suffered several casualties, but pressed on to join the northern flank of the encircling Soviet forces around the remains of General Busse’s German 9th Army, which was part of the army group that Hitler was depending upon for his relief.
At dawn Harry led his squad into their last battle. The village of Halbe, 40 kilometers southeast of Berlin, appeared to be deserted with any civilians remaining in hiding. The squad deployed on the eastern edge of the village overlooking a vast neglected pasture. A Maxim machine gun was brought up to reinforce the riflemen. Harry placed it on his right flank and, after issuing orders to his men, went to search the farmhouse to their rear. In the cellar he discovered the frightened inhabitants. ‘Stay indoors, don’t leave the house under any circumstances until you get fresh instructions!’ he told the astonished inhabitants in fluent German. ‘Ja, jawohl, Herr Offizier!’ they responded in chorus. Harry’s eyes scanned the shelf on the wall and spotted a row of cans of preserved meat. ‘Please take it!’ said an old man, the only male in the family. Harry picked up two of the cans, locked the door and went back to the trenches, stepping over a few corpses of German soldiers.
He was just in time. His soldiers were holding a German, a 15 year-old who had been riding a bicycle with a Panzerfaust on his shoulder. Reaching the squad, he realized that he had come to the wrong address, turned around and fell off his bicycle. There was no need to disarm him; the boy looked pathetic and scared to death. On being asked how he came to be there, the boy said: ‘Three days ago we were assembled in a school in east Berlin to meet Goebbels. The Reichs Minister spoke to us, promising that we would win the war, we would just have to answer the Fuhrer’s call to help out until the new weapons arrive.’ Harry felt sorry for the boy. He helped him straighten his wheel out and sent him home to his mother.
He wiped the dust from his binoculars and went on observing the area. ‘Not a single sign of life, it’s too quiet!’ he said to himself. At this instant an image appeared, moving across the field. Harry adjusted his lens and saw a woman with a baby in her arms running towards the village. Just as suddenly, she disappeared. ‘What the hell is she doing there?’ he asked himself as he went to distribute the two cans of meat to his hungry riflemen. Then the runner arrived with a call for Harry to report to the battalion command post.
The battalion commander and his staff were on the south side of the street dividing Halbe in two, and were looking south across the pasture to the woods. White flags were waving among the trees, indicating a wish to surrender. Harry stood to one side waiting to report his situation and state of readiness. The battalion commander turned to him: ‘Corporal, you speak German, don’t you?’ Harry nodded and the captain continued: ‘You see the white flags? It’s less than a kilometer. If you want to earn the ‘Red Banner’,[38] go clarify the situation and bring back some delegates with you for their surrender.’ Harry began crossing the pasture. After going about two hundred yards he stopped. The white flags had disappeared. He looked back. The command group was no longer there either. Several gun shots sounded from the woods. Harry looked towards the Germans again, but there was no sign of life.
Fifty years later he learned by chance what those flags had been, which also explained the commander’s remark about the high decoration, for he must have known how risky the task was. A group of German soldiers, known as Seydlitz-Troops and claiming to represent the National Komitee Freies Deutschland, for various reasons were working with the Soviets against Hitler. Many of them had had experience on the Eastern Front and had no wish to go on fighting Hitler’s war. Meanwhile the Soviet intelligence service had organized special task forces for parachuting behind the German lines, operating a complex spy and diversion system. Encouraged by the Soviets, the Seydlitz-Troops grew in numbers with the retreat of the German Army on the Eastern Front, encouraging whole groups to desert, and thus sabotaging the Nazi war effort. As soon as they were discovered by the SS or other convinced Nazis, they would be shot. Thus the Fifth Column worked on both sides. The white flags Harry had seen were being waved by a group of Seydlitz-Troops attempting to arrange the surrender of the main body to the Russians, but they were spotted and most of them killed by the SS.
Harry realized that he was in danger of falling into a trap, and went back to his squad. The next moment the runner appeared: ‘German tanks are moving towards the village with infantry following them.’ The pasture immediately became alive as the German assault began. Letting them advance 200 meters, the squad opened fire, mowing down many of the attacking infantry, and the rest rolled back. The situation was worse to the squad’s rear on the main street of the village, where German tanks were rolling forward, machine guns firing from their turrets, and followed by infantry assault groups, among them black-uniformed SS with sub-machine guns. Now they were fast approaching Harry’s lines and two men had already been wounded. The squad was firing non-stop at the attackers, the Maxim disappeared and a third man fell, dead. The Germans kept coming on endlessly and the fighting was fierce. The supporting light 45 mm gun on the sidewalk could not stop the German tanks. A shell from the leading heavy ‘Tiger’ tank hit the gun, killing or wounding all the crew. The squad tried to withdraw, but it was too late, the main street was already overrun. Then, as if by Divine intervention, a sudden dusk fell, which enabled them to reach the backyards, crawling with their wounded until they got out of Halbe and back to their main forces.
Twilight found the devastated battalion in retreat, having lost many of its combatants, including the commander. Many wounded were left behind, most of whom were found by the Germans during the night and shot. At this point, with a desperate effort, the Germans succeeded in breaking out of their encirclement. As Harry would learn fifty years later, their aim was to avoid Russian captivity, rather than to save the Fuhrer and the already encircled Berlin garrison.
During the following day the battalion recovered, received reinforcements and prepared to retake the village. The field kitchen arrived and set up on the ground. The corpses of enemy soldiers and horses were all around, but the smell of burnt flesh could not keep the troops from their meal. The mail came and with it a three month-old field postcard from Jaka for Harry: ‘Dear Brother, I am finally back in Riga. I found Aunt Jenny. She told me the sad news: Mother was shot at the beginning of 1944, just before the liberation of the city, while trying to escape the last selection (for execution).’ The blood rose to Harry’s head. He put the postcard into his breast pocket for safety.
A contingent of Katyusha multiple-barrelled rocket launchers arrived and took up firing positions. The T-34 tanks were also ready. The night passed without much emotion; they knew it would be ‘hot’ next day.
It began early in the morning. The Katyushas softened up the Germans for ten minutes, then the infantry went in to clean out whatever tried to resist. Harry’s squad piled itself on to the leading tank, which moved towards the forest where the remains of the pocket were concentrated. The tank stopped a hundred metres short of the woods to avoid being hit by Panzerfausts, and the squad jumped off and ran into the woods. A few gunshots were all the resistance that was encountered from the remaining German soldiers. One was shot, the others dropped their weapons and raised their hands. Further on a whole mass of Germans stood up with raised hands, obeying the order for the prisoners to assemble in groups. At the same time the rest of the platoon captured a colonel who was a highly decorated tank commander.[39]
Next day it was all over. Sixty thousand Germans from this pocket surrendered. An estimated forty thousand, including the civilians sheltering with the remains of the 9th Army, had been killed in the encirclement and break-out.
Later Harry was awarded the Order of Glory, the second highest ranking medal for valor, but received no explicit citation with it, so he could not attribute it to any particular event.
Harry served on in the Soviet Army after the war, attaining the rank of sergeant major. He left to become a newspaper photographer back in Riga. Later he was one of the first of the younger generation to obtain a visa allowing him to emigrate to Israel, where he continued to work as a photographer, got married, raised a family and divorced. Years later he was invited to visit his grandchildren in America and decided to stay on, becoming an American citizen. During a state visit by President Yeltsin he eventually received his award of the Order of Glory from him at a ceremony held at the White House.
ELEVEN
The Surrender of the ‘Phantom Division’
