Armin Scheiderbauer: Adventures in My Youth

The two photographs of our Christmas in barracks show ‘us eleven’ officer cadets with Obergefreiter Wahle in our Sarasani jackets. In front of the Christmas tree in the background, there are on the left, some lockers and against the wall, in front of them, a bunk bed. In the foreground is the long table. In the second photograph we are sitting with our tunics off. In front of the darkened window is the big tree, decorated with lametta and many burning candles. From the ceiling is hanging the big Advent wreath and on the table, too, some lights are still burning. In front on the left sits Popovsky, beside him Altermann, on the right opposite him Überla, and in front of him is me, with a reflective-questioning expression.

Better than all the service regulations intended for training, instruction and individual study, was the Reibert . It was named after its author, Dr.jur.W. Reibert, Hauptmann and company commander. A 300-page compendium, it was entitled Der Dienstunterricht im Heere , i.e. Service Instruction in the Army. We used the green-bound edition for the men of the Schützenkompanie . The Reibert was an excellent systematic compendium of all the training material. As well as the introduction for service instruction, it was divided into the sections Patriotism, The Soldier’s Profession and its Duties, Sense of Duty, Behaviour of the Soldier, The Army, Anti-Gas Defence, Close-Range Weapons, Weapons and Equipment, Drill, Firing, together with Duties in the Field and Combat. In addition to the oath on the colours, the words of which everyone had to know and repeat as he was sworn in, there were ‘The Duties of the German Soldier’, about which Reibert states: ‘The German soldier is expected to know the following articles by heart and word-forword’. They read:

1) The Wehrmacht bears arms for the German Volk . It protects the German Reich and Fatherland, the Volk , bound into one in National Socialism, and its living space. The roots of its power lie in a glorious past, in German Volkstum , German soil and German labour. Service in the Wehrmacht is a service of honour to the German Volk .

2) The honour of the soldier lies in the full and unconditional offering of his person for Volk and Fatherland, even unto sacrificing his life.

3) The highest virtue of the soldier is aggressive courage. This demands toughness and resolve. Cowardice is a disgrace, hesitation is un-soldier like.

4) Obedience is the foundation of the Wehrmacht , trust the foundation of obedience. Soldierly leadership rests on delight in taking responsibility, on superior ability and tireless care.

5) Great achievements in war and peace can only come about in the unshakeable fighting community of leader and troops.

6) Fighting community demands comradeship. Comradeship is particularly proven in need and danger.

7) Self-possessed and yet modest, upright and true, God-fearing and truthful, discreet and incorruptible, the soldier should be to the entire Volk a model of manly strength. Only achievements justify pride.

8) His greatest reward and greatest happiness is found by the soldier in the consciousness of duty joyfully fulfilled. Character and achievement are the hallmarks of his way and of his worth.

Those ‘duties’ hark back in their essentials to the Imperial Army and probably to still older regulations. Millions of soldiers in both World Wars modelled themselves on those regulations. In the Second World War soldiers followed their guidelines right to the bitter end. For those born after those wars it is hard to comprehend. But for me and my comrades, who willingly submitted ourselves to those duties, with all the idealism of youth, they were a kind of profession of faith.

To give an example of the sterling quality and thoroughness of the Reibert , I will quote from the General Principles of the Barracks, Room and Locker Regulations:

Anyone who shouts, howls and engages in tussles in quarters offends against discipline and order. Decorous singing is permitted, if barrack block comrades agree. Popular songs, hackneyed old hits, and songs of an obscene nature, are not a suitable part of a soldier’s singing repertoire. In the barrack block, i.e. the soldier’s home, scrupulous order and cleanliness is to be paramount at all times. The tone adopted among the block inmates should be comradely so that they can get along well with each other. Lunch is a communal meal both because of technical necessity, for reasons of military order and to cultivate comradeship. For meals the soldier will appear with clean hands, clean fingernails, and with his hair combed. At table he will sit upright, will not unnecessarily rattle about with the crockery, will be decorous, and refrain from unsuitable chatter.

There are many other examples that could be added. However, it may become clear why, in our day, the Wehrmacht was spoken of as the ‘school of the nation’. In that school, even the ‘simple man of the people’ learned a lot that he had not learned from either his parents or his teachers.

At the end of 1986, 45 years on, when I read the letters that I wrote to my family from St Avold and Mörchingen, during that first period as a soldier, I was astonished by the dispassion and distance with which I regarded the business of the Army, although I was right in the middle of it. In all conscience I had shrugged everything off. To have to learn hard lessons, to go through troubles and exertions, to have the occasional moments of harassment had never become too much for me. In any event, neither I nor my officer cadet comrades had ever been ‘reduced to tears’. That was something about which the regimental commander had once asked at the gentlemen’s evening. He no doubt was speaking from personal experience as he thought of his own time as a cadet. Certainly the cadets of the Imperial Army, about whom such stories were told, had been much younger. For them the seriousness of military life had begun when they were only ten years old.

In my first letter to my Mother and sisters I complained that ‘we have really very little time’ and that we officer cadets were given the ‘most impossible things to do’. Thus, for instance, ‘would you believe it’, I had been ordered by the UvD to darn his leather gloves. Nevertheless, I completed it to his total satisfaction. On 4 August 1941 I had to travel to Metz to the Reserve Military Hospital for a specialist medical examination of my heart. At my recruitment medical, the unit MO diagnosed a ‘serious’ defect. In Metz it proved, ‘thank God, to be a completely wrong diagnosis’. Otherwise I would have been sent home, which would have been a big disappointment. After only ten days we were having firing practice for the first time.

‘Then was our swearing-in, a ceremonial occasion. In the afternoon we had no duties and we had our first trip out, it is true, with our NCO and Obergefreiter. But it was quite nice. We gorged ourselves at a confectioner’s. For once at least we were full again. Otherwise we are always hungry. Yesterday we got our pay books and identity tags’. To Father I reported on 25 August that ‘today we had been flushed out, quick marched with machine-gun and gas mask, and then over the 2.5m high scaling wall’. But still, ‘I don’t let it get me down, you needn’t worry. In the group there’s a lot to laugh about, and you get through everything much easier with humour than with idealism’.

On 4 September I told Mother of a stay in sick quarters. The cause was angina, from which I had suffered a lot in my youth. In that letter I was longing for my schooldays, but in the next sentence went on that ‘we all really think that we’ve never had any other life than the one we have now in the military. Our time as civilians is only a beautiful dream. For all that we’re happy and contented’. In the letter of 18 September to my Mother, I reported that ‘in the last two days we have had no rest at all at night. The day before yesterday we had night exercises until 12.30am, then straight into the air-raid shelter until 2.30am. Yesterday was Gentlemen’s Evening again, very jolly, then air-raid shelter again until 2am. A Gentlemen’s Evening like that’, I said, ‘was as good as a rest, despite the tightness of space, especially the tightness of my tunic. I sat at table with the Colonel, but fortunately he left about 10pm. Then things got going. You get used to drinking. Today I can feel no ill effects at all’.