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

Five men were associated with each gun, the key man being the first gunner; he lined up the gun with the target and operated the firing-control. Then there was the loader, who kept feeding fresh shell-magazines into the gun-breach from the left side. The dogsbody refilled the magazines with fresh shells from ammunition-boxes as soon as they were empty. The driver of the unit normally remained in his cab, in case a fast pull-out from the position was needed and the co-driver acted as a stand-in or look-out, using binoculars to pick out approaching aircraft or other army movements.

It was not long before I experienced my first action when formations of Russian fighter-bombers appeared and swept down at a target quite close to our position. Our first-gunner, Schlemm, despite being a chunky little fellow, was amazingly agile about the gun. I was astonished at the speed with which our gun followed the movements of an aeroplane even though this had to be done manually by the operation of two handwheels. Schlemm sat on a seat attached to the gun, which was fixed to a swivelling base. With one handwheel in his right hand he could turn the gun through a full horizontal circle. He used the handwheel in his left hand to adjust the lift of the gun-barrel, which could travel through a range from pointing straight up in the air to a bit below the horizontal. The firing-mechanism was activated by a foot-pedal. Tremendous co-ordination of the gunner’s actions was needed to keep a plane in his gunsight, while accurately controlling all gun movements with his handwheels, a veritable one-man show.

This time the Russian planes came so close that Schlemm dispensed with the visually sighting instrument and used magazines with luminous shells. It struck me that it was like a man holding a high-pressure garden-hose and trying to hit a hare zigzagging past him. Having picked one plane as a target, Schlemm would open fire and violently swing the gun so that he was firing ahead of the plane and trying to make it fly into the hail of shells. Since the plane’s pilot could see the path of luminous shells almost as well as Schlemm could, he would suddenly veer away and Schlemm had to attempt to again sling his shells ahead of the plane. The violent swings of the gun gave the shells a curved flight-path which was why the comparison with the jet of water from a swinging hosepipe seemed so apt.

Since Schlemm had to concentrate on his target, it was up to the loader and me, as well as the lookout man, to keep clear of the swivelling gun-barrel which could swing through 180-degrees in little more than a second. This was not so difficult for the loader or the lookout but, crouching to refill the magazines, I sometimes needed eyes in the back of my head to avoid injury.

The honours in this encounter with the Russian planes seemed to be evenly distributed. The concentrated fire from anti-aircraft batteries caused some of the attacking planes to turn off, but a number of them got through and I could hear the explosion of bombs and the crackle from cannons as they strafed their target. Two of the Russian planes were hit. I saw the pilot of one plane bale out. It looked as if the second plane just managed to limp back behind the Russian lines.

I was struck by the distinctive sound of different weapons and my ability to recognize each sound amid a cacophony of other noises became very important for my survival in the months to come. Our 20-millimetre guns spat like wild cats, whereas the cannons of Russian planes made a crackling noise. The most common German machine-gun, the Model-42, hummed like a dynamo, which was why the Allies nicknamed it “The Sewing-Machine.”

We spent the next two days beating off Russian aircraft swooping down to strike at units lying close to us. They seldom attacked us directly because they were fairly vulnerable to our concentrated fire from behind the partial protection of the earth embankments. Hits on a plane were more effective than hits scored on our base.

For tactical reasons we moved our position each night. After being up at the crack of dawn and engaging Russian aircraft with our fire throughout the day, we had to pull out of our position after dark, which meant near midnight. We usually did not travel far, but by the time the new base was prepared for action, and I had maybe been caught for guard-duty, I was lucky to get three hours of sleep.

After the stabilising of the Russian Front on 20 July, the Russians had concentrated on bringing forward fresh supplies of troops and equipment. Now they began to renew their attacks in earnest. The 9th Army, to which my division belonged, was defending the area between the river Bug, north of Warsaw, and the town of Radom to the south of the capital.

On 29 July, strong Russian forces tried to cross the river Vistula, but we and other German units beat them back. My battery’s role now changed. We did not occupy dug-in positions over the following days, but made use of our in-built mobility to dart from point to point. This time the Russian fighter-bombers began to attack us directly, even though they never came too close.

Between 31 July and 8 August, my division found itself in the thick of what came to be named “The Battle for Warsaw.” Three Russian tank-corps had the task of achieving a crossing of the rivers Bug and Narew. They attacked in a northerly and westerly direction along a 10-mile front, but then suddenly came to a halt on 1 August. General Bor-Komorowski, the leader of the secret Polish resistance army, the “Armia Krajowa,” took this as a sign that the Russian tank-corps were about to launch an attack to free the city of German occupation and he ordered his troops to start a revolt. However, there was no Russian attack and it seemed to suit Russian government policy not to come to the aid of the general. There was a strong nationalist element in Poland which was as much opposed to the Russians as it was to the Germans, and the Russians were satisfied to see it crushed and to save themselves the trouble at a later date.

This explains my surprise when, stationed within ten miles of Warsaw, I heard the explosions in the city behind me, while all was quiet at the Russian lines in front of me. Only the day before, we had been pounded incessantly. On 2 October, 1944, General Bor-Komorowski finally surrendered.

The commander of the German 9th Army had correctly interpreted the reason for the lull in the Russian attacks and saw an opportunity to encircle the three Russian tank corps west of Warsaw. On 2 August, my division went into action north of the railway-line between Warsaw and Wolomin, while two other German panzer divisions joined us in completing the pincer movements. By 6 August, all three Russian tank corps had been destroyed.

My own recollections of those days are just a blur of noise and groping to reload magazines on a gun-carrier bucking across uneven terrain. I found it very difficult to retain any sense of direction and sometimes wondered how anybody could make head or tail of the situation.

Despite the many skirmishes we had with the Russians, all members of my battery escaped injury and, thanks to the great skill of the drivers, none of the guns got stuck in the punishing terrain. I began to feel appreciative of my association with a vehicle that had delivered me unscathed from the bedlam of warfare. Of course, I had been on the Russian Front for only a few days and was lucky to have escaped all the shrapnel flying about my ears. Though the war was probably lost, it could continue for many months and I had to expect far worse situations ahead of me.

With the destruction of the three tank corps, the Russians also lost 192 of their most modern tanks, and the pressure on the German forces decreased considerably. Then an alarming situation arose about thirty miles south-east of Warsaw. On 28 July, the Russians had been able to cross the river Vistula and three days later had established a bridgehead on the river at Magnuszew. The 19th Panzer Division, with which the Division Göring had fought side by side at Warsaw, had already been transferred to that hotspot on 4 August and the Division Göring was to follow four days later. The two divisions became the “fire-brigade” of Army-Group Middle, racing to plug gaps wherever they occurred, or blunting Russian attacks before they could get underway.