Armin Scheiderbauer - Adventures in My Youth

Müller brought the order to retake the village of Labeiki. To me he did not seem to be in his right mind, he was speaking incoherently and was not steady on his legs. He must have drunk too much schnapps at the regiment or, more probably, a small quantity of it had overcome him, since he was just as exhausted as I. But, perhaps he had a premonition that the time of his death was near. ‘We’re off, Scheiderbauer’, was the first thing he said. Then he gave the details. The entire battalion staff had to take part in the attack. Labeiki was to be attacked from the north and south along the Düna, and had to be taken. We had to do it without artillery, without assault guns, or any other heavy weapons to support us, without even adequate information concerning the strength of the enemy, but with only ‘Hurrah’ and the ‘moral’ support of the night.

When dusk had fallen we moved forward. The night was no use at all to us. When the Russians noticed that an attack was underway, they fired flares and deployed anti-tank guns and mortars that they had already brought across the Düna. In a small pine wood, at close range, the attack ground to a halt. It seemed impossible to overcome the enemy’s wall of fire. Anti-tank shells exploded against the trees. Ricochets and explosive shells whizzed, crashed and exploded in between. It was a noise that could not be drowned out by men’s voices. The darkness of the wood was lit briefly and spectrally by tracer ammunition. When the magnesium glow of flares had gone out, the blackness of the wood by night surrounded us all the more profoundly.

Müller did not seem to me to be in his right mind. Gesticulating with his pistol he cried ‘Hurrah’, but that did not get the attack any further. Finally he sent me to the left flank, where I looked for Leutnant Kistner, the commander of the 7th Company. Seeking cover behind pine trunks, I went forward step by step and so drew near to the main trenches on the bank of the Düna. Instead of Leutnant Kistner I found a couple of helpless men waiting for orders. The Russians were still firing with everything they had got. Suddenly there was calm and you could hear the ‘Hurrah’ from the direction of the enemy, coming closer and closer. Briefly we thought that it was the attack of the neighbouring unit to the east of us. Nothing had been heard of them until that moment.

But the attackers approached surprisingly quickly and by their throaty voices we could recognise that they were Russians. They counted on us being more afraid of our ‘Hurrah’ than of the Russian ‘Urray’. Because they seemed to be making their assault along the trench, I ordered the men to get out of the trench and to take cover to the side of it. In that way we could have let the Russians charge past us into the trench and thrown hand-grenades after them. The men leapt to the right out of the trench. While the threatening ‘Hurrah’ shook me almost physically, I turned to the left out of the trench, crept quickly into a bush and lost the ground from under my feet. ‘A steep bank’ was my only thought. I could not feel the ground under me. I was slipping and rolling downwards. I fell and went head over heels, until my fall came to an end in the soft sand of the bank of the Düna. I must have slipped down almost 20 metres. I had not taken into account of the gradient of the bank in relation to the higher level of the village of Labeiki.

I found myself alone. It seemed, in the almost complete silence of a dawning summer morning, that there was nothing else for me to do but try somehow to get back to my men. For almost 200 metres I went downriver along the steep bank, until I found a place where I could clamber up. Everything was calm, but I did not know where or if I would find Hauptmann Müller and the other members of my staff. They would doubtless have withdrawn from the pine wood.

Giving a wide berth to the command post, where some wounded men were gathering, I went forward again. On the way I met one of the staff runners. He told me that Müller had been killed. Soon afterwards they brought him in. A complete anti-tank shell must have gone straight through his breast and killed him outright. But the attack had been beaten off. I ordered the battalion back into the exit position.

As soon as it was light I went to the regimental command post for further orders. I took with me the dead Hauptmann . We put him, half lying, in the sidecar. I climbed behind the seat, laid his head on my lap and closed his eyes. His usually lively, familiar face bore a great strangeness and an exhaustion beyond words. The journey was uphill, on a woodland road along the valley of the little river Ulla, to the wooden house in which the regimental command post was located. The command of the regiment, or what was left of it, had been taken over by Major Arnulf von Garn. Until then he had been commander of the Divisional Füsilier battalion. While I was giving my report, two runners of the regimental Staff dug a grave in the garden. Müller’s body was laid in it. Major von Garn and some men were standing around the grave. Garn began to say the ‘Our Father’ and all joined in. Then we scattered earth on the tarpaulin in which the body had been wrapped and the grave was filled in by the silent men.

Our battalion was without a commander. It was taken over by Oberleutnant Mallwitz. He had been commander of the 6th Company from 6–9 August 1943, and had been seriously wounded in the upper thigh. But he had held the village of Ivanowo. I went with him in the motorcycle sidecar forward to our command post. The order was to attack Labeiki again. We would need to use a little more cunning after our experience of the previous night. There could no longer be any talk of companies. The plan was for half the battalion to go forward and round the pine wood to the right. The other half with Mallwitz and me had to move forward in the trench on top of the steep banking. I remembered to look at the place where I had fallen down. After the strong defence put up by the enemy during the night, we did not have the remotest expectation that the new attack would succeed.

When we entered the village of Labeikia, that second time, there was complete quiet. There was no shot, although the enemy must have long since seen our movements. At last, on the final leg, we shouted ‘hurrah’ as per orders and broke in to the position. Right up to the last moment we were still afraid that the enemy would let us approach, only to wipe us out all the more certainly with fire from everything they had got. But they put up no resistance. With their hands in the air, Red Army troops climbed out of trenches and bunkers and gave themselves up. Forty prisoners, three anti-tank guns, a German assault gun, mortars and machine-guns were captured. In addition, there were six wounded German comrades who had been set free. They had belonged to the troops who had earlier occupied the strong point. They had been severely wounded, not brought in, but had had their wounds dressed by Russian medics.

Our joy at the small victory of Labeiki did not last long. Further to the right a breakthrough was reported. The front therefore had to be drawn back. In the afternoon, when we had hardly had chance to establish ourselves in Labeiki, the situation appeared to become critical. Contact to the right had again been broken. On the Lepel-Ulla road, running along the valley of the Ulla to our rear, there was heavy vehicle traffic. Obviously everything that could travel was making for the little village of Ulla. Everyone wanted to cross the bridge there and to be able to reach further roads on which to retreat.

Meanwhile we waited, concerned, for the order to withdraw. When it was finally given by wireless it was, to all appearances, too late. As the battalion, widely separated, moved back into the Ulla valley, on the road there were already scenes of a wild flight. I saw baggage wagons with galloping horses, motorised vehicles of all kinds, and among them soldiers rushing on foot. The vehicles were loaded with men and material. Obviously behind them Russian tanks were coming. The rumbling reached our ears. Those who were fleeing were driven before them. The picture of the flight, the approaching enemy tanks, firing their cannons and machine-guns, swept the remnants of the battalion along in the panic.