Armin Scheiderbauer - Adventures in My Youth

It was time to brief the section leaders. With lowered voices, as if the enemy were already in earshot, they passed on the orders. Then the barrage began. ‘Section by section’, that is, salvo by salvo, our heavy and light artillery struck where the cemetery must be. The assault guns rolled up with the grinding sound of their engines. We pulled in our heads and ducked under the trajectory of the howling shells. Then we pushed up to the place where the breakthrough had occurred. During the five minutes of our own barrage we had approached to within 100 metres. At the end of that time the enemy barrage began. We then lay in the hail of shells from their artillery, the Ratschbums and above all the mortars. The Russians fired one flare after the other.

The terrain, which until then had been in dull moonlight, was bathed in the distorting glare of magnesium. The men had already clustered like grapes around the assault guns. They believed that behind them they were safe from shrapnel and shot. But then it was a matter of taking cover and working our way forward, metre by metre, and from crater to crater. During the preparatory barrage by our heavy weapons we had got to within 100 metres. It seemed an eternity since the assault guns had stopped. The enemy defensive fire continued undiminished. The earth seemed to be being ploughed up by it. In the light of the flares could be seen the crosses, and the mounds of graves. Among them were figures like ghosts, who fired their machine-pistols upon us. They were the attackers. The high ‘barking’ of their fire again and again broke through the thunder of the heavy impacts.

In this inferno I was compelled to come to a decision. 50 metres still separated me from the cemetery. Our attack was still under way and the men were on the move. I did not know how many men there still were. My orders were to clean out the area of breakthrough. Only one last decisive leap separated me from my goal. Should I, this close to the goal, give the order to withdraw? That order would cost just as many sacrifices as the attack. I decided to carry on. It only needed one more dash forwards. I jumped up and cried ‘Hurrah’! Still shouting ‘Hurrah’! I sprang forwards without knowing how many of my comrades would follow my lead.

A stabbing pain in my body caused me to fall in the crater. 20 metres in front of me I had seen an enemy aiming at me with a machine-pistol. If his shot had not stopped me, I would certainly have run on like a madman. Then the Russian threw a hand-grenade after me. It exploded on the edge of the crater in which I was crouching. Earth crumbled down upon me. I had to go back, twisting and rolling. Then I raced and limped, bent and ducking, from crater to crater. I heard a piece of shrapnel whizz up. It tore my cheek open. It was already flying too slowly to be able to hurt me seriously. My right eye could have copped it, but the splinter penetrated the flesh a little bit below.

The attack had been repulsed and the enemy were firing no more flares. In the pale moonlight while I jumped from crater to crater I kept my eyes open for the remnants of my company. As well as dead men I saw wounded men curled up in craters or crawling back. In twos and threes some of them crouched under cover and joined together. ‘ Herr Leutnant ’, one of them called to me. I pressed my hand on my burning stomach and decided that I must only be slightly wounded. ‘ Herr Leutnant , over here!’ I was called again. While I was listening for the voice and moving in its direction, I was brought down by another bullet. I slid into the nearest crater. Wailing voices were calling for the medics. The enemy was still maintaining barrage fire. I had no time to check on my third wound. I only felt relieved that it too could not be serious.

As I pressed myself against the edge of the crater, a mortar shell burst very close to my cover. A man dived into the crater howling with pain. His voice I recognised as that of the man who was crying out earlier, an old Obergefreiter . ‘I’ve lost my hand’, he groaned. I saw it dangling in his glove. Groaning, he asked me to open his belt buckle. My hand felt over his body. As I was groping for the buckle, I was seized with horror. I felt the warm soft flesh of his intestines. My hand went into his belly. It was torn open across the width of his body. ‘I’ll go and fetch the medic’, I said to him, knowing he was beyond help. But I could not just go and leave him to die alone. After all, he had followed my orders.

Minutes passed. It seemed like an eternity, although it was not long after midnight. The seriously wounded Obergefreiter had become still and his breath was coming in gasps. I saw the white of his eyes glistening and felt his sound hand feeling for mine. Then a sigh was wrung out of the dying man. ‘Ah, Herr Leutnant’ , he said. His head fell to one side. Again, I was shaken by a feeling of horror. Finally, I made off from crater to crater.

At the unit dressing station I found half of my company. Only 15 men out of 70 had remained unwounded. 20 must have been killed. I myself had been incredibly lucky. The first shot had clipped the surface of my stomach in two places. The second had neatly gone between two ribs over the spleen. I just about managed to walk unaided, with my upper-body bent forward. The wounded were driven back on the assault guns. I was lifted on, with Feldwebel Geissler, whose forearm had been lacerated by an explosive shell. At the regiment we were unloaded into Sankas , the medical motor vehicles that took us to the railway at Gorky. There a hospital train was standing ready. I had found time to report to the commander over the failed operation. I learned that the 1st and 2nd companies had not reached the trenches of the main line of resistance. Oberstleutnant Dorn shook his head sadly over the badly prepared and precipitate adventure. It had been taken out of his hands as a commander. The battalion had been put under the command of the second unit.

I can still remember the feeling of indescribable relief as I lay in the moving hospital train. The train’s destination was Vilna, and was reached via Minsk. During the journey I looked out through the porthole of the wagon, a converted cattle truck. I saw an unforgettable picture. From the West shone the setting sun. In its reddish light lay a broad land, with no houses, no trees, no bushes. On the northern horizon there was the wall of a thunderstorm, blackish violet. In front of it, lonely and distant, there rested a whitewashed stone church.

I wrote home about my two shots in the stomach and that I did not expect a lengthy stay in hospital. But after 10 days, the wound made by the shot in my stomach had become inflamed and had to be operated on. The surgeon was a staff medical officer of about middle age, red-haired, small and compact. He made fun of my officer’s ‘snappishness’, as I woke from the effects of the ether. Still under its influence, I rambled on about how nice it had been to pass, fully conscious, into unconsciousness. All responsibility was taken from me, and all thoughts of duty and compulsion fell away. The sceptical expression on the surgeon’s face told me that he did not know what I was talking about. He probably had no idea of the burden of responsibility placed on the shoulders of a 19 years old company commander. After leaving the operating table, I said ‘thank you, sir’, as was appropriate. But he was none the wiser. ‘Don’t mention it, my boy’, was his answer in reply to the thanks which I had meant so seriously.

The military hospital was in a convent hospital, an old building with thick walls. I have a fleeting recollection of Halina, a Polish medical student, who was on duty during the day. On the other hand I can still clearly picture the night sister with whom I had conversations every evening. She was a 70 years old nun, who ‘belonged to the House’. She was a cultured lady from the Polish nobility, and a widow of 44 years. In fluent German she told me, her interested listener, of her short youth, long ago. She had lived in Warsaw and had stayed in Paris and London. For years she had done only night duty. Perhaps, in that way, she felt closer to the ‘eternal night’. Every day an eleven years old girl came into the hospital selling newspapers. The child was obviously undernourished. Somehow she affected all the comrades in the room. We joined ourselves together into a ‘benevolent society’ for her family by always paying ten or twenty times too much for her 10-pfennig newspapers. Her eyes shone with thanks. On 3 November when we were loaded up into Sankas and driven to the station, ‘our’ little girl waved after us for a long time.