26. Januar 1945
| GEO & MIL INFO | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sanderi Höhe (Sanderi Heights)[1] | ||||
| Lt Fischer CompLdr 2./410 or 2./187? | ||||
| Chief of Staff Foertsch transferred to command of Army Group | GOC: GenOb Dr RendulicWP (only for a few hours) acting: Gen d Inf HilpertWP Ch Gen St: GenMaj FoertschWP,[2] | |||
The next morning the battalion command post is moved out of the hollow to the rear. The road to Kesteri, on which we came here, is no longer to be used because Russians are supposedly in the forest on both sides of the road. So that would be right at our back, a few hundred metres away. Not a nice feeling. Combing the forest seems pointless to the leadership. I have just heard that the Russians have penetrated our front in several places. In view of this situation, a withdrawal of the front is inevitable.
For two days we lay here in the Sanderi position. Tonight the front will be withdrawn. I am ordered to lead my company to a new position on the southern edge of the village of Kesteri, bypassing the unsafe forest behind us. To do this, I must first move to the left along a stretch of our previous front and then turn to the rear at a right angle at a certain point. Then I arrive exactly at the new position in front of Kesteri. In order not to miss this point at night, the battalion sends me a guide. He goes off with my company squad leader to mark this spot during daylight.
According to the battalion’s orders, the 1st Platoon of my company is deployed as a rearguard. It is to remain in position until a certain time and secure the battalion’s retreat. I go to Leutnant Harms to give him the order and discuss his task.
It has become dark. When the time set for me to withdraw had arrived, I give the order to abandon the position. The company gathers at the bunker of the company squad. Then I take the lead with the company squad leader and gave the signal to move off.
Suddenly, disjointed shouts come from the 1st Platoon. A few shots are fired. Then it is quiet again. We continued our march. On a small path that runs next to our abandoned positions, we enter the forest. Towards the enemy it is dense and dark, towards the rear it is light with wide open snowy areas. We trudge silently through the snow. Behind me the company squad leader and the long line of the company. Now we must soon be at the turn-off. There is no more path here, but judging by the distance and the time, we should be turning off now. I turn to my company squad leader. He must know exactly, because he has surely made a clear mark. When I ask him, he hems and haws sheepishly and finally admits that he doesn’t know the exact way either. I must be hearing things. After a few quick questions, it turns out that this guy was too lazy or too cowardly to walk all the way here this afternoon to establish the turn-off. Instead, he had the guide describe the area to him from afar and then turned back. And now in the half-light of the winter night he doesn’t recognise the area. What a bloody mess! Here I am with my company in the middle of an enemyinfested, unknown forest terrain and I am supposed to find the new position on a now unknown path! The whole company is now in an extremely precarious situation. An entire company is in danger of running into the hands of the Russians because a single derelict Feldwebel has neglected his duty! I gather the company briefly to explain our situation, not shying away from making the Feldwebel’s guilt clear. He is now supposed to be my support, my right hand! By the way, he is also a retrained Luftwaffe man . I hiss angrily at this guy, but that doesn’t make our situation any better.
So on we go! I first try to reconstruct the location of Kesteri from memory to have an approximate direction. But first I want to avoid the dangerous part of the forest that lies between me and my new position. So I continue stalking in the old direction for now. If we go too far, we run into the Russian positions. After a while I think it is now high time to turn off. At a clearer part of the forest I make a sharp turn and now go off at a right angle from the previous direction. The snowy area is untouched. No one has walked here for a long time. We have probably already walked too far. A farmstead appears in front of us.[3] The company squad leader, who was walking twenty metres ahead of me, stops hesitantly. So he’s a coward, too. I walk past him and approach the farmstead without slowing down. Everything remains silent. Either the inhabitants are asleep - it is night, after all - or the farm is deserted. I walk past the buildings without hesitation and continue on my way. Of course, the house could have been full of Russians, but if I had hesitated, the men’s trust in me would have gone to hell.
After a long walk we come across a solid road. We stop. I sniff around in all directions and hear the sound of shovelling on the left. Kesteri must be in that direction too, so I walk towards the sounds of shovelling and soon come across a front of digging soldiers from our battalion. I had marched in no man’s land between the enemy fronts and was now approaching our new position from the front, i.e. from the enemy side. Astonishing that they did not fire at me. When I reached the road, I was two hundred metres in front of our position. So I had turned off only two hundred metres too late, of which I was not unproud. But it could have gone bloody wrong. My guardian angel will probably have taken over leadership of the company here.[4]
I have landed right at my new company sector. The people working here on the expansion of the position are from my 1st Platoon. The battalion commander is also standing there with a guide. I report for duty and find out that Leutnant Harms has already been here for a long time with his rearguard. He had left his post as rearguard without further ado and arrived here long before me. When I question him about his behaviour, he claims that shortly after we left, a strong Soviet combat patrol on skis and in white camouflage coats suddenly appeared in front of the position and attacked him, whereupon he had to withdraw immediately. No need to comment! At the beginning of the war, such a guy would have been demoted, but with the prevailing shortage of officers, this can no longer be afforded, because those who follow are mostly no better.
26 Jan 45. Kesteri position. A small church village, surrounded by forest on three sides. The church is shot up, as are some of the farmsteads, which are not very numerous anyway. A hard gravel road leads through the village. My company’s positions run along the eastward edge of the village. There are three sectors. The one on the left runs along the high slope of the Barta valley. The Barta here is just a large stream with a narrow valley bottom, but high, steep-sided valley slopes and complex ravines. The positions here secure towards the hollow. The middle sector blocks the road that runs straight to the Ivan. Here is my company command post, about forty metres behind the positions, close to the road and at the same time in the middle of the company sector. The right sector is in the forest. It is the most complex and is therefore occupied by the 1st Platoon, which is the largest in number and is led by an officer. The latter is the norm, although I would prefer a proficient Feldwebel to this officer. But my Feldwebels are not much better.
What dashing daredevils our young Leutnants in 8./477 were at the beginning of the war! When I look at my slacker now, I realise that the war is already lost.
My company command post consists of two small bunkers connected by a fivemetre long trench. In one of them lies the company squad, in the other one I live with my company squad leader. The bunker looks like most of its kind: there is a thin layer of straw on the ground, in one corner is my sleeping blanket, next to it is the field telephone. On the other side lies the Feldwebel. The dug-out is covered with a layer of beams, over which there is still a covering of sand. A rickety door at least keeps out the harshest cold.
Yes, it is bitterly cold.[5] The country lies under a thick, white blanket of snow, whose millions of crystal stars sparkle like diamonds on the wonderfully clear days. But beneath the foot the snow crust cracks and crunches, and on the trampled paths it squeaks with every step. Our camouflage clothing is good and warm. That’s why the cold is bearable to some extent. But we also have days and nights with freezing frost, and then frostbite is not uncommon. It is also particularly bad that the food is often freezing cold when it arrives here. We haven’t had anything warm to eat for days now. When the soup is served here, it is almost cold, even though it is brought in thermal canisters. The coffee is completely cold. The bread that the men don’t eat right away is frozen in no time. And when they take it out of the bread bag later - it is supposed to last until the next evening - it is frozen as hard as a rock. Everything freezes overnight. When the men have their meals the next day, they nibble like mice on the hard edges of the bread, in which ice crystals glitter. The coffee in the canteens is frozen. You knock it out of the flasks one piece at a time and let it melt in your mouth. There are no Esbit cookers at the moment. If you don’t have a healthy stomach here, or at least eat very carefully, you can easily get a stomach ailment.
I have always been of the opinion that every superior should do the duty of his subordinates once in a while for a short time at certain intervals. Even higher troop leaders should come forward into the trenches for a few days. Incognito as a simple soldier.[6] Our paymasters and kitchen bulls, for example, should now enjoy our current rations for 24 hours. This should not be done out of malice, but only so that the higher and rear echelons do not lose sight of reality, which experience shows happens very quickly.
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- ↑ this name entered in paybook as place of a close combat, meaning unclear
- ↑ Arrival and command takeover Rendulic acc. to KTB HGr K dated 26 Jan 45, 18.20 hrs; immediate reassignment and transfer as well as transfer Foertsch acc. to KTB HGr K dated 26 Jan 45, 22.25 hrs
- ↑ probably the building north-west of „Kumpe“ (Karte des westlichen Russland sheet H 16), heute „Vītoliņi“ (development plan of Rucava county)
- ↑ The withdrawal of the projecting front arc on the left wing of the 87th and 30th I.D. to this “Krimhilde position” was completed at 10.55 hrs (KTB HGr K dated 26 Jan 45, cf. OKW situation map LageOstKurland24Jan45)
- ↑ down to –25°C (KTB HGr K dated 26 Jan 45 p. 235)
- ↑ The East German National People’s Army tried this from 1959 - by the way, based on a Chinese model - and already abandoned it again in 1960 due to complex problems - including restrictions on combat readiness. It is also the basic idea of the TV series „Undercover Boss“.