20. März 1942
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| platoon leader of the heavy mortar platoon, again |
“Reserves” are almost always response forces. You might as well call them fire brigades. We thought we had some peace and quiet at first, but the first night it already started. At 3 a.m. a messenger knocks on my door and shouts: “Alarm, the company is getting ready to march at once!”[1] Half an hour later we are on the march to the north-western[2] edge of the city. It is still dark. We stop. The platoon leaders are called to briefing. I am again leading the heavy mortar platoon. The situation is announced: A Soviet unit of 800 men has broken through our thinly manned security line in the darkness of the stormy winter night and has penetrated the first houses on the outskirts of the city. They have to be thrown out again. A rifle company, reinforced by an heavy machine gun platoon, prepares to counterattack. An assault gun and a four-barrelled self-propelled anti-aircraft gun are to support the attack. They are standing by, somewhere to our right.
It dawns. The outlines of the houses gradually become clearer. In front of us is the road. The usual picture of a suburban road: A wide sandy path flanked on both sides by little wooden houses. The log cabins stand about thirty metres apart, have a front garden with a wooden fence along the road and a garden behind the house. A rural scene. The road runs out into the open field.
In the meantime it has become light. A freezing cold winter day is breaking. No living thing is yet to be seen, and the houses lie sleepily in the early light of day. But it is a deceptive calm.
Our rifle company is setting out on the move. In groups, the soldiers sneak from house to house. Rifles ready to fire in their hands, they meander through the gardens and front yards. Each house is watched carefully. Then the first shots are fired. The fire quickly becomes more lively. Now we can see which houses are occupied by the Russians. Hum ... suddenly a dull firing booms, and at the same moment the wall of one of the first houses collapses under a cloud of dust and debris. That was our assault gun! Rumple - the second shot crashes into the house. In the dust cloud of the explosion, boards and a human body whirl through the air. Sergeant Kramm had taken up position with his two machine guns at the corner of a house and a front garden fence. Now he is firing his rounds into the occupied houses. A sheaf of bullets pelts his ears and clay splatters from the wall of the house. The Iwans put up a fight. Kramm changes positions, and then his sheaves rattle against the occupied houses again. Window panes shatter and the crumbling clay on the house walls shows the position of the sheaves. In the meantime, our rifle squads continue to advance. The first Russians retreat, fleeing from the houses, pursued by our hail of bullets. Now they are already jumping back in whole groups. The bright clatter of our carbine shots and the rattling of the machine guns are mixed with the dark, rhythmic thumping of our quadruple flak. Their 2-cm shells riddle the walls of the houses and disperse the groups of fleeing Russians. Many do not even manage to leave the houses. They had taken refuge in the cellar from the withering fire of the flak and the assault gun, but before they could crawl out again, our infantry was already in the house and captured them.
The resistance of the Reds is broken. We have recaptured one part of the houses they occupied, from the other they fled without a fight. Now they are streaming back in droves. As they do so, they have to hurry back up the gently rising but endlessly wide slope from whose heights they came down. The slope is a bare expanse of snow from which the brown figures stand out clearly. There they are without cover at the mercy of our four-barrelled flak. Without pause, it hammers its bursts of fire into the packs of fugitives. Woopp-boopp-boopp-boopp... each time the small shells tear a gap in their light heaps. This quadruple flak is a terrible weapon. Woopp-boopp-boopp-boopp... man after man sinks hit into the snow. Death follows the fleeing Soviets far up the slopes and carries them off until they disappear behind the saving edge of the plateau.
In the meantime, the column of prisoners that we have lined up on the road has grown longer and longer. There are many wounded among them. Their white bandages shine out from the brown rows. Some are still without bandages. The frost will penetrate their bleeding wounds. Silent and depressed, they stand there. Some stamp their feet to warm themselves. Others are preoccupied with their wounds. Here and there, compassionate women hand out something edible or a cup of milk from their homes. The Bolshevik attack group is completely crushed. About 200 dead lie on the battlefield, and as many prisoners stand in the street. This column is now slowly and sluggishly moving towards the inner city. This was a complete victory. Of the 800 attackers, only half return to their positions. We ourselves are back in our quarters by noon. Our own losses: None!
One evening we suddenly hear over there behind the Russian front the familiar howl of the Soviet multiple rocket launchers, the dreaded Stalin’s organs.[3] We jump into cover and await the first impacts. That’s when it flares up in Bilbassowka. First one impact each to the left and right, and then another 12 or 16 sparking fountains of fire spurt up into the dark night between them. And while the rumble of the screeching detonations makes the air tremble, the glowing shower of sparks falls back to earth. Phosphorus! For seconds, the shadow of night descends over the village again. Soon, however, individual fires flare up. The thatched farmhouses have caught fire. Now they stand like giant burning torches in the darkness and then gradually extinguish into dark red glowing patches. The Russians are not afraid of destroying their own villages and people if they can only hope to harm us thereby.
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- ↑ acc. to KTB 257. I.D. the alarm was given at 6 a.m. (NARA T-315 Roll 1804 Frame 000827)
- ↑ in the original erraneously north-eastern
- ↑ On 21 March - after the fighting around Karpovka - between 22.00 and 22.30 there were three attacks of a rocket battery on the western part of Bylbassowka (KTB 257. I.D., NARA T-315 Roll 1805 Frame 000609).