When Alfred announced that his was the next street ahead, I asked him to keep twenty paces behind us and cover our rear in an emergency. He laughed at my cautiousness, but agreed. Looking round the street corner, we saw that it had five-storey buildings on one side, the other being bounded by the two metre brick wall of an industrial site. Parked along the right hand side of the street was a convoy of three-axled American Studebaker trucks, in which ammunition cases could be seen through the partly opened canopies. The trucks were parked closely together with only about two metres between them.
The Russians were so unconcerned that they had made open camp fires alongside about every third truck and were squatting around roasting their delicacies.
Just as Alfred was pointing out which was his apartment, a woman appeared leaning out of the window, her arms held by Russians. She saw us and cried out in distress: ‘Alfred, come quickly! The Russians…’
We heard no more as she was pulled back into the room.
We had arranged that we would remain below to cover him, but the other comrade could not be held back and stormed in with him. I called out to Alfred: ‘Grab your wife and get out over the backyard! I will cover your retreat!’
They had pulled the sub-machine guns out of their bags, and I prepared my grenades. The sound of their sub-machine guns came from upstairs, alerting the Russians squatting beside their fires, who started going across. They did not notice the dirty Gipsy going behind the third truck and throwing a grenade inside, and again into the last-but-one truck, before heading for the street corner. Not that it mattered, for their time was up.
The blast of the explosion blew me to the end of the street and I blacked out. When I recovered consciousness, all I could see was a sea of rubble. The explosion had destroyed the convoy, knocked down the boundary wall and pushed in all the windows and their frames on the other side of the street. My guardian angel had taken care of me again. I had only suffered bruises, but the Russians had been spattered against the walls. Whether Alfred had managed to escape, I could not stay to find out. I limped away.
TO THE LAST MAN
It was now really dark and I had to find somewhere for the night and get off the streets, which were still alive with looters.
I overtook an old woman pulling a fully loaded handcart and offered to help her take it home. She looked at me sideways: ‘I know, you are looking for a place to stay. Unfortunately, not with me. I have two daughters at home and there is coming and going day and night. The Russians just open the door. You know how it is.’
So I had to keep on looking. Eventually I came across an old man coming out of a shop cellar unsuccessfully trying to carry two large boxes on his shoulders. I offered to help. He too saw straight away what I was after. ‘I only have two rooms,’ he said, ‘but my wife is away, so take a box and come along.’
He passed me over a box and we went off like two loaded donkeys. The Russians did not look at us, for people running away do not carry boxes, as those naive lads knew. On our way I discovered what we were carrying. The boxes contained cans of green beans.
‘I’ll prepare something to eat when we get home,’ the old man said, and he did. ‘It would be best if you lay down on the bed with a wet cloth on your head and pretend to be ill. The Russians are bound to look in soon and see who I have brought with me.’
This seemed a good idea, and when the Russians looked in shortly afterwards I groaned in Russian that my head hurt and that I thought I had cholera, which sent them off in a hurry. Then we had our meal of green beans and burnt potatoes.
The night was full of the screams of women being raped.
Next morning I had a real Russian cat wash, which went as follows. I rinsed my mouth with the precious water, then put my head back and sprayed it into the air so that it fell over my face, which I then wiped with a cloth. The old man commented that I was still dirty, so I repeated the process.
Again we had green beans and baked potatoes. Clearly that would be the old man’s diet for the foreseeable future.
Now I needed to scout out the ground. I asked the old man if he could spare me a couple of buckets. As I did not know if I would be returning, I bade him a provisional farewell and thanked him for his support. He said: ‘I have a couple of grandchildren in the same situation as yourself, so it was only natural.’
I went along the street with my buckets looking for a street pump. I found one and stood in the queue for water, as there were quite a few people ahead of me. I half filled the buckets and set off, not back to the old man, but first to Alfred’s apartment to find out what had happened. With my buckets no one would suspect me of being on the run. There were many posters ordering all soldiers, Volkssturm, Party members, officials and others to report to the nearest Soviet post or be shot immediately.
When I got to Alfred’s street an old Russian soldier was shovelling the remains of his former comrades into ammunition boxes to bury them. When I asked him what had happened, he said that there had been an accident.
Below Alfred’s window lay three dead bodies that had been thrown out of the window. They were my comrades and Alfred’s wife. When the Russian saw me looking at them he commented: ‘Fascists with no sense of fun!’
I went off with my half filled buckets. The nearer I got to the city centre, the more and stronger the checkpoints I came across. I noticed that they seemed more interested in those leaving the city centre than those entering, which was understandable as fighting had been taking place only the previous day. There was a checkpoint ahead of me where papers were being examined. I stopped and put down my buckets as if taking a rest.
Then a Russian one-and-a-half tonner, one of their own primitive construction that had no battery and whose windscreen wipers were hand operated, drew up and stopped near me. Inside were three men packed close together on the narrow seat, the driver and two officers, with a German civilian standing beside them on the running board. The officer on the outside hit the civilian in the face with his fist, swore at him and threw him off.
This, I thought, is my chance. I quickly went up to the vehicle and asked the Russians if I could help. They were happy to have found someone who could speak Russian and show them the way to the Reichstag. I said: ‘I am a Pole and so not at home here, but I do know the way to the Reichstag and can take you there. But there is nothing there for you to take.’
‘We just want to scratch our names on the pillars of the Reichstag. Every Russian soldier with legs is making his way to this central point to scratch his name, and if he has a photograph of it he will be a hero back in Russia. Anyone can say he did it, but he needs evidence that he was there. Now stop talking and come!’
This I did as quickly as possible and told the driver to set off. We came to the checkpoint and went through without stopping. When we reached the Reichstag I jumped off the running board, A female supervisor grabbed me and wanted me help clear the rubble. I swore at her in Russian. Then one of the Russians came up to me and asked if I could use a Leica. He had acquired it somehow but did not know how to use it. I checked the camera to see if it had a film in it, then they stood in front of the Reichstag and I took several pictures of them. Then I had to give the camera to the driver for him to take a photograph of me with the two officers.
They were anxious to scratch their names, so I left them without saying goodbye. I wanted to make my way across to Friedrichstrasse to say farewell to my dead comrades if they were still lying there. I thought that the wounded would already have been taken to hospital. Close by was the Charite where during the fighting a point had been made of not taking in military casualties in order to preserve its civilian status, but that probably did not apply any longer.
The Friedrichstrasse was still full of dead and some German prisoners of war were clearing those away on the Weidendammer Bridge. Bulldozer tanks were pushing the burnt out wrecks into the ruins to clear the street.
I still had no papers to identify me, not even the usual Waffen-SS blood group tattoo under the armpit, as I had missed having it done through having been on guard duty when the company was tattooed.
As I passed up Friedrichstrasse into Chausseestrasse I passed a shot-up armoured personnel carrier, a
