Armin Scheiderbauer - Adventures in My Youth

Despite the extremely serious situation a feeling of strength overcame me, because up to then we had seen nothing of the Russian air force. First a flight of Stukas, Ju (Junkers) 87s, flew in. Almost vertically they dived down with their engines screaming. The detonations of the bombs followed. Then, a squadron of Ju 88s also attacked, and, finally He (Heinkel) 111 bombers. Unfortunately, ahead of the 5th Company sector they had dropped their bombs too short. There were dead and wounded. Among them was the excellent company commander, Oberleutnant Esken. Not long after that short pause there suddenly rang out shouts of ‘Tanks, tanks!’ and for the first time in my life, I heard the characteristic dull rumble, that unforgettable grinding noise of heavy tank engines.

A scout car was the first to drive from the left through our lines. Unconcerned, he rattled on up the Saawinki-Upolosy road. When he got as far as the battalion command post, he was polished off with one shot from a 5cm anti-tank gun. From my inactivity in the reserve, I was able to watch from the command post how the gunners let him approach and then, from 30m range, let him have it so that he lurched to a halt. With his hands in the air, a barefoot Russian, smeared with blood and oil, crept out.

Our company commander told us a few days later that the prisoner said the Russians deployed entire families as tank crews. ‘The husband was the driver, the wife aimed and fired the gun, and the adolescent son loaded the gun’. You could well believe it. From the tongue of woodland where the 7th Company and my section had been, shortly after the scout car had been destroyed, a single Russian ran out with loud cries. He shouted in a hoarse voice, Kamerad, Kamerad . As if he himself wanted to desert to us, or wanted us to desert to his side, he held up one hand, gesticulating. But suddenly the older man pulled a hand-grenade from his pocket, pulled out the pin and held the grenade in the air. It exploded and mangled his hand. Thereupon he ran back into the woodland, wailing loudly. What he wanted remained a mystery to all of us.

The Russians again mounted a frontal attack on the main fighting line with tanks and infantry. The tanks fired with their cannon and machine-guns while we were under heavy mortar fire. In front they were shouting Urraih , and were already breaking through. A runner came under the heaviest covering fire and reported what we had realised without him telling us, that the main fighting line could not be held. Oberleutnant Bayer, the commander, without waiting for orders from the battalion, decided to withdraw some hundred metres. On his order the entire company ran across the short stretch of level ground. When they had reached the level of the command post, he, too, ran back and I with him. The Oberleutnant , in a bleached summer tunic with a yellow-brown belt, knew that he presented a particularly good target to the enemy. He sprinted like a runner in a race and had overtaken the company in no time.

Behind us, the tanks rattled up, firing with everything they had, while our men ran back in front of them. Where were the anti-tank guns? At the edge of a small hollow, in which the company was then to take up position, the battalion commander Kelhauer stood erect, unmoving, and without cover. Only his moist eyes gave any sign of how moved he was, and then the words: ‘Bayer, lad, you can’t just bolt with the lads!’ From his words there spoke the complete shock that German infantrymen had given up a position without higher orders and had given way to enemy pressure. The fact that it had happened in the form of a completely orderly withdrawal, and the men had immediately taken up positions again, altered nothing of that inconceivable fact. Hitherto, there had never been such an event in the regiment’s history. In December, facing Moscow, they had had to withdraw. But that was following orders. Even so, the tears had run down Oberst Boege’s frozen cheeks, as those who were there tell with awe.

While I was running back over the level ground, the right-hand pocket of my tunic had been shot through. Even in retrospect, that discovery sent a jolt of horror through my limbs, because in this pocket I was carrying two ‘egg’ hand-grenades! A tank shell had lacerated the company commander’s breeches. A Feldwebel had had a grenade in his hand shot through by a bullet, luckily without it hitting the detonator.

The fire became heavier. It even compelled those who were tired to dig in hurriedly. The hollow at the edge of which we then found ourselves attracted the enemy mortar fire like a magnet. The strikes were good. For us, they were dangerously near. I was still standing in the open. Some 15 metres from me a shell hit a fully-occupied foxhole. A Gefreiter with blonde hair and a chalk-white face was somersaulted by the blast of the explosion some 5 or 6 metres out of the hole. All around the earth was spraying up with the shells exploding. There rang out the blood-curdling screams of a fatally-wounded man crying for his mother. I used to think that was an invention of fiction writers. After a while, in obviously unbearable agony, he looked at Bayer, and cried, ‘ Herr Oberleutnant, shoot me!’ Bayer, at other times never at a loss for words, shrugged his shoulders helplessly and turned away without a word.

‘God Almighty, let it soon be evening’, I thought. Unsure, under the stress of being in the thick of events, and under cover in the hollow, I could see nothing of the enemy. In the immediate main line of resistance, 50 metres further forward, I would have been able to survey the ground. I would have seen them attacking and breaking through. I would have been able myself to take aim and fire. But there at the company command post, I was condemned to wait under gruelling fire unable to do anything.

Finally, the decisive attack was made. Three tanks of the types KV 1 and KV 2, the latter 56 tons in weight and armed with a 15cm howitzer, drove up the road and through the battalion’s front. The anti-aircraft guns were gone, the anti-tank unit long since lost. From in front there rang out Urraih . Then, our men were getting out of their trenches and retreating. They could no longer be stopped. The tanks had also overrun the field dressing station where a number of wounded were waiting to be transported away. The tanks then formed up some 200 metres behind the scattering remnants of the battalion. In a triangle on the elevated open ground, each one gave the other cover.

Beside the knocked-out scout car I noticed as I passed, the dead platoon commander of the 7th Company. A man took his pay book and broke off his identification tag. I could see no outward injury on the dead man. It must have been a tiny splinter in the head, or in the heart, that had brought his life to an end. While I was standing by the dead man, suddenly I could no longer see any of my own men. The air was ringing out again with Urraih , the whistling and bursting of the shells and infantry guns. Even the company commander was no longer to be seen. So I hurried after some Landser who were striving to get across a small hollow to a wood, evidently with the intention of getting around the tanks. I caught up with them, and we hurried together along the edge of the woodland to get past the firing monsters. After we had successfully got round them, we reached a river that had overflowed its banks. From somewhere or other bullets crackled in the water.

I began to wade and sank deeper and deeper. With one hand I held my machine-pistol over my head. In the deepest places I had to move as if swimming. Soon I felt the bottom under my feet. Again and again, probably from one of the tanks, a machine-gun spat fire at us. The fellow must be able to see us. What should I do now? Inexperienced as I was, I thought myself to be the only survivor of the company. The men with me belonged to another unit. We decided to look for the baggage-trains, which surely had to be in one of the neighbouring villages.