12. Mai 1943
Soviet mortars now cover the village more frequently with harassing fire.[1] I therefore dug myself a small cover hole behind the house. Actually, I was going to dig it in turn with my cleaner, but the stinking lazy bugger didn’t take a spadeful at it. However, since I like to work, I didn’t mind. I do make a mental note of it though and get him on it sometime when it’s much more unpleasant for him. Once he was cleaning my boots while I was shovelling. When I told him that he could relieve me as soon as he was done, he fiddled with the boots for half an hour just so he wouldn’t have to shovel.
These cleaners or orderlies were the platoon and company leaders’ go-to guys in quiet times. In action, they then acted as messengers. But my current one was unsuitable for both functions. He was also no good as a soldier. I had only accepted him because no group wanted him. A long time later - the guy had long since left us - I received a letter from him telling me that he had enlisted as an officer candidate and asking me to write an assessment about him and send it to a specified office. I wrote him an evaluation, correctly and truthfully, but it would have been better for him not to have asked for it.
I had been sent chocolate blancmange powder from home and had cooked myself a mess kit full of this favourite dish of mine. To let it cool down a bit I put it in my cover hole. Then, as I was about to take the blancmange out, I see a cat coming out of the hole. Suspecting disaster, I climb down and find that the beast has eaten some of the pudding. Snorting with rage, I run into the house, get my submachine gun and run after the cat to shoot it. It takes to its heels and I chase after it. Several times I draw a bead on it, but it disappears among the garden vegetables. I know that the Russians see me, but my anger is greater than my caution. Nevertheless, I have to turn back without any hunting luck. I am still angry. Such a rare treasure for the birds![2]
I am now the position construction officer and, in cooperation with the battalion adjutant Gawletta, I have to check the condition of the fire positions, improve the installations, select and develop new positions, and complete the position and fire plans. Plans for newly laid minefields must also be drawn. My most important task at the moment is to build a barbed wire fence that will run along the front of the entire battalion section. Night after night, I am now in front of the positions to lay out the course of the wire obstacle with the combat engineers. Our work is secured by a rifleman’s screen, which I have already moved forward against the enemy into the wooded foreland.
In front of the village, the fence is already in place. It runs down in the valley parallel to the steep slope. The slope here is almost fifty metres high and cut by deep, steep-walled ravines that have been washed out by the rainwater. Year after year, these balkas eat further into the slope and plateau. Headward erosion is what the geographer calls it. Some of these balkas are overgrown with scrub, others show their bare flanks with the bare ground like a deep, gaping wound on the slopes of the grassy plateau. One of these gullies has already eaten its way so far backwards that it has reached the first house on the left side of the village. The croft is already perilously close to the edge of the steep-sided ravine, and one day the house will slide down into the balka along with the garden.
We dislike these balkas, because they force our front to bulge out again and again and because they make the terrain confusing. But above all because the Russians love to use them to sneak up on our positions.
The slopes of the steep bank are mostly overgrown with grass. Only in places does the forest reach the upper edge. The plateau is covered by the giant fields of the collective farm or by extensive pastures. The fields are worked by the villagers.
Our battalion section extends to the northeast a few more kilometres beyond the village. Here, the positions of the rifle companies are on the front edge of the plateau. From up here, one looks over the densely forested Donez valley, several kilometres wide. Like a huge green moss cushion, this partly swampy forest stretches below us to the horizon, where you can just make out the edge of the valley on the opposite side. Only in places is the bright band of the river visible between the green forest. In the far distance, a large village can be seen in a vast clearing.[3]
In front of our village, the Donets River comes close to the valley slope in a huge bend, flows along it for a distance and then moves away again. The lower houses of the village reach down to the river, which is about fifty metres wide here. In and around the houses lie our forward positions, because on the other side of the river, where the dense forest immediately begins on the bank, the Soviet outposts already lie at night.[4] One can almost throw a hand grenade across. At night our machine guns comb the edge of the woods from time to time with short bursts of fire to unsettle any Russian lookouts or snipers. Lately our Landser even get a kick out of having all the machine guns at the same time fire two longer and three shorter bursts. Then the rhythmic rattling of the machine guns drones through the forest along the entire front: Rrrrrt-rrrrt-rrt-rrt-rrt, like the drums of the Deutsches_Jungvolk during their performances[5]. Our Landsers took over this joke from the SS. But those could afford it. For us it’s a waste of ammunition. Upon my remonstrance, it is forbidden by the battalion.
As the leader of the heavy weapons, I have particularly large and powerful binoculars. I sometimes use them to search the forest. Sometimes I see brown figures walking around in the forest. As long as they stay in the shade of the trees, they cannot be seen. But as soon as they walk through a ray of sunlight or stand in the sun, their uniform lights up.
One of my mortar squads has also spotted a group of entrenching Bolsheviks. It is a strange feeling to see the unsuspecting enemy so close through the glass. It’s as if you could grab him with your hand. After the Reds had left their place of work, our mortars adjusted their fire to this place, and when the Ivans came back the next morning, our mortars pounded in between them.
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- ↑ Until 12 May 1943 only sporadic, weak or minor harassing mortar fire, sometimes just general harassing fire, is reported, from 26 Apr onwards predominantly mortar fire. predominantly mortar fire, which may indicate higher intensity; on 12 May intensified mortar fire is explicitly mentioned (KTB 1.PzA, NARA T-313 Roll 48 Frame 7293926 as well as before and after).
- ↑ The usual German expression is an exactly fitting word of games as it translates to “for the cat”.
- ↑ Perhaps Tscherwonyi or Iwanowka
- ↑ They had been pushing inexorably towards the river since 21 Apr (KTB 1.PzA, NARA T-313 Roll 48 Frame 7282520, 567, 623, 665).
- ↑ A documentary film shows such drummers (unfortunately without original sound, from minute 00:40).