Armin Scheiderbauer: Adventures in My Youth

It was particularly during the warm seasons of the year that bugs made their unpleasant presence felt in the barracks. In the last summer, 1947, Willi Cellbrot and I had an idea. Instead of sleeping in the barracks, we would sleep outside in the open air. The barracks containing the kitchen and canteen, had a front building with a roof that was ideally suited for our purposes. For some weeks of the very warm summer we slept on our straw mattresses with blanket and overcoats over our old uniforms, free from bugs, that alone was some pleasure! Out there in the open air we were also not bothered by rats. They occasionally made their disturbing presence felt during the night. Sometimes such a creature would take a nibble at your bread ration kept on the board over your head, or give you a shock by running over your feet.

I had a remarkable experience the night before New Year 1947. Just as I was standing for the third time at the drum, I could not believe my ears. From far away, coming from Insterburg, there was the sound of music. It must have been an Austrian transmitter that was broadcasting it, because the music was unmistakably that of the ‘Blue Danube’. This seemed to me to be a hopeful omen that this was the beginning of our last year in captivity, and this was in fact the case.

It must have been in May when my everyday life suddenly completely changed. In all the regular physical examinations I had always been put down for work detail 3, but all of a sudden I was designated as completely capable of work. That was in line with my general physical constitution. For some time I had no longer felt my knees trembling, and by and large felt that I had recovered my strength. So I had to give up the work in the library that I had come to like. But it was the right thing for me. From then on I was no longer close to the Antifa officials, who always, so to speak, forced me to think and speak in ‘political’ terms. From then I joined the so-called forest commando.

The forest commando consisted of the few Hungarians in the camp. There were about 15 of them, including a lieutenant. He had remained to his fellow-countryman their superior, a person whom they respected. He was called Nyiri Antal, was about 28 years old and came from Budapest. Amongst his men there were some ethnic German farmers, including a father and his son. Nyiri spoke a little German. With him and with the Hungarian soldiers of German ancestry I could make myself understood very well. Also members of the forest commando were the Austrians amongst the officers. There was Willi Cellbrot and me, but Paul Eberhart belonged to another commando. Every morning at 6 o’clock our small group got into a rickety lorry. When it had barely reached the road to Insterburg, it turned off sharply to the right to drive along the highway to the woods in which we carried out our tree-felling work. Those woods must, at one time, have been the pride and joy of their owners and of those who took care of them. In the meantime the bark beetle had infested wide stretches, and we prisoners had to chop down kilometres of forest.

Peace and quiet reigned there in the forest. The only sentry, who drove with us and stayed with us after the lorry gone, was just as peaceful. Boris would immediately find a sunny spot for himself, while we spread out over a small area and got to work. Boris more or less dozed away the rest of the day. Lack of movement and at a lot of kascha made him drowsy. He always looked as if he was just about to fall asleep and could only with an effort keep his little brown eyes open. He came from around Gorki, the earlier Nizhni-Novgorod. If there had still been peasants there one could have spotted him a hundred yards away as a peasant lad. His vocabulary was no more than 400 words, and it was simple Russian that he spoke. But for the most part he was quiet. He only occasionally summoned up the effort to make a necessary announcement that his position as sentry required of him.

I was not in a position to judge Boris’s linguistic knowledge, because I only knew about 200 words of Russian. But Willi Cellbrot, who had studied at Polish universities, was in a better position to judge. He spoke excellent Russian, which was obviously attractive to Boris. Probably because of that, and not because we represented any particular risk of escape, he liked to sit near to us. Perhaps he was also amazed that we two and the Hungarian officer as the only officers, had no fascist brutality. We worked hard to boot. We always fulfilled our norm, although that was not small.

The forest commando was organised in such a way that two men always sawed with a bow saw, while the third, with an axe, took care of removing the branches. It was amazing how quickly we mastered the rules of tree felling. At first you had to assess how the tree was to be felled and accordingly how the saw was to be placed. The trunks, 20 and more metres long, then had to be cut up into pieces four metres long. They were then piled up at the edge of the road ready to be loaded up. While our young Hungarian was engaged in removing the branches, Willi and I were sawing at the next trunk.

Once there was a short-lived misunderstanding that spoiled Boris’s rest. Willi and I were supposed to be cutting up gigantic oak trunks that had been felled years before and had been dragged to the edge of the road. With our relatively short saw blade the work would not have been pleasant, even with softer wood. The hard oak of the thick trunks, however, made our progress very slow. Because of that, Boris thought we were lazy and cursed us. He grunted curses at us, culminating in a shout of Sibir nada. He said our laziness should send us to Siberia, and that was what he wanted say.

We were furious and Willi began to argue with Boris. He told him that he did not understand anything of working with timber. He challenged him to pick up the saw and to try it himself. That would convince him that oaks are harder than pines. Boris put down his rifle and loosened his belt. Sweeping his arm right back, he waved Willi over and said Dawai ! They knelt down and began to saw. Boris, from his little eyes, threw half mocking, half poisonous looks at Willi. The unaccustomed work quickly got him into a sweat. He also expended too much strength on it instead of matching the regular strokes of Willi, the trained forest worker. The tense situation was resolved when the lorry arrived. Afto gommt said Boris relieved, and stopped what he was doing. He got up, put his belt back on and picked up his rifle again. From then on there was no more talk of cutting oak trunks into smaller pieces.

The ‘Afto’ was sometimes a rattling ‘Sis’, but often also a heavy German artillery tractor. But instead of pulling a field howitzer, it was fully loaded with trees. On the last run of the evening the prisoners got on. As had happened to me in the war, sometimes the heavy vehicle from time to time sank into swampy areas of the forest floor. Then the driver brought out the steel cable, tied it round the nearest thick, firmly rooted tree trunk and turned on the motorised windlass, with the aid of which the vehicle pulled itself out.

By the time it was evening, the norm was fulfilled and tiredness would overcome us. We the prisoners, and Boris too, would listen for the ‘Afto’. Mostly it came at 5 o’clock as planned, but sometimes it was delayed until 8 or even 11 o’clock. Then we arrived in the camp towards midnight and received our mid-day and evening soup all in one. After that our bellies were so full they hurt. No food was brought to us in the forest, so it took a while until our stomachs had got used to not having the midday meal. But just as sore muscles had gone after a few days, our bodies also adjusted to this. In the lunch break for the most part we would swarm out and go in search of berries. Once Willi caught frogs, roasted the legs over the flames of the fire, and he and I devoured the few tasty delicacies.