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

I noticed that there was a clear difference between instructors who had seen active service and those who had not. The seasoned campaigners were hard, but humane, and they knew no pettiness. Maybe their approach was at variance with the official line, but it was they who earned our greatest respect.

Towards the end of my training in Holland, I did get indirect confirmation from an officer that I had not lost my pride and I must confess to having cherished the memory of this occurrence with some self-satisfaction. An officer once upbraided me, saying, “You know, Stieber, you salute your superior officers the way an English lord greets his underlings.” He obviously exaggerated, but I do know that I fully intended to hold on to my self-respect while also being committed to becoming a good soldier.

The crotchety behaviour of our instructors did make a lot of sense in the matter of footwear. I recall many a time being exhausted after spending an hour kneading boot-grease into the leather and belabouring my boots with a bottle, in order to make them soft and supple. When he was inspecting our boots, the NCO would drop a sharpened pencil from a height of about two feet onto the front of each boot. If the point of the pencil did not make a clear indentation in the leather, the recruit was in trouble. Of course, the condition of one’s footwear made all the difference between getting blisters or not on long, forced marches and on that could hinge survival. In later months I was often grateful for the skill I had acquired during this long and gruelling drudgery.

During classroom sessions we were lectured in great detail on various aspects of integrity, loyalty, decency, courage and other codes of behaviour, including hygiene. We were expected to be fully committed to the aims and aspirations of the fatherland and to display courage so that we would not let our comrades down.

Getting injured could lead to a court-martial if there was any suspicion that one had done something purposely in order to get out of the combat zone. (A court-martial was a court set up for the trial of military offenders and was composed of officers, none of whom could be of inferior rank to the prisoner). A court-martial also applied if anybody was caught looting, no matter where or how insignificant the items taken or what excuse was given. Theft from the army or from one’s comrades was treated similarly.

Personal hygiene was of paramount importance. To become infested with lice was severely punishable, unless the first signs had been reported to the medical orderly. No excuse for getting VD was accepted, including the claim that one had got it from a public toilet. The penalty for this was a court-martial, because it was considered as serious a charge as that of desertion.

According to statistics of the allied armies, VD put more men into hospital than did combat with figures ranging from 6.1% in Europe to 10.2% in Burma.

The training that I enjoyed most was the handling of arms, and target practice. It was not the fighting connotation that attracted me, but the fact that here was a case where skill, and skill alone, counted. An air-gun owner since the age of ten, I had become a very good shot and had collected prizes and marksman badges during my boarding-school days. Heretofore I had handled only air-guns and .22 rifles, but a heavy army rifle was a different thing altogether and we had to shoot over a distance of more than two hundred metres without telescopic sights. The target was usually a cardboard ringed silhouette of the life-size head and shoulders of a soldier in a steel helmet. We also trained on the army pistol, machine-gun and machine-pistol. Of them all, I found the army pistol to be, by far, the most difficult to master. One of the exercises I liked most was the replacing of machine-gun parts. This was a speed exercise and a stop-watch was used on each of us as we performed the different actions.

Another form of target practice involved throwing dummy hand-grenades and “Mills” grenades onto a target area from three positions; standing, kneeling and lying down. I was surprised that we were never taught bayonet-work, although we did carry bayonets and kept them in spotless condition.

After twelve days in Utrecht, we were moved to Amersfoort, a much smaller town of 40,000 inhabitants and lying about ten miles further east. The garrison there had originally been a Dutch monastery and was not ideally suited for military requirements. The accommodation was adequate, although the grounds were small and we had to use a truck to get to some of our training sessions. The training programme continued along similar lines, except that we now had an additional classroom subject; skills on the Front-line. This dealt with observation-training; recognition of planes, tanks and other armoured vehicles, making out reports, the use of a compass, map-reading and guidelines on survival.

After only two weeks in Amersfoort, we were again transferred. This time our destination was the town of Apeldoorn, about 35 miles to the east with the somewhat larger population of some 70,000 people. This was a very welcome change. We had seen hardly anything of Utrecht or Amersfoort, because we had not been given town passes, but from now on we would be less restricted in our movements. I think it was out of concern for a good relationship between the German army and the Dutch population that young recruits were not allowed to leave barracks until good discipline had been drummed into them.

About fifty of us new recruits out of several hundred had been moved to Apeldoorn; the rest were sent to other parts of Holland. Our accommodation now consisted of a group of detached suburban houses on the outskirts of the town. These were four to five-bedroom houses which had been requisitioned because of their location and suitability. All original furnishing had been removed apart from the bathroom and kitchen equipment, but we still got our meals from a nearby field-kitchen. The same standards for the care of our accommodation were applied as in the barracks and penalties for neglect were enforced just as strictly. We were told that the houses would be returned to their owners after the war and there should be no adverse reflection on us occupants.

In Apeldoorn I got my first taste of a new responsibility given to us. Our accommodation had no perimeter protection, so one man in rotation was put on the tedious chore of round-the-clock guard duty.

Our training continued with undiminished vigour, but there were now few classroom sessions and most of our time was spent on a nearby scrubland area toughening ourselves with increasingly demanding exercises. Marching exercises, arms drill and target practice also took place every day as standards were relentlessly pushed higher. We used to march in formation to and from the scrubland, but the customary singing of marching-songs was always dropped when we passed through the suburbs of Apeldoorn. The intention was to avoid giving anybody unnecessary offence.

How did the Dutch population react to us? Since we were not allowed to fraternise, all social contact with the townspeople was out of the question anyway. We had strict instructions to treat civilians with respect, and this applied especially to females. Anybody who threatened or abused members of the population could expect to be severely punished.

My one regular contact with the local people was a fruit-vendor who visited us daily, his cart piled high with baskets of luscious and inexpensive fruit.

Walking through Apeldoorn I received neither friendly nor unfriendly looks; it was as if the citizens were intentionally ignoring me. It was widely known that the Dutch people very much resented having their country occupied by a foreign power and we were told that lone sentries had been shot or had dogs set on them. Since we were now doing guard duty, we were warned accordingly, but I never had any unpleasant experience during my remaining two months in Holland. I had one encounter with Dutch people that caused me much embarrassment. I wanted to buy something to read and so I went to one of the larger book-shops in the town centre and asked if they had any English books. The frightened look on the assistant’s face, and her vehement denials, made me realise how naive I had been. Trying to correct my mistake, I quickly told her, and an elderly gentleman who had come forward, that I wanted it only for my own use. I told them that I had grown up in England and Ireland and wanted to keep up my English. The gentleman said that he would have a look and disappeared into the back of the shop with his assistant. They were away quite a long time, probably discussing whether to trust me or whether this was just a ruse to catch them out.