22. Dezember 1943
| GEO & MIL INFO | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| additionally assuming command of 10th Coy |
The Bolsheviks are attacking our positions again. Our village is under artillery fire at the same time.[1] I’m at the battalion command post, as always in such cases. Landsers are coming down from the heights. They are coming from the direction of the old front, which has held until now. There are more and more of them. At first, one might have thought they were wounded or messengers. But now it is clear that they are retreating. The front seems to be crumbling. I receive the order to intercept the men and bring them back into the lines. So I run through the fountains of bursting shells towards the Landsers who are coming down the slope in scattered groups. I stop them. But while I bring the Landsers to a halt on the left, they continue to run back on the right. When I approach, those on the left again try to slip backwards. They are completely demoralised. After the nervous strain these poor, emaciated and overtired Landsers have been subjected to over the last week, it’s understandable. But it doesn’t help, we have to stick it out.
In the meantime, the Russians have increased their artillery fire. Broukh-broukh - the impacts are getting closer. Broummm-brakhkh. I throw myself flat on the ground. The explosions shred the white blanket of snow and send black fountains of earth into the air like jagged crowns. Damn, are the impacts close! Twenty metres, fifteen metres. And I am lying on level ground with almost no cover. Only small, shallow furrows offer imaginary protection. With each impact I press myself deep into the rock-hard frozen clods of earth. Slowly the volleys roll down the slope, a rolling barrage. Perhaps it is directed at the retreating groups of Landsers. They would always have run in the fire if I hadn’t stopped them. The impacts still crash near us, and each time I throw myself flat on the ground while rock-hard chunks of earth drum on my back.
The fire subsides, the Landsers gradually get up again. I gather them and bring them back to their positions. But not all of them. A number of them still bunked off to the rear. Those are the ones who will then talk in the rear about “drumfire” and “countless dead”. Then the Russian “broke through”, “everybody dead” and whatever all these excuses are.
After the men had gone back up to their positions, I went back alone. A hare is lying in the snow in front of me. His head is missing. The Pak shell must have torn its head off, because next to it is a long, narrow black groove carved into the white snow by the flat-trajectory shell.
As I walk back, I pass a shell crater in which a soldier is crouching. When I asked him, he pretends to be wounded, but he had nothing and I send him back to the front. He wanted to quietly wait out the evening here in peace and then scram backwards. Fortunately, most of them are still holding out, but the number of those who are at the end of their tether and see the hopelessness of this war is growing.
Late into the night, the Soviet Paks bark, the Red artillery rumbles, messengers run through the winter night, ammunition carriers take empty boxes to the rear and lug full ones to the front, ration fetches clatter forward with their mess kits, balancing with swaying steps over the hard-frozen earth.
I have just returned to the battalion command post and am sitting in the commander’s parlour when the leader of 10. Kompanie comes in. He has a serious knee injury and needs to go to the military hospital. The commander then orders me to immediately take over the leadership of the 10th Company. So I go forward and set up in the 10. Kompanie command post. It is a simple earth bunker. It is opposite the bridge at the end of the village, halfway up the slope. So I can look into the village. A layer of straw is spread out on the floor of the bunker, a blanket lies in the corner, and next to it is the field telephone. That’s all, and it’s enough. I have everything else I need in my haversack. Plus binoculars, a map case and a submachine gun.
I only spend one night here. Although the Russian doesn’t attack, he worries us with incessant artillery fire. You never know if he’ll attack during a cessation of fire. He’s probably trying to wear us down, or he’s up to something in the long run after all.
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- ↑ Acc. to KTB PzAOK 1, NARA T-313 Roll 62 Frame 7297725, own artillery smashed an enemy assembly.