Armin Scheiderbauer - Adventures in My Youth

On 15 August several enemy deserters were brought back. They were elderly men who came from Tschernovitz and the Bukovina that had been annexed to Russia in 1940. They had all taken part in the Great War and served in the Austrian Army. In itself, that was shocking.

In accordance with the situation in the town we were able to move the command post forward again. It was in a modern villa built in the Bauhaus style and made a strange contrast to the mostly simple neighbouring wooden houses. Since the Russians were continuing to fire on the town, we took up our quarters in the cellar of the villa. I then spent a few days mainly lying on one of the tubular metal bedsteads brought down from the house. Since all the units under the command of the regiment were connected to the telephone in sequence, it rang without ceasing. You had to count every ring so as not to miss the call that was intended for you. But in doing so you could listen in to every conversation and thus gain an overall view of the up-to-date situation. I sat, or rather lay, at the telephone, while Hauptmann Schneider either slept or stretched his legs outside.

So for me there was no question of sleeping and, with the receiver at my ear, I dozed away the night hours, listening in to everything that the individual callers had to say. The reconnaissance training battalion, normally stationed in Krampnitz near Potsdam at the weapons school for armoured troops, was posted to Army Group Centre because of the disastrous situation. It had come to Raseinen where it was placed under the command of the homespun Grenadierregiment 7. Its commander, Major Graf Krockow, spoke there with Hauptsturmführer Mylius. The latter was ‘snappish’, with a sharp voice. However, Graf Krockow inimitably talked through his nose like a Prussian Graf Bobby. They consoled each other by assuring themselves that they had not been in such Scheisse for a long time.

Mylius was the commander of a unit also under the command of Regiment 7, the SS Bataillon z.b.V . 500. It was composed of men who had ‘all done something wrong’. In order to get to know the SS sector, I had spent the afternoon with Hauptmann Schneider in their position. It was obviously the worst in the Raseinen hot spot. It was hopelessly unprotected. From the flank, on the other side of the plain, enemy anti-tank guns fired on every movement in the trenches. The SS , as they ran through them, suffered casualties. The officers and men whom I saw in that command post were fine specimens of manhood, the typical élite that was found in the SS . I thought to myself that the Vandals of King Geiserich, or King Teja’s last Ostrogoths, must have looked like them at Vesuvius.

When Hauptmann Schneider and I made a move to go, Oberst Dorn appeared, giving a friendly greeting to me, the only person he knew. He was wearing a white summer tunic, radiated calm and rest. I could tell that he had just come back from convalescent leave. His greeting was interrupted by one of the two battalion medical officers of the SS . They had two medical officers in contrast to comparable army units with only one. He reported to his commander that a SS-Unterscharführer had carelessly shot off his arm with a Panzerfaust . The heat of the gas escaping backwards, he said, had immediately sealed the blood vessels. The man was still standing and in possession of all his faculties. He had gone on foot to the dressing station, the arm that he had shot off clamped under his healthy one!

The deployment of the SS battalion in our unit evidently demonstrated the military senselessness of setting up such a praetorian guard. Every one of those fine SS men was a NCO lost to the Army. Even more stupid seemed the formation of the Luftwaffe field divisions. With those 100,000 or more soldiers of the Luftwaffe the burned-out divisions and regiments of the army could have been sensibly topped up.

The Russians still occupied the convent. In order to put an end to that situation a 28cm mortar had been requested and brought into position overnight. At noon on 20 August it fired 24 shells on to the convent. Almost all of them had delayed fuses. They had exploded on the target that was by then only a heap of ruins. Four survivors were taken prisoner, all completely terrified.

All the rest, I did not know the exact number, were dead. Where the nuns had gone I could not find out. The prisoners also revealed the reason for the tough enemy defence of the convent. A general with his staff had carelessly ventured that far forward, obviously confident of the progress of the offensive. He had, however, slipped out in the night before the mortar bombardment. Since he was not caught, he must have got unchallenged through our lines.

After the modern Bauhaus villa had been occupied by my staff, the battalion, subdivided into companies, had once again been sent into action. It went as a complete unit and in conjunction with the SS battalion. But on the evening of 21 August we had orders to occupy a sector north of the town. The left-hand third of it reached the Dubysa and there connected to a Volksgrenadier division. That was the name given to the divisions of the last wave that had been assembled after all lines of communication and the so-called home front had been combed through for men. We could be sorry for any one stuck in such a unit. I considered myself fortunate to be with my old mob, at least in the 252nd Infanteriedivision .

The remnants of the Regiment were then driven back on 22 June to Army Group North. They had returned from Dünaburg with their staff and the regimental commander, Major Herzog. My welcome from him in June had not been pleasant but it was then frosty. He found no word of recognition for the fact that we had brought back the few survivors of our 2nd Battalion safely through the long retreat. From one remark, I thought I heard that Leutnant Gegel, the hypocrite, must have landed me in it. Certainly he had not forgiven me for the fact that he occasionally had had to obey my orders. I had unwittingly remarked to him that I did not like ‘this joint’. The commander, he said, was collecting together scattered men in Dünaburg. The adjutant was making the retreat with the baggage-train. In addition the undamaged 13th Company, the infantry gun company, was similarly with the baggage-train. Through Major von Garn and the Ia of the Division, I had brought up a detachment of light infantry guns and two vehicles and thereby run the risk of losing them, but success had proved me right. What a difference between that unjust and unpleasant person and Major von Garn with his achievements.

I quote from the regimental history: ‘On 2 September Major von Garn was awarded the Knight’s Cross for outstanding tactical command of Grenadierregiment 7 in the heavy fighting and withdrawal during the period from 27 June to 1 July’.

The enemy seemed to leave us alone for a long time, and the battalion established itself in the new sector. The companies worked industriously on constructing the position. The battalion command post was located in a small ravine running north-south, the eastern slope of which was ideally suited for the construction of the bunker.

Life together in the Battalion staff was, so to speak, harmonious. Hauptmann Schneider remained passive as far as command of the battalion was concerned. The orderly officer, since Gegel’s departure, was a Leutnant Martin Degering, the son of a ship’s doctor from Bremen. For a very long time he had been in the French lines of communication. It was then his first time in front line action. The battalion medical officer was a Dr Franz Josef Mies from Rheine in Westphalia. He did a good job, in that he reliably completed the change of position of his dressing station. I well remember the operations clerk, Unteroffizier Dressner. He was a teacher about 35 years old. He could judge what weight of responsibility I had to carry in commanding the battalion. Once he very kindly expressed his admiration for that. Apart from the signals man, Hermens, of whom I have already spoken, I vividly recall the wireless operator Obergefreiter Guth. In all the noise of the fighting he would listen in extreme concentration through his headphones to his wireless set.