Armin Scheiderbauer - Adventures in My Youth

The railway ended in Nasielsk, six kilometres behind the front. Brinkel and I marched together to the Divisional command post. It was a gleaming white winter’s day. The sun illuminated the Sunday peace and the war, for once, was still. At the Divisional Staff everybody apart from the guard was still asleep. They had been celebrating New Year, and the Divisional Adjutant, Major Östreich, had to get out of bed on our account. He said we could have stayed at home to see in the New Year. That was easily said, my leave ended on New Year’s Eve, and that was when I had to begin the journey. Quite apart from that, I could not have celebrated knowing that the next day I would have to travel to the Eastern Front, for the fourth time. The nearer the front I came, the more I had the familiar feeling of ‘butterflies’.

But there was some compensation in the fact that I was back with the ‘7th’. I looked up Klaus Nicolai. We had a quick welcome nip and went to the bunker of the regimental commander. Oberst Dorn, the Grand Seigneur from the Rhineland, welcomed me to the regiment and informed me that I was to get the 1st Company. The company was at the moment in reserve in the so-called second trench of the extended trench system. The next day it would move back into the frontline. At the 1st Battalion, Hauptmann Fitz and Oberleutnant Küllenberg, the Hauptmann and the Adjutant, welcomed me with a loud ‘hello’. I knew them from the previous summer. Then a runner took me forward and at the Company I was welcomed by Leutnant Martin Lechner who was to take over command of the battalion’s heavy weapons company.

I had become friends with Lechner in spring 1944 in Schweidnitz. At that time he had come from the war school to which he had been sent as an active Unteroffizier with above average potential. He had good manners and you could not see the ‘12-Ender’ in him, even if at the Ersatz battalion he had not had any comrades. I had put myself out a bit for him for which, I noticed, he had been grateful. But we celebrated our reunion with the appropriate drop of the hard stuff. Before that of course we had done another tour of the bunker. I had to see and greet the men. They should get a look at their new ‘boss’ straight away. After that we sturdily went on to have a few jars, because that was still the best tried-and-tested way of getting things off to a good start. Finally Lechner got up and made a speech on the theme that the 1st Company must be the ‘first’ not only in name but also in achievement, something it was now and also must remain in the future. Not quite so awkwardly and seriously as Lechner, I also said a few words to him and to the men of the company. I stressed my pride at now being commander of the 1st Company of our old regiment, and that was the truth.

The next night we moved into position in the Nase von Poweilin . It was extremely unfavourable, because the main line of resistance ran at a right angle, one arm pointed in a westerly and the other arm in a southerly direction. The Russians could come from two sides, in the intersection of the angle enemy fire was possible from three sides. Our neighbour on the right was the 2nd Company, on the left was the Divisional Füsilierbataillon . Only a hundred metres of the trench had been dug out to knee depth, so that during the daytime you could only move through it by crawling.

Because of the way the trenches ran in the entire Nase , the men of the company regarded themselves, in the event of the expected large-scale enemy offensive, as ‘written off’. With almost complete certainty, those in the Nase could expect to be overrun or cut off. As far as anyone could see, there was no way of escape. Fire could come from three sides, attacks from two sides, and to the rear in front of the second line were our own minefields only passable in narrow channels. Whoever survived the heavy barrage before the attack had to face the attack itself. Scarcely anybody would be able to survive that. Because of the minefields and the completely open, gently rising terrain, to retreat did not offer the slightest prospect of getting through in one piece. Thoughts like this I had to keep to myself, and particularly the thought that, if the worst came to the worst, I had only my own pistol to keep me out of the Russian captivity that I viewed with such fear and horror.

During those days, or rather nights, I was continually moving around the trench from post to post and bunker to bunker, in order to get to know every one of the men under my charge. Many knew me by sight, many by name. Actions like Upolosy, Nemers and Raseinen and many others, bound us together. Also I spoke the language of the Silesians, who still formed the majority of the regiment. I was able to converse with them in their local dialect, so that none of them felt that I was a stranger. Soon after I joined the regiment I had learned to speak Lower Silesian and Upper Silesian. Once, on an exercise march in the vicinity of the garrison, an old dear had said to me that I was certainly a Schweidnitzer. Telling her that I was not, I had laughed at her, and she had got angry.

My company troop leader was the young Berlin Unteroffizier Ulrich Lamprecht. He was a student of Protestant theology with the Iron Cross First Class on his narrow chest. Every day he read the book of proverbs of the Herrenhut Brethren. In the days that remained until the offensive, I read the proverbs with him and also the corresponding references from the New Testament, which I had in my pack. Among the runners Walter Buck stood out, He was a 35 year old businessman from Hamburg. He matched the type of the intelligent soldier, who has long since passed normal military age, and who lacked the ambition of youth. He was reliable and did his duty well, as did the other runner Reinalter, a farmer from Swabia.

As in all the earlier trenches, in this trench too some branch trenches led to the separate Donnerbalken or ‘Thunderbox’. It was the one little place where you could be alone at the front. In that quiet hermitage, you could, if it suited the enemy, actually spend the quietest minutes of the day or night. In summer as in winter there was the smell of the chlorine. Then, in the icy cold of winter, strange towers, frozen stiff, stood up in the pit as in a dripstone cave. It was then that I decided, if I was granted a happy return home and had the opportunity, I would somehow sing the praises of the latrines, which I have now done here!

The company command post lay on slightly rising ground, in the middle of the bridge of the Nase . The linking stretch leading to the main trench could be seen by the enemy, during the daytime. Therefore, if at all possible, we had to remain in the bunker. In that way, during the long days up to 14 January, I learned how to play Skat . I never had any interest in card games. Many a time comrades or superiors had asked: ‘Can you play Skat or can you play Doppelkopf ?’ When I said ‘no’ it usually prompted the surprised and amused question, ‘Eh lad, how did you get to be an officer then?’ On 6 January I had the great surprise of seeing a schoolmate from Stockerau, Leutnant der Reserve Otto Holzer. In the autumn he had passed out of war school, and came as a platoon leader into the heavy weapons company. It was a huge pleasure for me, even if our time together during the evenings did not last long. Subsequently, after Otto was wounded in February, we did not see each other again.

A ‘visit’ of another kind was the assignment of a ‘trench dog’. Not the designation for a new weapon or machine, it was an actual guard dog. It had been selected to alert us to ‘alien elements in the trench’. It was a smallish, wolf-like mongrel, and despite my love for dogs I had no confidence in its military value as an additional defence against the ever-active Russian commando units.