on to edit a technical journal on armoured subjects.
SIX
The Defence of Seelow
KARL-HERMANN TAMS
I met Karl-Hermann Tams at the reunions of the 20th Panzergrenadier Division’s ‘Mook wie’ old comrades’ association held on the anniversary of the battle for the Seelow Heights, which were held at the Seelow Museum each year after the reunification of Germany made such events possible. He was always the life and soul of the party, a great raconteur, and his death on 16 April 1995 was a great loss to all his friends there.
My thoughts go back to March 1945 when the situation on all fronts was relatively stable and the feeling among us young soldiers could still be described as confident. We had not been brought up to political contemplation. The situation appeared different at home in the now surrounded remains of the Reich, where there was already a widespread feeling of defeat, although the transport system was intact and food supplies still reaching the population.
I was already 21 years old and had passed a company commanders’ course at the Boehm-Kaserne in Hamburg-Rahlstedt, when on Good Friday, 30 March 1945, I received my orders to join the troops on the Eastern Front. I said farewell to my family and remaining circle of friends with truly mixed feelings; as, the longer the war lasted, the more difficult it was for a soldier to return to the front. I had already been wounded twice in action in Russia. The feeling of parting was, in view of the strange situation, hard to describe, inwardly burdened with the uncertainty of the future, yet outwardly confident nevertheless. For us the collapse of the Reich and of the Wehrmacht was unimaginable and one’s own ignorance about what was happening was deliberately suppressed and played down. So I set off with three other comrades full of inner tension on the adventurous route to Berlin, a city which, even in the sixth year of the war, had not lost its appeal and radiance as a metropolis.
Naturally we had a night out ‘on the town’ in Berlin at a small bar on the Kurfurstendamm. Next morning,
