9. Dezember 1944
GEO & MIL INFO | ||||
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Troop training grounds Wandern, camp Narviklager | ![]() | |||
Groß Kirschbaum | ![]() | |||
Company Leader 3rd/Corps MG Btl. Berlin
16.12.: Battle of the Bulge |
Field post letters/Red Cross cards | ||||
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✉ to parents |

The next morning I already have my transfer order in my hand. If this rear society always worked so quickly, things would be a lot better. I once more visit our garrison chaplain to receive the holy sacraments. Afterwards, we sit together chatting and I warn him about the sneaky “spanner thrower” in the battalion who wants to sabotage the divine service.
Then I pick up my luggage and make my way to the railway station. I leave without regret. Meseritz will always be an extremely bad memory for me. I have only received blows from fate here. I literally shake the dust off my feet and board the train that will hopefully take me out of this town forever. Goodbye forever!
9 Dec. 1944, military training grounds Wandern[1]. I report to the staff of the 257th Volksgrenadier Division as ordered. A runner then takes me to a barrack where numerous officers have already moved in. And as I greet my comrades one by one, my gaze falls on a familiar face: Lieutenant von Arnim! It’s a happy reunion.
Today is the interview with the Ia[2] of the division. He explains that the division is destined for deployment in the West. He asks me about my previous position, honours and age. He pauses: 34 years old? A bit old. Then he adds: “But you have the prospect of soon becoming a first lieutenant and then a captain!” However, he then decides in favour of a younger man.
At the same time as the 257th Volksgrenadier Division, a Corps Machine Gun Battalion is formed, also destined for the West. It bears the name “Corps Machine Gun Battalion Berlin”[3] Here I am employed as company leader of the 3rd company and replace the previous company leader. I have another officer in my company, a freshly minted lieutenant, who leads the 1st platoon. The battalion leader is a petite captain, a Protestant pastor in his civilian life. He is calm and courteous, but is rumoured to be a Nazi.
The NCO corps consists largely of retrained members of the air force. The enlisted men have completed a short six-week recruit training and are going to the front for the first time. The only combat-experienced soldiers are the battalion leader and the company leaders. This is what the units we go to war with today look like!
The battalion is divided into 3 heavy machine gun companies and 1 heavy mortar company. The machine gun companies have 3 platoons with 4 heavy machine guns each and an anti-tank platoon with 6 Ofenrohrs of the type “Panzerschreck”[4]. The organisation is therefore somewhat different from the usual machine gun companies. The mortar company has 12 mortars of 8 cm calibre.
New replacements arrive day after day. Plus equipment, clothing, weapons, vehicles and horses. The horses are well fed, but the riding horses are insufficiently broken in. During the riding lessons, there are exciting moments every time the horses bolt with their riders or try to strip them off at the next wall.
The formation and equipping of the battalion is completed. We start with the shooting training of the sMG and the squad training. The men have to familiarise themselves with each other. This is followed later by platoon and company exercises, a loading exercise and, from time to time, small night exercises. Exercises in larger formations follow later.
The Christmas season is approaching. We send scouts to the villages to see if we can accommodate the men with the farmers over the Christmas holidays. The villagers are very helpful. I have already accommodated my whole company. Now I’m looking for quarters for Carola and myself, because I want to try to have Carola here over the holidays.
The Wandern troop camp is an extensive hutted camp that starts right next to the railway station and is surrounded by dense high forest. The training area is open terrain.
Battalion exercise with live firing on the troop training grounds Groß-Kirschbaum[5]. I go off to set up the targets for the sniping with the target sergeant. He is already waiting for me at the cover bunker. As I get closer, I recognise the sergeant who was the platoon leader of the heavy mortar platoon in my company in Mikhailovka and who I remember worst for his shirking. So this cunning rascal managed to abscond all the way home. Now he’s sitting here in the safe position of a target sergeant back home. You can’t go any further back. This type of crook is so cunning that they slip through the smallest of cracks and evade all the hero grab commissions.
And then I meet another old acquaintance here. It’s the shooting officer. I was a sergeant with him in Jasło. Later we were in the leader reserve together, where he, now a lieutenant, always chose the most comfortable night watches until I objected. Once again, he chose a comfortable post, back home. The character cannot be denied. In the meantime, he has even become a first lieutenant and acts very reserved. I realise that he doesn’t like my comradely tone at all. He is very taciturn, so I soon ditch the bloated frog.
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- ↑ according to the postmark on the field post letter of 9 Dec 1944 apparently in Narviklager, located, acc. to Ostensternberger Heimatbrief 3/2012 p. 11, between See-Vw. and Schermeisel on the southern side of the road on a forest clearing (cf. 25k map Schermeisel); on a piece of paper enclosed with the diary, the author noted: Next townlet: Zielenzig; according to this field post letter, Z. is also a post town for Wandern
- ↑ pronounced Eins-A (one-a), the First General Staff Officer of the Division (modern designation: G3)
- ↑ 28 such battalions had been established since November 1944 (KTB AGN of 22 Nov 1944 p. 304)
- ↑ Ofenrohr (stove pipe) and Panzerschreck (tank’s fright) were nicknames for the Raketenpanzerbüchse 54
- ↑ The author only remembered “Groß- ”. Groß Kirschbaum is one of the villages that had to be cleared in 1939 prior to the establishment of the troop training grounds Wandern (Ostensternberger Heimatbrief 1/2002 p. 4).