31. Januar 1945
| GEO & MIL INFO | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kudi | 
| |||
| Sili |
| |||
| Close combat day?[1] | ||||
| Boege GOC 18.A.[2] | GOC: GenOb von VietinghoffWP,[2] | |||
| Field post letters/Red Cross cards | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ✉ to Carola |
I bring in the company, which is lying in the straw and snoring. (I should have taken the company squad leader with me. Then I could have saved myself this trip. It’s my own fault!) I lead the company to Kudi, a dispersed settlement, a loose grouping of several large farmsteads. Here, at intervals of a few hundred metres, three large farms stand in a row along the road. Whether Kudi is the name for the whole settlement or just for one of the farmsteads, I don’t know. These three farms are to become the backbone for the 2nd line. Several more shelters have been built on the site of each of these farmsteads. I occupy the middle farmstead with a platoon and also place my company command post here. I move to the arty observer who also has his observation post here. The other farms are also occupied and the platoons are ordered to start building fire positions immediately. Now, above all, I still need to occupy Sili. The farmstead lies between our two lines about 600 metres in front of my command post. Since we are on a slope, I can see it lying below. It lies on the flank of the incursion, and I am to occupy it in order to prevent a lateral expansion of the Russian breach. In other words, a blocking position to secure the flank. I therefore send a strong squad of 10 men there. As the leader of this squad I appoint the Feldwebel, who had surreptitiously obtained a place in my command post in Jurmalciems. To reinforce the right platoon, I send another halfplatoon over, which takes up position there with its two machine-guns. The breach almost reaches this farmstead, so our position must be strong here. I can see one of these firing positions from my farmstead. Near this machine-gun is the man from Danzig who offered me help and an invitation several times back in Gdansk[3]. Although I had been very reserved in order not to commit myself, I have now assigned him a relatively safe position in the 2nd line. Sometimes one can be influenced.
After I have briefed the platoons and squads and put them on the march, I myself go over to the left farmstead with one platoon. Here I establish the firing positions with the platoon leader, exhort the men to be vigilant and immediately start building the positions. Then I return to my farmstead and order the immediate expansion of the positions here as well. The men are dead tired and have not the slightest desire to entrench. But I am adamant. It is already beginning to get light. In one or two hours it will be daylight, and then entrenchment work will no longer be possible. But we have to get into the ground, because tomorrow will bring heated fighting. Then the men will be glad to have a hole. So I have a trench and a MG position dug at the front of the barn. The ground is frozen as hard as a rock. The work is hard and the men lose many a drop of sweat. I explain to them that a vital experience has emerged in the war that can be summed up in three words: “Sweat saves blood.” And then I urge them on to shovel. The men are still shovelling when the sun already appears on the horizon, but now a high wall of earth and snow hides us from the eyes of the enemy. Now the men are finished, and they have even been lucky, because in digging the trench they had come across an earlier ditch that had only been blown over by the snow.
31 Jan 45. On the night to 1 February pioneers lay a mine barrier in the terrain in front of our farmstead.
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- ↑ acc. to paybook form II opposite p. 23; KTB X.AK does not note any unusual combat activities in either the daily report or the morning report; perhaps they have been moved to another place in the diary, or is it a complimentary entry?
- ↑ 2,0 2,1 KTB HGr Kurland S. 300
- ↑ see 23.12.44