Armin Scheiderbauer - Adventures in My Youth

Up at the Battalion staff we had a large open Madford Kübelwagen at our disposal. I had brought it up from the regimental baggage-train along with the driver. We drove in the afternoon to the Divisional command post to receive orders. I took the opportunity of making my apologies to Major im Generalstab ‘Schorsch’ Binder. On the journey from Parigiai, westwards through the gently climbing terrain that was largely visible to the enemy, we were spotted by a Stalin tank. It sent a few shells after us with its gu, but thank heaven did not hit us. The driver, who must have formally served in the Dutch police, drove off, with a shout of Karacho, in a zig-zag course over meadows and fields.

On the evening of 22 July it was announced that an assassination attempt had been made on the Führer on 20 July. Among us there was more surprise than fury. We had no time to comment on the event and scarcely had any time to reflect on it. I thought to myself, it was doubtless a kind of treachery that had taken place. But, I went on to think, men with names like Yorck, Stauffenberg, Witzleben, and Moltke would not be likely to betray Germany, nor would they be likely to betray what the German Fatherland meant to them. I wondered if perhaps they had acted for Germany and not against her.

The following day the battalion was assigned to occupy and hold a sector eight kilometres wide. The lack of forces only allowed us to defend the as strongpoints of three villages lying within the sector. The Battalion staff also had to go into the main line of resistance. So we established ourselves in the Dvariskai strongpoint. The retreat road unfortunately led southwards. Therefore I kept the motorised vehicles safe along the westward course of the road. I did it because it was a fact that I had to assess the situation on my own and make the required dispositions. It seemed to me that Hauptmann Schneider was not capable of commanding a battalion. He certainly did not seem to be up to the job. He had no idea of how to command an autonomous reinforced battalion and would simply say ‘Get on with it Scheiderbauer’, in his broad East Prussian dialect.

Dvariskai lay on a gentle rise. Neat gardens and yellow wheat waved round the thatched cottages whose cleanliness bespoke a modest standard of peasant prosperity. To sit again at a wooden table with a clean plate was a pleasure in itself. My batman Walter Hahnel set about whipping up a big plate of rolls spread with Konservenwurst , with local bacon and a lot of eggs. After the telephone connection had been re-established and our connection to the right had been secured, we sat down to table in the battalion command post, a farmhouse. The Russians were evidently only feeling their way hesitantly after us. We hoped that we would remain unscathed until the evening when we were to leave the position. That hope proved to be unfounded.

From the advanced security positions, rifle fire could soon be heard. Therefore I sent the motorbikes to the rear on the retreat road that was still open. To gamble with them and lose them would have put an end to our task of protecting the flank, where particular mobility was required. Scarcely was the rifle fire heard than the new commander ‘disappeared’. I had already noticed he did that in critical situations. Then he did not need to make decisions and could not be called to the telephone. Probably he was observing the advancing Russians with his binoculars, from cover. The rifle fire continued and drew closer. I had to bring up supporting fire. While I was sitting at the field telephone I noticed wounded men were struggling past and to the rear. A little later non-wounded were also passing. To me that meant that they were fleeing. The commander was absent all that time and I was tied to the telephone. Of the whole sector I could see nothing more than a bit of a wheatfield.

At the regiment and the artillery they wanted to know how the situation was progressing. I had been able to direct the artillery fire well for a quarter of an hour by the use of a map. Then outside I saw large numbers of Landsers rushing to the rear. Walter had taken up position at the window and had cocked his weapon, while I, with the telephone cabinet in front of me, sat at the other window in telephone contact with Hauptmann Bundt, the Adjutant of the Divisional Artillery Regiment. Just as I was saying to him that according to what was going on outside we would only be able to stay there for a few more minutes, I saw Russian infantry wading through the cornfields towards the house. Walter fired. ‘Get out!’ I ordered and shouted into the telephone, ‘Fire on our own strongpoint, the Ivans are outside the house’.

I tore the telephone from the wires, sprang after Walter and left the house by the backdoor, just as two Red Army soldiers entered by the front. As the last to leave, I dashed with long strides after my comrades. After half a kilometre I at last caught them up and was able to build a new security position to the south of the village. While I was still at the house I had seen a wounded man lying there shouting imploringly ‘Take me with you’. But, as the last man to leave, how could I have managed it? Some hours later, in the afternoon, Dvariskai was retaken with the support of assault guns and quadruple flak guns. I entered the farmhouse and even found a couple of rolls still on the plate.

The most dashing officer in our battalion was the 20 years old Leutnant Blatschke. In June he had been orderly officer for only a short time. But since the battalion had been re-formed he had commanded the 6th Company. Within our group he was the right man for a company commander, with its task of covering the deep flank to the left. At that time Blatschke, with his little band of men, had to hold the village to the south of Ponewisch. When the village was finally evacuated Blatschke, not a second before he was ordered, sitting on a motorbike, was the last man to leave the village. Nobody knew how he had come about the motorbike, and Russians had broken into the village on several sides. While the driver bolted away shouting Karacho , i.e. step on it, Blatschke fired with his machine-pistol in every direction. He finally reached the wood, not far from the settlement, and thus reached cover.

On the 28 July we reached Gedainiai, also called Gedahnen. It was a friendly little provincial town through which there ran a little river. On the raised eastern bank of the river, from which you had a wide view westwards, was the grammar school. I set up our command post there. Straight away I found the Direktor’s room, because in Lithuania too, I gathered, grammar school Direktoren sat enthroned in leather armchairs. So the venerable seats were, so to speak, desecrated for a few hours by our tired schoolboys’ bodies. We former Pennäler enjoyed almost as much as ever the natural science room. It contained the same skeleton of homo sapiens , the stuffed birds, the induction machines, and the loo just like our school at home. In a burst of black humour I planted my steel helmet on the skull. It looked like the natural model for an anti-war poster. It also reminded me of the helmeted Russian skull, from the summer of 1941, on which I had stumbled the previous year in the minefields in the Jelnja sector.

Since the battalion had been re-formed, its orderly officer was a Leutnant Gegel, with whom I did not get on. He was getting on for 40 years old, came from southern Hesse and was a teacher by profession. However, in line with the old prejudice, he was a ‘know-all’. At the same time he was ‘professionally incapable of dealing with grown-ups’. It obviously did not suit him that because of his position he was subordinate to me and that Hauptmann Schneider gave me a free hand in the command of the battalion. One time he tried to get above himself, and I had to sharply remind him of his duty. If my relationship with him was cool and tense, all the more friendly and heartfelt was my friendship with Leutnant Helmut Christian.