John Stieber - Against the Odds - Survival on the Russian Front 1944-1945 [2nd Edition]

A number of my short holidays were spent with the Soukals in Mücheln. I recollect an interesting event concerning captured British soldiers who had accepted the option of working in the sugar factory rather than spending their time idly in a prisoner-of-war camp. When one of them died from an incurable illness, all German senior factory staff walked with the funeral cortege headed by the factory manager, Herr Rieper, who wore a silk top hat. I was much impressed by this show of respect for a prisoner-of-war who was also just one of hundreds of workers in the factory. When Herr Rieper died a few years later, the soldiers returned the honour by lining up at his funeral.

In 1942, our school orchestra began to give public performances in nearby towns. We usually played incidental music at small civic occasions in town halls or community centres. I liked going on these outings even though it was quite tiring. We were collected by horse and trap or, very often, with farm wagons and sometimes had to travel quite a distance. Our recitals were usually in the evening and in winter we were frozen stiff after our long journey. Having endured the trip, we had to play in an unheated hall and often put up with a piano affected by the cold. A redeeming feature of our trials and tribulations was that after each performance we were treated to mountains of open apple and plum tarts, a speciality in Thuringia, that were baked for us by a local unit of BDM girls.

During all the time I spent in Haubinda, the school gave me an immeasurable feeling of happiness and fulfilment. I also enjoyed an excellent rapport with my fellow students and some have remained lifelong friends. All this must have played a significant part in helping me cope with the continued separation from my parents. I naturally missed them, but I do not recall ever having been really homesick. The Red Cross letters that my parents sent me were a mixed blessing. On the one hand it was good to get them, but, on the other hand, there was something quite depressing about the terse lines that reached me on an impersonal form every month.

My stay in Haubinda came to an abrupt end in February of 1943 when my class was called on to staff an anti-aircraft battery in central Germany even though we were, on average, only sixteen years of age. My matriculation was still two and a half years away and, though an arrangement was being made that we would continue to receive our lessons, this did not sound at all like a practical idea. The only redeeming feature that I could see was that we were to be allotted in large groups to batteries and would still be with our friends.

However, for all practical purposes our schooldays were over and our idyllic existence in a protected environment was no more. As for me, the whole reason for years of preparation in Ireland, and my going to school in Germany had come to nothing.

Anti-aircraft batteries in Germany were manned by an arm of the Luftwaffe which was known as the Heimat FLAK (Home Ak Ak). On 22 February, 1943, I became a Luftwaffen Helfer, which means an auxiliary of the Luftwaffe. The purpose of establishing these units of schoolboys was to be able to release regular soldiers for service in the Front-lines. As a result, anti-aircraft batteries retained all officers and NCOs, but only a skeleton crew of rank and file soldiers. It was recommended that seventy soldiers should be released for every one hundred auxiliaries called up. A total of 100,000 schoolboys became auxiliaries between the beginning of 1943 and the end of the war.

All boys in my year had been called up, with the exception of a few who were older than the rest of us and had already been conscripted to the Labour Service. Our Classics teacher, Dr Reichler, was detailed to go with us and to give us our lessons in all required subjects.

After bringing my belongings to my guardian’s house in Mücheln, I set off for the town of Schkopau, eleven miles to the north-east. My battery was stationed nearby in open country which put it about halfway between Halle to the north and the giant Buna/Leuna chemical works to the south. It formed part of a protective ring around these two vital production areas and also had to prevent bomber formations from flying further east to attack other targets. The battery consisted of four 105-millimetre anti-aircraft guns, radar equipment, a computer control module and a data conversion section. There were twenty-one of us auxiliaries and we were allotted in groups to the different sections of the battery, but not to the guns, apparently because we would have been exposed to greater danger.

The rules and conditions under which schoolboys were called up were very comprehensive and stringent; all civil laws governing the protection of youths were to be observed. Auxiliaries had to receive a minimum of eighteen hours of school classes a week and they were not allowed to carry out any manual labour. Strict rules applied to the accommodation provided and an officer in each battery was given special responsibility for their well-being and to ensure that they were not exploited. These, among a host of further guidelines, showed that the well-being of the auxiliaries was being taken seriously. In my group the conditions were generally met, with the exception of one rule which stated that all auxiliaries must get a minimum of ten hours’ sleep a night, or be compensated with extra sleep during the daytime. As Allied bombing raids were stepped up, there was no practical way of meeting these requirements.

Our accommodation in Schkopau consisted of timber huts which had a floor area of some twenty by twenty feet, and were placed about four feet below ground level. Each was surrounded by a protective mound of soil about five feet high so that only the shallow roof of the building was visible. Since each group of seven auxiliaries had a hut to itself, there was plenty of room and, though furnishings were sparse, it was clean and adequate. We slept in two-tier bunk beds and each of us had a steel locker and chair. A table and an army stove completed the equipment. Spartan as it was, and though the beds were not comfortable, nobody groused and we took it all in our stride.

Our personal equipment was standard army issue, but the uniform was based on the design of the Hitler Jugend dress. As a distinguishing feature, we wore a wide band with a swastika on the upper left arm of our jackets. For normal daytime activities we wore light-coloured army fatigues.

The food we got was mediocre, unlike the meals we had been given in the Lietz schools. We were often served a kind of goulash, and sometimes the potatoes had suffered frost damage, but we got some very good milk puddings. Since by this time the war had been going on for over four years, I suppose we could not complain too much and we got enough to fill our bellies. A large hut served as a canteen and we used it as a recreation hall in the evenings after we had done our homework.

We generally had very little contact with the army personnel during leisure hours and even less contact with NCOs and officers. Maybe they had been instructed to keep it that way. One exception was a young, outgoing lieutenant, who often sat with us philosophising for many an hour.

Our daily routine began at 6.30, that is, if we had not been up half the night. After washing, making our beds and tidying up the hut, we ate breakfast and then had school classes up to lunchtime in one of the huts especially reserved for this purpose. The afternoons were devoted to instruction in our respective sections of the battery and we also had physical fitness training, as well as marching drill. We did our homework in the evenings and could then relax, provided there was no air-raid alert.

I was very impressed by the high degree of automation with which our heavy FLAK-battery operated. Approaching aircraft were picked up, either by our radar-disc or by an optical range-finder. All data relevant to the movements of the aircraft were fed into a control-module, a technical marvel that could best be described as a mechanical/electrical computer. This equipment made all ballistic calculations for the guns and positioned them correctly by remote control, so that they were set and ready to fire. We auxiliaries had only light work to do; it was just a case of watching dial-gauges and adjusting small hand wheels. The only heavy work was done by the loaders of the guns, who had to lift and thrust a four-stone shell into the breech of each gun every three to four seconds.