With Our Backs to Berlin

maintain complete control of the situation, the main mass of the enemy being brought down by rifle and machine gun fire. He then engaged those of the Bolsheviks that had got through to this position in close-quarter fighting until the area was cleared. R.’s courageous behaviour was decisive here and prevented a sudden enemy breakthrough.

On 6 Jan 44 R. and his section were the first to break back into our own positions that had been occupied by the enemy near Pietki, and then pinned down enemy resistance with fire until it was possible to reoccupy the whole of the position once more. R. destroyed three enemy machine gun nests during this engagement.

In the hard defensive fighting southwest of Proskuroff, the enemy attacked the battalion’s positions on the northwestern edge of Andreievka with armoured support during the evening. The enemy cut through our weakly occupied lines and established themselves on the northern edge of Andreievka. Eight enemy tanks tried to force their way into the village, four of them being destroyed by our own self-propelled guns. R. received the task of establishing the strength of the enemy on the northern edge of Andreievka. At 2000 hours he attacked the enemy with a storm troop, using the enemy’s surprise to split up the enemy combat teams. The enemy fled, leaving 20 dead and two prisoners behind. This decisive act enabled the battalion to establish a new security line on this position.

At 2000 hours on 2 Apr 44, R. received the task of launching an attack on two enemy occupied farms near Losiacz. R. was the first to commence clearing the farms, which were taken after some hard close-quarter fighting, the enemy having to leave several dead behind them in the farms. Several enemy counterattacks that followed shortly afterwards were beaten back successfully by R. until he received the order to redeploy to the edge of a wood nearby. R. covered the redeployment and inflicted such heavy casualties on the enemy spearheads that the new positions could be occupied unhindered by the enemy.

In all his engagements with the enemy, SS-Sergeant Major Rogmann has proved himself to be exemplary, and was awarded the Close Combat Clasp in Gold on 1 Sep 44. In view of his exceptional personal courage and his ever determined drive, I consider him worthy of the award of the

‘German Cross in Gold’

and request that it be awarded to him.

Comments of the Divisional Commander:

SS-Sergeant Major Rogmann has shown himself to be a manifestly brave NCO in all the engagements of the 1st SS-Panzer-Division ‘LSSAH’.

I request that he be awarded the German Cross in Gold for his exceptional bravery.

(signed)

SS-Oberfuhrer and

Divisional Commander

Comments of the 1st SS-Panzer-Corps:

I approve this commendation

(signed)

The Commanding General

SS-Gruppenfuhrer and

Lieutenant General of the Waffen-SS

Comments of HQ 6th SS-Panzer Army:

The proposal is approved

J. Dietrich

SS-Oberstgruppenfuhrer and

Colonel General of Armour

of the Waffen-SS

This citation is also notable for omitting an important incident involving Rogmann in late March 1944. The ‘Leibstandarte’ had been encircled with the rest of the 1st Panzer Army near Kamenets-Podolski on the western edge of the Ukraine, when their officers were all flown out on orders from above in order to reform the division in Flanders. Rogmann, then a sergeant, was left commanding the remains of his battalion, and eventually broke out with only six men. When he reported back to the division in Flanders, his reappearance was totally unexpected.

Photographs

^{1. Soviet troops outside the Brandenburg Gate.}

^{2. German youngsters being marched off into captivity.}

^{3. Schloss Thorn from across the Moselle River.}

^{4. Erich Wittor in the uniform of a subaltern of the Grossdeutschland Division.}

^{5. American troops survey the dead after the fighting for Nennig near Schloss Thorn.}

^{6. Ernst Henkel in 1943.}

^{7. Volkssturm at Frankfurt/Oder.}

^{8. Schloss Klessin before the battle.}

^{The two German ‘Tigers’ destroyed at Klessin.}

^{All that remained of Schloss Klessin after the battle.}

^{German dead in their smashed trenches below Seelow.}

^{9. Karl-Hermann Tams as a sergeant major with the Iron Cross Second Class.}

^{The first visit of the ‘Mook wie’ Old Comrades Association to Seelow on 15 April 1991. Tams in raincoat on left, the author far right.}

^{10. Major von Hopffgarten revisits the ‘Kurmark’ battlefield as a retired Lieutenant General of the Bundeswehr.}

^{11. Soviet T-34 tanks on the battlefield.}