“When will they reach us?” he asked a soldier.
“Soon enough,” replied the soldier. “Eat something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Eat,” said the soldier. “You need to keep your strength up.”
The meals, when they came, were filling. The problem was there were days when they didn’t come, leaving the Volkssturm ‘volunteers’ and their companions, the regular soldiers, to sleep with aching bellies.
Ludwig’s trench was 300 meters from the river Oder. On the far side of the river, a forest hid the Red Army that everyone knew was there.
On January 10, Herr Tannhäuser was replaced by a younger man and they moved Ludwig to a trench occupied by an old sergeant armed with a Panzerfaust. This man was even more curmudgeonly than Herr Tannhäuser, and Ludwig could get little more than a few grunts from him. At dawn on January 12, artillery shells began to fall from the sky. They still hadn’t seen a Russian tank or a single Russian soldier.
The noise was deafening, the carnage worse than anything Ludwig could have imagined. He saw fellow soldiers, young and old, blown to pieces in the trenches.
The sergeant fired his Panzerfaust blindly into the forest. Ludwig kept the ammunition flowing. After about five minutes, someone shouted at them to cease firing. Ludwig was glad of the interruption; the weapon’s barrel was too hot to touch, and he already had blisters on his hands.
And then a shell exploded above their trench. Ludwig was blown off his feet. The sergeant was struck in the neck by a piece of shrapnel and fell at his feet. Ludwig screamed. No one heard him above the roar of the artillery shells.
Ludwig watched the blood pour from the sergeant’s neck. He tried to stem the flow with his fingers, but the sergeant died in less than a minute. The troop leader recoiled from the body and used water from his canteen to wash the blood from his shaking hands.
The bombardment continued for another hour. And then it stopped.
A bugle sounded the retreat and they all scrambled from their trenches and ran away from the river, back toward the city. The older men and some of the luckier boys found places on Wehrmacht trucks, but most of the young boys made the journey on foot. The dead and wounded were simply abandoned. Thirty minutes of breathless, desperate running took Ludwig to a collection point where they rested before forming up.
After a half day’s march, they reached another line of defensive trenches in the Seelow Heights. There were hundreds of soldiers and boys here and the trenches had protective covers. They had heavy machineguns and many Panzerfaust weapons. They could take a stand here. They could fight back.
The new arrivals were given time to rest. Soon, boys were moving about, exchanging stories and seeking out missing friends. Ludwig wandered among the trenches.
A soldier handed Anton half a pack of cigarettes for his nerves. He’d heard the Russian artillery fire in the distance. And he’d seen the troops arriving from the east in trucks and on foot. His hands were shaking. He was beginning to understand what was coming.
He was experimenting with his first cigarette when Ludwig, his troop leader, jumped into the trench beside him. Anton hardly recognized him; he looked thin, and much older than his 16 years.
“I told you your chance would come,” said Ludwig.
Anton offered Ludwig his cigarette. Ludwig took a long drag and handed it back. Anton admired his friend’s familiarity with the forbidden art of smoking. He drew in a deep lungful himself and broke out in a wild coughing fit.
Two soldiers laughed at him.
Ludwig patted him on the back. “I didn’t see you at the Oder. Were you there?”
Anton shook his head; he couldn’t speak.
Ludwig waited for Anton to recover his breath. “Seen any action?”
“Nothing’s been happening here.” Anton’s face was red, his voice a distorted croak. “What about you?”
“There was a big battle at the Oder. The Russians fired their artillery into our trenches.”
“We heard the artillery,” said Anton. “Did you fire back?”
“We had to run for our lives.”
“That’s defeatist.” Anton started coughing again.
Ludwig took the cigarette from him and drew on it once more. “We got the signal to pull back.”
“A strategic withdrawal.”
“I suppose. Guess who I was assigned to?”
“Who?”
“Your father! They moved him somewhere else after a few days.”
“And left you on your own?”
“They moved me in with an old sergeant.”
“What was it like?”
“Old and grumpy.” He handed the cigarette back, but Anton waved it away.
“No, what was the battle like?”
“Very noisy.” Ludwig stuck out his chest. “We fired our Panzerfaust at the Russians. We took out three of their tanks.”
“That’s amazing! We heard the artillery bombardment, but we haven’t seen a Russian yet.”
“There were a lot of soldiers killed. It was really scary.” Ludwig’s voice broke. “My sergeant was killed…”
“You saw that?”
Ludwig shuddered. “It happened in the trench right beside me… He was hit by a piece of shrapnel that would have killed me if he hadn’t been standing where he was.”
“That’s nothing,” said Anton. “I’ve seen hundreds of dead bodies in my father’s funeral parlor.”
Ludwig glared at him. “This was different. When the bugle sounded, we ran for our lives. We left—” His voice broke. “We left the d-dead and injured behind. We left my s-sergeant in the trench where he fell.”
“You’re sure he was dead?”
Ludwig said nothing more. He took a last drag on the cigarette and threw it away.
25
Anton and Ludwig were told to stay in the trench where they were. An officer came by and asked all their names. Then they gave them Panzerfaust 30s and 100s and several crates of shells into the trench.
Ludwig and Anton were given a Panzerfaust 100.
“Wait until you get the order to fire,” said the officer.
They both saluted. The officer moved on without saluting back.
“I’ll fire, you load,” said Anton. “I’m good at
