Armin Scheiderbauer - Adventures in My Youth

Night had fallen by the time we found them. The ‘sarge’ welcomed me. There was not one word of reproach. He knew what had happened. I had to make my report. I did so and was secretly ashamed that I had run to the baggage-village instead of looking for my comrades further forwards. The ‘sarge’ left me no time for that. He himself gave me fresh dry clothes and ordered me to sleep in late. The next day at noon I was to go forwards again with the food vehicle. Then he took me into a floor-boarded room in a Russian house, in which nine other scattered men were sleeping. I lay down with them, my haversack under my head, on the hard floor of the farm cottage.

On the morning of 16 August 1942 I awoke from a leaden sleep with the feeling that I had only just gone to sleep. Washing, shaving, the fresh clothes without lice, what a joy! Then I inspected the contents of my pockets. The letters were washed-out, the photographs stuck together and useless. But worse still, my pay book was similarly illegible. Some of my papers, among them my driving licence, were missing. I had just put them down in my gas mask case with my gas mask and then forgotten them when the CO gave the order to withdraw. During the previous days I had not dared to think of the imminent end of my probation at the front. But the fact that the order to return to my regiment came on that very morning was a new piece of good fortune. Then I only needed to report in up front. With that relieving certainty within me, I joined the food vehicle.

The Russians were taking a breather. The company was not even under fire. The command post was based in a house, not in a hole in the ground. The CO was pleased to see me when I reported, and immediately gave notice of departure. He looked weary, and had long stubble. He had once again had ‘uncanny luck’, he said. When he was standing under cover behind a hayrick, a tank shell came through the several metres of hay but was slowed down so much that only its head came out on the other side. There, it was finally brought to a halt by Bayer’s belt buckle. It gave him quite a fright, but nothing happened. It did not explode!

He wished me all the best for the journey home and sent his greetings to the regiment. Then I left. But however depressing the events of the last few days had been, and however much I was looking forward to getting to War College, it was not an easy thing for me to leave the company. It seemed to me undeserved that the Scheisse (I have to use the proper expression for the action!) should be at an end, for me of all people. Among many others, even our old friend Kräkler had been killed. The battalion of more than 500 men had shrunk to a fifth that size. The ‘Sixth’ then only numbered twenty-six men. With such thoughts in my mind I got in to the lorry travelling to the Division. As we were driving out of the baggage-village, rifle fire was cracking behind us into the morass of the road. The road was under enemy observation.

The effects of the Upolosy adventure were with me for a long time. To Rudi I wrote that I had experienced ‘atrocious and terrible things’, but where need was greatest, ‘God’s help was closest’. Apart from a few tiny splinters in my hands, that today I can no longer remember, I told him that I had remained unscathed. Our chaps had said that the battles of the winter had not been as bad as those terrible days. The return from Gschatsk to St Avold took us eight days. I can remember several stops that lasted many hours, first in Vyazma then in Molodetschno and Dünaburg. Only from Warsaw were regular trains running, but we had to change trains many times. In Berlin we arrived at the Silesian station and had to go to the Zoo station. From there a train went to Metz. Our destination was St Avold, where we were given a few days’ leave.

From my correspondence I note that I must have visited my Father in Vienna. He was in the Reserve Military Hospital there, on the Rosenhügel. It was only while in the position at Gschatsk that I had found out he had had a surprise move to Russia. During the course of the advance in the south, which then led on into the Caucasus and to Stalingrad, his military hospital group had got as far as Stalino and Artemovsk, in the eastern Ukraine. We suffered considerable casualties in the offensive. They led to the associated overload on the resources of the dressing stations, the field and main military hospitals. It also led to the overwork of the medical officers and other medical unit staff. At the age of fifty, in a state of nervous exhaustion, he himself had to be taken into hospital. But he was able to tell of his good fortune that he was not sent back to service behind the lines on the Eastern Front. Instead he was sent to the West, to Cambrai.

On 13 September 1942 I was back in St Avold. From there we three active officer cadets, Henschel, Popovsky and I, were sent to Metz for a preparatory course for War College. About sixty Reserve officer candidates were assembled there for ‘a revision of the ABC’, as I wrote home. Once again it was a matter of cleaning our boots and belts. Apart from the danger of being killed, life in the field, I said, ‘was far better’. I asked Mother to send me fifty marks because we were hungry, and were being ‘woefully shoo’d about’. In the evening we went into the town to eat un-rationed standard meals in the inns. The course was supposed to last until 9 October and the course at the War College to begin on 12 October. But we still did not know to which school we would be sent. On 29 September I asked Mother to send immediately, and by registered post, my certificate of Aryan ancestry and my fifth-form German essay exercise book. Father sent me a textbook on stenography on which I worked from time to time. At the grammar school I had not taken that option so as not to further increase my workload. The course in Metz ‘gradually petered out’ at the beginning of October. In the mornings we were supposed to undertake duty with a company, but ‘since no-one is bothered, we lie in really late in the morning and then go into town’.

We three from Regiment 7 were ordered to ‘School I for Probationary Officers of Infantry’ in Dresden. It was the War College for the active junior infantry officers and could be found in Neustadt under the really civilian-sounding address of 11 Marienallee. I arrived early on 12 October and as the first to arrive had rung them up. Then in the afternoon I went out by tram to the War College. I did not meet the prescribed requirement of at least two months’ probation at the front, so at first it seemed doubtful whether I would be accepted. It was with relief that I noted the positive decision. Part of that was doubtless due to the fact that the regiment, which knew what the entry requirements were, had sent me there nevertheless.

It was a pleasant surprise for Popovsky and me that almost half the course participants and a large part of the teaching personnel were southern Germans. I even found a room with Popovsky. In fact it was an apartment. The rooms, each provided for four men, consisted of bedrooms and living rooms. As it was war-time, by means of double beds they were occupied by twice the normal complement of men. So there were eight of us. As well as the two of us there were six more Gebirgsjäger , among whom we immediately felt at home.

I can still remember Ernst Lauda from Kapfenberg, Hubert Melcher from Obdach, Adolf Aschauer from Goisern, Dauth from Munich, Jakoby from Konstanz, and Zilinski from Stettin. The man from Stettin had reported to the mountain troops for the same sort of reasons that many southern Germans and Austrians went into the Navy. At the War College I also met Bäuerl from Stockerau, the brother of one of Rudi’s classmates, and my fellow-pupil from Sonneberg, Klausnitzer. Once again, I wrote urgently for my Ariernachweis , because non-Aryans, covering those who were up to one-quarter Jewish, were not allowed to become officers (translator’s note: the certificate of Aryan ancestry required under the National Socialist racial laws before an individual could be admitted to many institutions).