So we set off back in the early morning with our rich booty, and the policemen were also very happy. Nevertheless an incident occurred that could have ended badly. One of my men came up on deck with an armload of champagne bottles, shouting with glee. I had found some sekt beforehand and we were all a bit drunk. I kicked him in the shin and he dropped the bottles in surprise. Soon some heavy machine gun fire came from across the river and we had to take cover quickly. The stupid chap had not realised that voices carry easily over the water at night. Of course we could not do any more that night and had to return with half empty trucks.
On the way back I managed to shoot two deer in a wood near Brandenburg. Then a boy suddenly appeared on the roadside and stopped us. ‘Sergeant Major, do you need some schnapps and wine?’ Of course we did. He indicated a manor house on a hill top, where there was plenty for us.
It turned out that a major in the paratroops was in charge of the store there. When he asked for a requisitioning order, I had to let it go, but when I reported to my commanding officer, the situation soon changed. The adjutant had to make out a requisitioning order, and it was on a large scale, authorising me to acquire schnapps and wine for 1,000 men. Now the major issued us as much as we could carry. Naturally I kept aside 200 bottles for my personal use.
This resulted in my having no lack of friends back in barracks. A whole row of my superiors wanted to drink ‘Bruderschaft’ (brotherhood) with me. The sergeant major of the 1st Guard Company wanted to be my friend and invited me to the house near the barracks that he looked after and lived in with his girlfriend. He even invited me to move in with them and bring female company, but I declined, as I believed this period of happiness would only last a few days more.
And that is what happened. We came to 20 April and, to honour our Fuhrer’s birthday, a proper parade was to be held in the barracks once more. Even I was expected to take part. I marched past the saluting base in the first rank of the 1st Company with a drawn rifle to the ringing music. SS-Brigadier Mohnke took the parade with some other senior officers.
After the parade things became hectic in the barracks. The sirens howled a long note: ‘Tank Alert!’ Marshal Koniev’s 3rd Guards Tank Army under General Rybalko had thrust up from the south toward Berlin and was suddenly threatening the city. There was only one serious obstacle in his path, the Teltow Canal. He was soon able to establish several bridgeheads and threaten the southern part of Berlin in which our barracks were located. As the Guard Battalion was expected to man the innermost defences, it could not be sent into action against Koniev’s troops, so the whole battalion had to fall in and be reorganised as a combatant battalion, and not before time!
The commander of the 1st Guard Company, in whose headquarters I lived, had asked me to stay out of this, as he wanted me to act as a sort of adjutant to him, so to say ‘extra to establishment’, as such an appointment did not officially exist. He had confidence in me as he had hardly any combat experience himself. His experience had been a brief period at the front, an Iron Cross 2nd Class, and a posting to an officer cadet school, and since then he had never returned to the front but had made his career here.
For me it was of no consequence where or how I would fight, and I had agreed. While the battalion adjutant did the detailing, I kept in the background, but once he had finished, he noticed me. I told him what the commander of the 1st Guard Company had told me, and the latter ran up when he saw I needed support. When he heard what I had to say, there came a strong denial. I reminded the adjutant of the Fuhrer-Order that prevented him from assigning me to combat duty. The adjutant agreed but called upon my sense of duty. He had still to set up a mortar platoon and needed a commander for it.
As I had not done this before and knew nothing about mortars, I declined. But he rejected this and said: ‘The way you are, you should be able to do it easily, and the other commanders,’ looking at the company commanders, ‘have no experience of leadership in combat. You will learn quickly and probably do better than most.’
When I asked him what men I would get, he pointed to the band, who, when they saw my long face, looked grinning into space, and my heart sank. But with hindsight, they were to show themselves absolutely contrary to what I expected. They never let me down and were with me to the very end.
We then drew six 8 cm mortars with all their equipment, such as telephones, cable, etcetera, and ammunition. In doing so I discovered that my three sergeants knew something about them. I myself knew how to fire them, for I had often done so with captured weapons, but I had no specialised knowledge.
There, in a corner of the armoury, I saw a pile of sub-machine guns of a kind that I had never seen before. To my question, the armourer replied that they had been dropped out of British aircraft to arm foreign partisans. They had fallen into our hands and were just waiting here for someone to take them. I examined them and saw that they were quite primitive in appearance with differing hand grips, and none more than 25 cm in length.[40] Then I thought that if it came to partisan warfare, these would be just right for us.
While our men took the weapons and equipment back to their quarters, I went down to the underground firing range with my sergeants and fired these things. I discovered that they fired even with dirt in their moving parts, and that our ammunition fitted. Now I could put aside my Italian sub-machine gun that I had brought back from Italy because the German sub-machine guns jammed so often.
There was even an MG 42[41] in the armoury that we took. When I gave the armourer a gift of a couple of bottles of wine, he positively hummed with pleasure.
We divided up into three sections, each of a sergeant and twelve men. My Headquarters Section was led by a corporal and consisted of two runners, the linesmen-to-be and the machine gun section. We were in all about fifty men strong.
Then I told my men that they could collect cigarettes and tobacco from me, as I had reserved a considerable amount for myself. Also food and drink were available to them from my supplies. These were taken with murmurs of pleasure, and soon they were celebrating in their quarters as they had not done for years. I had taken the hearts of my men by storm.
Now I must describe my last Hitler’s birthday celebrations, which I held in the two rooms I shared with SS-Sergeant Karl Berg, my deputy at the Reichs Chancellery. He had a stiff leg from a wound acquired during the preparation for Operation ‘Citadel’, the big tank battle.[42] He had come to us as a Luftwaffe replacement, being a sergeant in a Luftwaffe field division, and so was taken on as an SS-Sergeant. I tried to persuade him to become my fourth sergeant. (He had hidden himself during the battalion reorganisation and so not been detailed.) But he was not interested and only wanted to get on one of the vehicles leaving Berlin, which he succeeded in doing. I met him on a tram in Magdeburg after the war, and he told me that he had been taken to Hamburg, where he obtained his release from the Waffen-SS and joined the local police force, thus avoiding being taken a prisoner of war when the British arrived.
But back to my celebration. Tables and chairs were set out and everyone who came was made welcome. Meanwhile the barrack square was filling with vehicles from all kinds of units, all filling up with the petrol that I had brought back, so as to get away on the last route still open, Reichstrasse 6.
Everyone of these ‘heroes’, when one spoke to them, had important reasons for leaving, but the word really was: ‘Get out of the Berlin trap, and don’t get caught by the Russians!’ Several offered to take me along with them. These rear area types did not want to stay behind and fight beside the Fuhrer and die, to remain loyal until death, as they had sworn. But I had to tell them that it was out of the question for me; I did not want to break my oath. But there were other cases.
I was told that my former company commander, SS-Major Ernst Kleinert, who had lost a leg in Russia and now had an artificial limb, and had nevertheless commanded the ‘March’ Company at Hartmannsdorf/Spreenhagen, was on the square with his staff car, accompanied by his wife and child. I quickly wrapped up some food for him and hurried to say goodbye. He was not leaving on his own accord but had orders from Mohnke to take the ‘Leibstandarte’ wounded out of Berlin in buses, which he managed to do, taking them to a polder in Schleswig-Holstein. However, despite some of them being very seriously wounded, they all became prisoners of war and some were held for a long time under primitive and degrading conditions, permanently hungry, so that their artificial limbs no longer fitted.
The most senior guest at my party was SS-Brigadier Meyer (‘Sippenmeyer’) from the SS Sippenhauptamt.[43] His driver, an SS-sergeant major, knew one of my sergeants and had asked if his chief could come. He want to see again how real soldiers celebrated the Fuhrer’s birthday. Now he sat next to me, the host. He too needed to get to Hamburg urgently. While he was still sober, he
