29. Dezember 1943
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| Position “Ilse/Anna”[1] | 
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After a few shifts, we have taken over our new company sections. The new front line again consisted of individual emplacements (machine gun emplacements and foxholes for double posts), spaced a hundred metres apart. My company “bunker” is fifty metres behind the line, roughly in the middle of the company section. For the time being it is still a simple hole in the ground 2 metres square and 1.70 metres deep. All other positions are also still open holes. The beams and tree trunks for the ceilings are to be driven in over the next few days. Until then, we will be lying out in the open day and night. It’s currently 23 degrees cold. We’re glad about that, because it could be even more. To protect myself from the fresh air, I have stretched my shelter half diagonally from the top edge of the hole to the ground. There is a handful of straw under this slope. My messenger did the same on the other side. This is my company command post!
Our winter clothing is good and warm. I wear a jumper under my uniform, a fur waistcoat over my uniform and on top a winter camouflage suit with felt boots, fur gloves and a fur cap. But it’s not enough to sleep under the open sky at night at minus 23 degrees. I don’t get more than three to four hours’ sleep these nights, as I wake up from the cold after just a few hours and am then so frozen that I can’t fall asleep again. I lie there shivering and with stiff limbs, covered only by my thin, green uniform coat, and feel the frost penetrating my bones.
The first vehicles with beams and trunks arrive. I have them drive to the machine gun emplacements so that they can finish them off first. The machine guns are our heaviest weapon up here. They have to be protected. What’s more, there are four to six men there at once who don’t need to freeze, while there are only two men in my hole.
The only advantage at the moment is that the catering vehicles can come right up to the front so that the men at least get warm rations. Every evening, a man from the orderly room comes forward with the field kitchen to present me with the signature folder. The sergeant major and the combat clerk always take turns with this job. Today it’s the first clerk’s turn again. He has laboriously crawled into my makeshift tent, now crouches close to me and hands me the documents one by one for my perusal and signature. I sit on the straw bed, my legs under the blanket, my back against the rock-hard frozen wall of our hole, and try to hold the pencil with my clammy fingers. I only manage to scribble my name with difficulty. Finally we are finished and I can put my fur gloves back on. The clerk, however, is glad that he can return to his warm farmhouse parlour.
I want to make one thing clear at this point: My train in the rear, from the sergeant major to the last driver, is and was better off in action than me, the officer. Back there they lie in warm beds at night, mostly undisturbed by enemy fire, receive their regular hot meals and various additional rations, which they get or exchange from the Russians. If you’re looking for it, you can also have accommodating female company. But we here at the front are cold and hungry often enough, and the officers are no better off than the men.
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