Armin Scheiderbauer - Adventures in My Youth

After five weeks in Freiwaldau I arrived in Schweidnitz, where I met many old acquaintances and good comrades in arms. Amongst them, was Oberleutnant Klaus Nicolai. In August, as commander of the third company, he had been wounded. I became friendly with him and we often went to the theatre and frequented the Hindenburg-Hof in which I had lived the previous year. As head of the convalescent company, Nicolai had rooms in the barracks. I had a private room in the house of innkeeper Pöttler. Another acquaintance was Leutnant Heckel, member of a well-known family of hatters in Neutitschein.

One Sunday, I went from Freiwaldau to Mährisch-Schönberg, to visit my officer cadet comrade Bormann from Breslau. He had been wounded during his first period of probation at the front and had come away with a stiff knee. Another time Nicolai, Heckel and I went from Schweidnitz, in the company of two actresses, on a trip to the dam at Frankenstein. Schweidnitz possessed a quite good provincial theatre. When I heard Flotow’s Martha the tenor part was played by a certain Alexander von Krüdener. He was a fairly old gentleman and, so the story went, had many children.

The commander of the Ersatz battalion was a Hauptmann Brandt. Nicolai and I called him ‘SA man Brandt’, after a novel from the Kampfzeit , i.e. the ‘period of struggle’ before the Nazis had come to power, well known at that time. The battalion adjutant was Leutnant Dr Waller, who in civilian life was an attorney from Eger. To a certain extent Waller seemed to me more of a business manager to the battalion. At any rate he was more of a businessman than an officer. He had gained his Leutnant’s rank in the Czech army.

At that time a marching company went every month to France to the Atlantic Wall. There the mostly recently enlisted older and quite young soldiers were given further training. In April Waller assigned me as transport officer. After I had received the papers, he took me to one side. He made the remarkable suggestion that I should travel from St. Maixent near Poitiers, without marching orders, and without a leave permit, and go to Bordeaux to buy some things for him. Such obviously irregular suggestion I brusquely declined, without even asking for the details. However, Waller accepted it with just a shrug of his shoulders.

The railway journey, through Germany and half of France, was naturally more pleasant than the journeys through Russia had been. There was much more variety in terms of landscape. I did not even know the Rhineland through which I then travelled and had never been any further west than Metz. In Verres, the massive freight station to the south of Paris, there were troop trains. Among the goods transports there were many wagons carrying wine. Word immediately got round that a unit had succeeded, with the help of a shot from a pistol, in ‘nabbing’ a huge wine container. In a flash the Landsers on our transport had run with their canteens to the place where the ‘nabbing’ had occurred.

When the military police arrived, it was no longer possible to find out who had done it. As long as the hole was not stoppered the best thing was to hold the canteens under it and fill them up. The wine soon began to take effect and the accompanying personnel, again and again, had to take care that there was no rowdiness. The men lay on straw in the goods wagons, each with a little cannon oven. For the accompanying personnel there was a passenger carriage available. While unloading in St Maixent, an oven fell over in one of the Schweidnitz wagons. The straw immediately caught fire and the men had to hurriedly evacuate the wagon. ‘Heaven help us’, I thought, if this accident had happened during the rapid journey through France.

On the journey back, we went past the Loire castles spread out in the sunlight. The barracks of St Maixent, the French infantry school, had no attraction for me. My journey back was uneventful, apart from the fact that it passed through strange country, which was an event in itself. But the main event was Paris. At that time, there was an order that every member of the Wehrmacht who was travelling officially, to or through Paris, was allowed to stop there for 48 hours to see the sights of the city. With a Pionierleutnant from another Silesian garrison town I too made the visit. We were accommodated in a double room of the Grand Hotel de l’Opéra . It was the hotel requisitioned for officers’ accommodation. To our pleasant surprise there was running, even if only lukewarm water.

It was a Sunday and Monday that we spent in Paris and we raced through the main sights of the town, as I wrote on 9 April to Father. We saw Les Invalides , the cathedral of Notre Dame , the Louvre , the Champs-Elysées and the Trocadéro .

On the Arc de Triomphe , where the changing of the German guard was just taking place, I discovered, among the names of Napoleonic battles and engagements engraved there, the name of Hollabrunn near Stockerau. Father had climbed the Eiffel Tower two years previously, in two and a half hours, counting the steps up to the top. However, at that time, we could only climb up to the restaurant on the first storey. But the view from there over the huge city was over-whelming and confirmed my impression that Paris was far greater than Vienna and Berlin.

In my Easter Sunday letter to Father, I told him of a good Easter sermon by a preacher from the Confessional Church in the Schweidnitz Parish Church. I thought that Father would have a lot to do over the Easter holiday in Cambrai. I reminded him of Mother’s birthday on 11 April, as I knew that Father easily forgot such family events.

On the journey back from Paris I managed to trick myself a day out to Stockerau. It had been easy, because the army leave trains from the Paris Gare de l’Est , left in the evening after 7pm, with a quarter of an hour interval between them. The train to Vienna was the later of the two. So because I did not catch the Breslau train, I ‘had to’ travel with the Vienna train, so to speak. I was able to make this easily understood to the railway authorities, and the guard, an old Austrian Reserveonkel , nodded understandingly.

When I arrived back in Schweidnitz I learned that the father of my comrade, Leutnant Ludwig, had died suddenly. With Oberleutnant Liebig who was also from Lignitz, I travelled there in order to attend the burial. The Ludwig family owned Vaters Hotel in Lignitz. The mourners assembled there in the salon. Oberleutnant Liebig was a ‘12-Ender’. A former Unteroffizier , he had risen to the rank of officer. He had married in Lignitz, but only seldom visited his wife. In fact he had a relationship in Schweidnitz with a singer at the Theatre. Paulchen Vogt had a small voice, was thin in build, but had a lovely nature. In Martha she had sung the part of Frau Flut.

Liebig was commander of the so-called Marschkompanie of the Ersatz battalion. All officers and soldiers passed through there after they had been wounded and had been in the convalescent company. Once they had been certified fit for combat again, they waited there to be sent back to the front. Liebig himself suffered from a stomach complaint. He and the core personnel were ‘GvH’, i.e. garnisonsverwendungsfähig Heimat , which meant they were fit for garrison service at home. Unfortunately, to my disappointment, I was the same. I was longing to be at the front and did not much enjoy life in the barracks.

Meanwhile, I had found an enjoyable activity. I was responsible for the war training of a Marschbataillon that had just been formed. It was composed of people who had not been old enough to fight in the First World War. They had only just been called up. The platoon and company commanders had no experience of the Eastern Front. I had to set up the service plan and supervise the training operations on the training ground and shooting range. Men from those age groups formed the ‘secret weapon’, was what we said mockingly. But the new weapon that would decide the course of the war, for which everyone was hoping, was nowhere to be seen.