Armin Scheiderbauer: Adventures in My Youth

As a young man Armin was only dimly aware of the political difficulties of his father. However, after the move to Stokerau, which occurred shortly before the outbreak of war, Armin had two experiences which led him to feel some discomfort with the political tone of the times. He was taken to a demonstration against the assassination of von Rath by his schoolteachers. While there he witnessed a group of demonstrators jostling and taunting some Jews who were present. A family friend who saw Armin and his classmates at the demonstration, reproached him for taking part in this harassment, a charge which left him feeling uncomfortable. In 1939, while he was boarding with a family in Sonneberg, he and a group of friends were arrested and held in the police station overnight. The youths had no idea why they had been apprehended, but in the morning were told the reason; they should not have been wandering the streets because the Gauleiter was due in town that day. The boys were completely unaware of the proposed visit. These two incidents left Armin with a strong sense of injustice.

Despite these negative experiences, Armin was nevertheless keen to join the army as soon as he left school in 1941. Indeed, such was his yearning for military glory, that his chief response on hearing the news of the fall of Paris was to fear that the war might be over before he had an opportunity to take part. The stories of heroism on which he had been reared led him to believe the noblest profession to follow would be that of an infantry officer. His own father had been an army officer, and he felt that this type of combat was more authentic and heroic than that found in the other forces. To him the life of an officer represented values similar to those of the church: duty to fatherland; a commitment to order and decency in society; care and responsibility for subordinates. In retrospect he also suspects that he knew that a career in the army would keep him at arm’s length from the political authorities, who had caused so many problems for his family. Upon receiving his call-up papers in July, he therefore left willingly and with some enthusiasm. His only anxiety was that the war might frustrate his plans to marry his childhood sweetheart Herta, as the couple had planned during his last summer in Stockerau.

On 1 August 1941, I had to be in the Jäger barracks at St Avold in the Westmark by 3pm. If the word ‘Westmark’ had not been added, I would not have had even a vague idea as to where my destination was. Westmark was the name given to that region which had been added on to the Reich after the surrender of France. Whether that included only the former German Alsace and Lorraine, or more, no one knew. In any event, I had to seek the aid of a large-scale map to find St Avold which, I finally discovered lay between Saarbrücken and Metz in Lorraine. 1 August was not a normal call-up deadline, the normal dates were 1 April and 1 October. It turned out that there were in fact only a few of us young lads who turned up on 1 August 1941, in accordance with our call-up orders. In the meantime, Mum was in the Liesertal with Rudi and Liesl, so I went for a few days to where they were staying in Zlabing Post Lieserbrücke. For 31 July they had planned a trip out to the parsonage at Eisentratten to visit the family of Pastor Schimik, a school friend of Father’s.

From there, I began my journey on the regular afternoon post bus. The journey took me first as far as Spittal on the Drau, and from there by rail via Salzburg. During the night we crossed southern Germany to Saarbrücken. There I left the express train to get on an ordinary passenger train going towards Metz. On the platform I met a boy who was looking around just as I was. He was dragging along two big suitcases. I spoke to him and it turned out that we were both going to the same place. He was Ludwig (Wiggerl) Popovsky, the son of a Vienna tram driver. In him I had found my first comrade. We remained close through two years, more or less.

Neither of us knew or had any explanation why we had ended up in that particular district. We also knew nothing about the unit to which we had been assigned, namely the 2nd Company of Infantry Ersatz Battalion 7, nor from which part of the country its members came. Wiggerl, like me, had left it up to chance as to what infantry unit he would be assigned. The mystery was resolved shortly after we arrived. First, after getting out at St Avold station, we had to lug our heavy luggage two kilometres over a mountain, behind which lay the little town. At the edge of it was the Jäger barracks.

We arrived at about 2.30pm. Although we were not yet soldiers, we had nevertheless to experience for ourselves the truth of the saying that ‘half his life the soldier has to wait in vain’. There are certainly good reasons for that. At 3pm, however, to a certain extent in an official manner, there began the new and serious part of my life. It turned out that altogether there were four of us soldiers who had been provisionally accepted as officer candidates. Most were from Lower Silesia. One came from the Ruhr area, two from Trautenau in Lower Bohemia and the two of us, Popovsky and I, came from Vienna and the Vienna area.

The battalion stationed in St Avold was the Ersatz unit for Infantry Regiment 7, in peacetime based in Schweidnitz. We found out that the entire Silesian Ersatz Army Corps had been moved into the ‘Westmark’. In the French campaign Regiment 7 had been commanded by a colonel from Vienna. At that time, replacements had been added to the regiment to the strength of almost a battalion of men from Vienna. It was the case, right up to the end of the war, that in almost every company I came across there was at least one Viennese or Austrian.

For my part I often regretted that I had made no attempt to join a unit from my homeland. Before I became a soldier I had dreamed how grand it must be to march in the victory parade through the Ringstrasse with the returning troops. But later my regret was because I had no close wartime comrades living nearby. That became clear to me when eventually I sat on the Linz regional high court with my colleagues Zauner and Hemetsberger. They had been in the Linz Division, the 45th. Zauner was among the men of the Linz Infantry Regiment – ‘the sons of the region and of the city’ – who marched off to war from the castle barracks. Hemetsberger had been an artillery officer in the Division.

Immediately after ‘installation’, under which general heading I include being assigned a barrack room and a bed, and obtaining items of military uniform and equipment, there began the rigorous service involved in basic training. It lasted six weeks. It turned out that this too had been a kind of test. Of the seventeen of us who had joined on 1 August, six were dismissed because they did not meet requirements. Because they were not yet of age for military service they were sent back home. We could easily imagine with what mockery they would be welcomed back to school by their classmates who had stayed behind, after their experience of a ‘holiday’ that brought so much trouble.

So, ‘eleven’ of us remained together. Our service went on, apart from the normal work of the barracks, under the supervision of a Leutnant , a NCO, and a Gefreiter who, at the same time, was senior soldier in the barrack room. The ‘eleven’ of us were Hans Alterman from Gottesberg in Silesia, Walter Borrmann from Breslau, Walter Henschel from Reichenbach in the Eulengebirge, Hans Bernt and Gottfried Bergmann from Liegnitz, Jochen Fiedler from Glogau, Diesel and Helmut Überla from Trautenau, Pohlmann from Wuppertal, together with Popovsky and me.