Armin Scheiderbauer - Adventures in My Youth

There was complete confusion in the Russian baggage-train into which we had stumbled. No one could recognise anyone else in the darkness. I shouted ‘Out! Into the fields!’ We had to get away from the village street and the vehicles. The only option open to us was the field to the left of the road, because on the right the road was blocked. Franz stuck close to me. The other men were swallowed up in the snow and the night. After an hour of strenuous searching and muffled shouting we had only found seven of the fourteen. Then we set off, without vehicles and without machine-guns. I could not hold up any longer if I wanted to avoid being seen when it got light.

It was the only time during my time as a soldier that I lost my bearings at night. The sky was cloudy and the Pole Star could not be seen, and my sense of direction let me down. I was convinced that the west was in the east, but my compass showed the opposite. I wavered between which I should trust, my instinct that had never yet let me down, or the compass. Then reason and drill, which were the stronger, won through and trust in the compass saved us. We were stamping through the snow in the direction my compass showed as west. From time to time we had to wade up to our knees through the snow. At last a farmstead came in sight. There we had to ask the way. Fortunately I had written down the place names along our retreat. I could not send any of the men still shocked by the experience to the farm, so I went again with Franz.

While the rest of the group waited near a tree that we hoped to be able to find later, Franz and I, with the safety catches off our weapons, crept closer. A dog set off barking, but from the house there was neither light nor any sound to be heard. We knocked on the window and on the door until an anxious farmer opened up. Were there any Russians here yet, the Upper Silesian Franz asked him in Russian, to which the Pole replied: ‘No, you are the first’. Smiling to ourselves we got him to tell us the way to the road and the names of the next villages.

Soon we had found the road again. Just as it was becoming light, we at last found the battalion in the third village. With the help of Hauptmann Wild’s map I had to establish that we had missed the fork in the road by five kilometres. At the regiment and at the Division they were agitated when they found out, on the basis of my report, that enemy baggage-trains were already in the village where we had had our adventure.

On 25 January we had come to within 10 kilometres of the Vistula to the south of the town of Graudenz. From midnight there was a two-hour halt. After that we were to march on again. Since the enemy was not pushing up behind, we only had to take normal security precautions. There was enough time to knock up a decent stew for the men. The farmhouse, in which we were, had been deserted by its inhabitants. They had fled. But the stock was still there. Two men who knew how to do it hurriedly slaughtered a pig. The portions we needed were cut out, the rest was left. The Ivans could make a good meal of it if it had not become inedible by that time. In a massive pan that the farmer’s wife must have used at harvest time and at celebrations, the pieces of meat simmered in such a way as to make our mouths water. Outside it remained quiet and we were lucky enough to be able to eat our fill until we left.

After three hours’ slow night march we crossed the frozen Vistula. Pioneers had reinforced it to form an ice bridge so that tanks and heavy artillery could also get across it. At 5am in the area of Deutsch-Westfalen, I set my foot on the western bank. The positions ran along the riverbank on the Vistula embankment. On the western bank a strip of meadows about one to three kilometres wide then ran along the river, ending in a steeply climbing hill. About 10 kilometres north-eastwards was the town of Graudenz with the visible silhouette of its fortress. Called after the Prussian General, Courbiere, it stood high above the Vistula.

The Vistula embankment was occupied by alarm units that had been pooled together at the nearest frontline control point. We had the presence of such a unit to thank for a last day of rest. The German inhabitants of the prosperous town had not all yet fled. They hoped that the enemy could be brought to a standstill at the riverbank. Despite the ample evening meal, everyone ate his fill of the plentiful supply of food. While the men were cooking chickens I scoffed a full ten scrambled eggs that Walter had rustled up for me by way of a change of diet. When the field kitchen arrived in the morning, most of the men made short work of another pot full of bacon and beans. The joker Franz said, tongue-in-cheek, that as far as he was concerned the Führer could do away with the card system. After the meal we stretched out to sleep. Someone had found a gramophone and got it working. Of the two records only one was chosen. Adolf Hitler’s speech, ‘Give me four years’, was not requested. Instead we had an old song, the melody of which I know to this day. It rang out from the tinny sounding gramophone: So liebt man in Lissabon, in Tokio, Wien und Rom; die Sprache der Liebe ist überall gleich (‘Thus people love in Lisbon, in Tokyo, Vienna and Rome; the language of love is the same everywhere’).

On the afternoon of 27 January we moved into the positions on the bank of the Vistula. My company’s sector was the village of Jungensand, to the south of Deutsch-Westfalen. On the snowy riverbank there were willows. Adjoining it was an embankment, some five metres high and sloping on both sides. To the east of the embankment ran the village street. On the other edge were clean, for the most part smallish farmsteads all planted out with gardens. Since there were no trenches, we dug foxholes in the embankment. In the farm that I took as my command post I met a Leutnant with a few troops on leave from many different units. As they got out of the train in Deutsch-Kone they had been gathered together into an alarm unit. The Herr Kamerad had let his men sleep in the outhouse while he had spent the night with mother and daughter in the farmer’s bedroom. Grinning offensively he suggested to me that I should do the same. Without saying anything I looked at him, not understanding and full of contempt.

Since the enemy obviously had need of a break, as we did, we were granted two days of rest. As our physical exhaustion abated, the oppression of our minds and spirits proportionately increased. The deserted dwellings, farms and settlements created a thoroughly sad atmosphere. There were columns of German refugees, old men, women and children with belongings they had had to snatch together as best they could in the emergency. We had already overtaken some of them on the way. Everything reinforced those sad impressions. The realisation hit me that the area, German for more than half a millennium, would be irretrievably lost.

In the stables there was still some warmth. Many farmers had not even been able to take all their stock with them. Gates and doors were standing open, as if the houses were still inhabited by their owners and they had just gone out into the fields. The cellars and barns were full. The shelves of the dining rooms were stocked. In addition to the large amount of meat daily, we even had stewed fruit. We would have done without it only we were still standing at Smolensk. We, the infantrymen, were to be the last to set foot over the threshold of those countless homes about to be given over to the enemy. ‘Oh Germany, poor Fatherland’, I thought at the time. I happened to find in the First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter four, verse seven, the text that essentially ‘hit the nail on the head’ in describing what was happening to us. ‘Even unto this present hour we both hunger and thirst, are naked and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling place’.