Armin Scheiderbauer - Adventures in My Youth

The accommodation was unbelievably comfortable. We had white bedclothes, running water in the bedroom and the rooms were cleaned by cleaning ladies. I wrote that the War College was ‘the best time I had had as a soldier so far’. It required not only physical, but also mental and spiritual qualities. The superiors, all officers, were selected men. The head of the Inspektion was a Hauptmann from Infanterieregiment 19 Munich, the Group Officer Oberleutnant Maltzahn. I also recall the tactics teacher, Major Rousen from Infanterieregiment 49 Breslau. The Inspektion corresponded to a company, the Group to a platoon. The aim of the course was to train us to become platoon commanders, the normal function of a Leutnant . The exercises took place on the famous Dresden troop training ground, the ‘Heller’. We had little free time. What little time I could spare I spent with my relatives, mainly with Uncle Rudolf and Aunt Hanni Löhner. At that time Rudolf had much to do. He was working on commissions for the memorial to Richthofen, the fighter pilot, at the Invalidenfriedhof in Berlin. He worked too on figures for the Dresden Opera and the Reich War Ministry.

In our room we often had a ‘beano’, to which the Styrians, Ernst Lauda and Hubert Melcher from Gebirgsjägerregiment 28, especially contributed. Their Ersatz troop unit was at that time in Marburg on the Drau. A short time previously they had heard a production there, of Verdi’s Traviata . Erni Lauda was really taken with the champagne aria and sang, over and over again, ‘Up, drink in thirsty draughts from the glass that Beauty presents to you’. The two of them teased each other with the amatory adventures they had had in Marburg. It emerged that Erni had once spent the conclusion of such an evening in the Marburg municipal park. He had got so hot that in no time he had taken off at least his field tunic, as well as his belt.

Ernst Lauda was killed in April 1944. Hubert Melcher lost a leg. Adolf Aschauer survived the war in one piece. (Once after the war I looked him up in the Rassingmühle in Goisern, his home. Ernst Lauda’s father at one time entered into correspondence with me and I met him in Schweidnitz.) He was at the time on the Staff of Heeresgruppe Süd with Feldmarschall Kesselring and he told me of one absurd order from the Führer . This order required that the sarcophagus of the Hohenstaufen Emperor Friedrich II be brought back with the Army on the evacuation of Sicily. However, Kesselring refused the order on the grounds that he needed every cubic metre of ship for troops and ammunition.

The star of our group was Arnold Suppan, a smart Kärntner with brown hair and brown eyes. He already held the Iron Cross First Class and the silver Infanteriesturmabzeichen (Infantry Assault Badge). The Gebirgsjäger told a lot about the Murmansk front from which they came, about the bright summer nights and the dark winter days in the Arctic Circle.

The weeks passed quickly and in the middle of November we heard the great news that the course would finish on 16 December. The best group of students, to which I too belonged, would be promoted on 1 December to Fahnenjunker-Feldwebel . The majority of the candidates were handed out their uniform chits. My request to Rudi was to the effect that he should obtain a sword, an officer’s belt and a holster, because it looked as if there were not any in Dresden. In actual fact, a sword was never required. In any event, I would only have been able to wear it on very few occasions. My first officer’s uniform I had made by Uncle Rudolf’s tailor. He rejoiced in the cosy name of Trautvetter. For my overcoat and the second uniform I waited until my Christmas leave. I had them made at Splinar in the Theobaldgasse, by the tailor of the Steinbach family. The tunic was of better material, and the overcoat displayed all the skill of a Viennese Bohemian tailor.

Our instructor, Oberleutnant Maltzahn, professed himself to be very satisfied with us from the Ostmark . On the occasion of our promotion to Feldwebel he told us the notes he had made on our assessment. He found me, among other things, ‘very intelligent’. I had never before been praised in that way. It certainly said a lot for his judgement! He himself was of above average intelligence and culture, and in addition showed us a lot of what it means to live like an officer. Our promotion to Leutnant was to take place on 12 December. I announced that I would be arriving home on 16 December, a Wednesday. I asked Rudi to collect me, and I ordered a ‘celebration meal’, of whatever Mother wanted to rustle up. Before then, however, we had the trip to Berlin. There, in accordance with tradition, the Führer was to speak to us in the Sportpalast .

The entire War College marched from the Anhalt Station. We were divided into several groups and went by different routes. On one we passed through a quarter of Berlin which showed city slums that shocked us. The event took place in the Sportpalast . Several thousand young officers were assembled there. At first there was a long wait for Adolf Hitler. After some time it was announced that, in Hitler’s place, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring would speak to us. After another long wait, Göring came hurrying in. He gave the impression that he was under severe psychological pressure which the content of his address underscored. We later found out that it was on that very day that the tragedy of Stalingrad began to loom. It explained why Hitler had not come, and made it disconcertingly clear why Göring praised the death of the Spartans at Thermopylae under their king, Leonidas. ‘Wanderer, should you come to Sparta, tell them there that you have seen us lying dead as the law ordained’. The Reichsmarschall simply substituted the word ‘duty’ for the word ‘law’ and almost punched it at us. ‘As duty ordained, as duty ordained’. At the end of his address we were immediately marched off to the station and straight away began our return journey to Dresden.

It had been the previous day when the names of those who had been promoted were read out in the gym. It began with the members of Infanterieregiment 1 (Königsberg) and ended with those in the Gebirgsjägerregiment who were last in the numerical series. We from Regiment 7, in alphabetical order, were Henschel, Popovsky, and Scheiderbauer. We soon had our turn. Afterwards Wiggerl and I dozed off in a half-sleep of emotions of release and tiredness.

The night before, following an order given by our Leutnant Riedl, we had hoisted ‘the white flag’ on the chimney of the boiler house. To accomplish that, one of our bed sheets had to be brought along, we had to cobble together something to raise it, and the 20 metre high chimney had to be scaled. Since you could climb the chimney on iron rungs on its inside wall, it presented not too much difficulty, but nevertheless it required some courage. It was Popovsky who volunteered to take up the duties of the climbing party and not one of the Gebirgsjäger . It might be imagined that the task would fall more easily to them because of the arm of the service they were in. Oberleutnant Maltzahn was pleased that his group, the twelfth group in the third Inspektion , had carried out the task.

With my promotion to Leutnant I was then to a certain extent ‘grown-up’. I was not then nineteen and would not come of age for a long time. I had already been an Unteroffizier . But then I was capable of supporting myself and was in receipt of a salary with my own account at the Stockerau savings bank. At that time a Leutnant’s salary was 220 Reichsmarks per month. It was a considerable sum for a grammar-school boy, but also for a soldier who had to live only on his service pay and that meant from his additional front-line allowance. In any event, the freie Station was guaranteed. It guaranteed a barracks roof over your head, and military rations that were more or less adequate and digestible for a young stomach. As well as our salary we got a one-off ‘clothing payment’, the enormous amount of 750 Reichsmarks . My kind Aunt Lotte had given me an additional 50 Reichsmarks for my Equipierung , an expression she used from the old Imperial Army. In a letter to Mother she wrote about it and told her, quite touched, that I looked ‘like a young nobleman’. Father, with great seriousness, had written me the following: