As the enemy planned a surprise attack, this was not announced by an opening barrage that would have alerted us. The infantry attack began suddenly. According to Russian accounts this was made by a battalion each from the 150th and 171st Rifle Divisions, which stormed across the bridge toward us.
The machine guns of our two companies, which had been reinforced in the meantime by sailors, hacked away with steady fire. On their first attempt the infantry stuck on the barbed wired barricade at our end of the bridge. I was directing mortar fire to hail down on the bridge and my friend Kurt was using his guns to send shells ricocheting along it. They tried to withdraw, but none got away, for as they withdrew they were hit several times by the fine splinters from the mortar bombs and Kurt’s ricochets ripping across the bridge, throwing bodies into the river with their blast.
Meanwhile a whole battery of rockets had been set up on Potsdamer Platz and I had them directed on Washintongplatz and the Customs Yard. I later learnt that General Perevertkin had his forward command post there, where he could observe the attack at close hand, but there is no mention of the effects of the rockets in the books. I only hope that they scared the pants off him and his divisional commanders.
Now bulldozer tanks rolled on to the bridge, scraping the dead and injured aside and then pushing aside the barricade at our end. Kurt’s ricochets soon turned them into scrap. Anti-tank guns had joined in from our side as well as the ‘Nordland’s’ tanks from the Tiergarten. Then the heavy anti-aircraft guns on the Zoo flak-tower also opened fire once they could see a little from the fires on the bridge, and a vast heap of scrap metal formed, blocking the way for the new tanks rolling forward.
Fresh infantry stormed the bridge and were able to form a small bridgehead on our side. Now the officials from the Ministry of the Interior went into action, frantically pouring fire from their windows with their old MG 34s.[51] They defended their building like a fortress, for they knew what their fate would be as ‘Himmler’s people’, and were bypassed at first.
The Diplomatic Quarter was barely defended, for we wanted to respect the neutrality of the embassies as much as possible, something which did not bother the Soviets. This was now stormed by the 171st Rifle Division. It was like the breaching of a dam; there was no holding them back. Russian artillery of all calibres was laying down a barrage on us that left a clear path for their infantry in the centre. We could hardly lift our heads to fight them off. Now I could see that their artillery was not just on Washingtonplatz but also deployed on the Customs Yard with self-propelled guns behind, all firing without cover. However, once it became light, this was not so good for them. Guns of all sizes opened up on them from the Zoo Flak-tower. I had not seen the heavy anti-aircraft guns in action before. They did not simply hit a tank, but blew it apart, especially when catching it in the flank as was the case here.
The piles of scrap metal grew higher, especially on the far bank, but this did not deter the enemy, who simply brought fresh tank regiments in from his reserve like a cardsharper pulling aces from his sleeve.
But now we started to counterattack, and on both sides of the river. From our side we saw some close- quarter fighting suddenly start up among the guns, so the troops on our side attacked too. The Russian infantry in their small bridgehead thus came under fire from both sides, so most of them just kept their heads down, as I charged forward with my men.
Green Verey lights were fired to warn the Zoo Flak-tower to stop firing. Normally this would have meant the opposite, but fortunately the flak-tower gunners understood straight away and held their fire.
But how was it that German troops had so suddenly appeared on the other side of the river? They were in fact men of the Colonel Harry Herrmann’s 9th Parachute Division that had been defending the Lehrter Station and had been cut off in the goods station area. The Russians had overlooked them in their haste to cross the Spree and get to the Reichstag. Now they were using the opportunity to take the Russians by surprise from behind, putting many of the gun crews to flight and creating chaos before charging across the bridge to us.
A demolition team was quickly assembled to blow the bridge at last but, because of the haste and the Russian fire, they succeeded only in causing half of one span of the bridge to fall in the water. To try again was too dangerous as the Russians immediately seized the bridge again, the generals driving their men on. We could hear their hysterical cries from where we were.
Unfortunately the success of the counter-attack soon came to nothing, as we had been unable to drive the Russians out of the Diplomatic Quarter. There were too many of them. Also by this time they were filled with an immense sense of victory, knowing just as we did that this was their final battle of the war.
Now the fighting turned on the Ministry of the Interior, or ‘Himmler’s House’ as the Russians called it, which the occupants defended virtually to the last man.
Then a runner arrived from the battalion commander with instructions for me to report back to Potsdamer Platz immediately. By this time our field cable had been shot through in several places and was useless. I was not unhappy to be called away, as I did not fancy having to fight alongside such a strange and unfriendly unit as that of the Ministry of the Interior. My friend Kurt Abicht thought the same, but I offered to lay a new field cable for him if he remained as our forward observer. However, I took back with me Alfred, my HQ Section leader, and the two runners. I got on with Alfred best of all my NCOs and liked to have him with me. He had no respect for anyone or anything and provided a witty Berliner commentary on events.
Back below in the depths of the Potsdamer Platz S-Bahn Station we received a warm welcome not only from our comrades, but also from the battalion commander himself. Here too things had heated up, and it seemed that he was afraid the Russians would burst in at any moment. Apart from my men, he had no one he could use in a close combat role. The civilians could easily panic and hinder or even prevent a defence, and should that occur, I would be the one who knew best what to do.
I was therefore to remain here, first constructing barricades on the upper level behind which we could entrench ourselves and conduct an all-round defence. Should the Russians break in, they would have to be dealt with quickly. We did not know from which entrance the Russians were likely to appear, so we had to have an all- round defence.
Meanwhile, above on the square, a vast scrap yard had formed of burnt-out abandoned vehicles and shot- up equipment strewn everywhere.
My attention now turned to our sector from Belle-Alliance-Platz to the Potsdamer Bridge. The situation at the bridge was still as previously described with an aerial mine suspended from either side and the bridge unblown. The bridge was stormed by the 79th Guards Rifle Division, supported by tanks of the 11th Tank Corps. Sappers had first to neutralise the mines, which cost them heavy casualties from our machine guns. We also fired our mortars and rockets as directed by our forward observer in the immediate vicinity, whose radio worked perfectly.
The Russians later made a big thing of the story that a child crying for its mother was rescued by the standard bearer of the 220th Guards Rifle Regiment at the risk of his own life, but the forward observer reported nothing of this and I think that it was just another one of their propaganda stories. [52]
The enemy infantry first advance under cover of a smokescreen, which enabled them to establish a small bridgehead. Then the tanks tried a new trick that our comrades fell for. The first tanks were shot up by the ‘Nordland’ tanks firing from the Tiergarten, where they were immobilised for lack of fuel. The Soviet tanks had protected themselves with sheet metal and other items against Panzerfausts, so one of them threw sacking over these projections and soaked it with fuel then set it alight to make the tank appear as if it had been hit, which enabled it to get across and take up position without being fired at.
Simultaneously the infantry of the 39th Guards Rifle Division swam across the canal and got up the embankment, while the 12th Motorised Rifle Brigade did the same thing at the Mockern Bridge U-Bahn Station and were suddenly on our side of the canal. Our defending troops were taken by surprise, but counterattacked vigorously and drove some of the Russians back into the canal. Unfortunately not everywhere, only where we had energetic leaders.
Further to the east at the Hallesche Tor the Russians were able to get some tanks across by means of pontoons, but as soon as they got their tracks on to firm ground tank destroyer units engaged and destroyed most of them.
The Russians could no longer use their aircraft against us as the lines were too close, barely two metres separating the antagonists in some places. In some buildings the Russians fought from the lower stories with Germans above them, and I would have to clear the lower stories myself before handing over my stragglers. My British sub-machine gun proved excellent for this close quarter fighting. At a range of thirty metres it was the best
