Armin Scheiderbauer - Adventures in My Youth

On 17 August heavy fighting was taking place around the village of Ssilenki, while the 292nd Infanteriedivision withdrew to a line further to the north. Seriously combat-weary, completely soaked, with only cold rations, the troops were partly broken through in a very strong armoured attack. They had to make a fighting withdrawal on to the Upolosy high ground. As a result Upolosy itself was drawn in to the bridgehead position. West of Upolosy the enemy had broken through at Popowka. That was Infanterieregiment 19. One company of Panzer-Abteilung 18 was placed under the command of Kampfgruppe Karst and supported the infantry.

A Stuka attack in the early morning of 18 August, on Cholmino and the wooded territory to the south-east of Upolosy, won some more breathing space. Enemy armour, assembled immediately south of Cholmino, was shattered by artillery fire. The gap to the west of Kampfgruppe Karst still yawned. On the eastern wing Feld-Ersatz-Bataillon 292, then under the command of the Kampfgruppe , maintained the connection. Renewed enemy attempts to assemble armour were successfully opposed by the artillery. But it was not possible to prevent Soviet infantry, with armour, from advancing to the west of Upolosy northwards across the Worja. The enemy seemed from this point to have shifted the emphasis of their attack from the east, against 292nd Infanteriedivision . They moved opposite the sector held by Kampfgruppe Karst and further westwards.

The intervention of Infanterieregiment 82 on 20 August, and the arrival of Infanterieregiment 282, had a relieving effect on the Kampfgruppe . On 24 August it was possible to repulse a large-scale enemy attack on the Upolosy sector. But further to the west the enemy succeeded in taking Bekrino and Schatescha. On 1 September Oberst Karst was decorated with the Knight’s Cross, for personal gallantry in counter-attacking. On 2 September fresh enemy attacks took place against the Upolosy bridgehead. But they were all repulsed. Only on 6 September were orders executed for the planned evacuation of that position. Bataillon Vielhauer returned to the Division with a combat strength of about 80 men. A small barracks at Waldlager Nord was sufficient to provide accommodation for that little band.

My personal experience was more exciting than the picture painted by the dry report from the regimental history. During the night the battalion was relieved from its position and removed from the Division’s Field Reserve. I handed over my section sector and the stocks of ammunition, hand-grenades, and machine-gun belts. We thought it was a relief that those supplies did not need to be dragged along. I marched off with the section in the direction of the assembly area to which we had been ordered.

Company after company joined us on the route. Soon the whole battalion was on the march with us. We went in line, one behind the other at long intervals in order to invite as few casualties as possible in the event that we were attacked from the air, or fired on. From Shabino, the baggage-train village, the battalion went to Gschatsk, to the camp in the woods some kilometres north of the town. In the summer of 1941 that camp had served as headquarters to the Russian Supreme Commander, Central Sector, Marshal Timoshenko.

Hauptfeldwebel Melin, the ‘sarge’, a strict, self-possessed man, had his cross with the drivers, not only those of the horse-drawn vehicles. In a mighty voice he gave out his orders. In pure Silesian, one of them asked, ‘Wot ‘ave ah for’t tek, Herr Hauptfel ?’ And the Hauptfeldwebel replied, ‘Tek ‘t’ Poischou’, by which he meant a captured French Peugeot lorry. Several ways led to Gschatsk. The one that went via Staroje was the furthest, but was better for the vehicles and the Peugeot. We followed the route that had more ‘corduroy’ roads and was therefore better. But even so, to the accompaniment of dreadful cursing, horses and motor vehicles had to be heaved out of the sticky mud.

On the way it was passed from man to man that we had set off as Army Reserve and should be getting some rest. I believed it, the old hands did not. On 23 August 1942, in the brightness of the dawn morning, we arrived in the camp in the woods and settled ourselves down in the barracks. I slept for some hours. Towards noon there was something to eat and afterwards there was a front-line film show. While the film Der grosse Schatten , ‘The Great Shadow’, was still running, the Battalion Adjutant shouted ‘Alert!’ Barely five minutes later the battalion was standing ready to march. When the lorries of an Army mobile column arrived we were immediately loaded up. We were told that the Russians had broken through at Juchnow and that we were to be thrown in to the gap created by that move.

The journey through the bare countryside, only here and there crossed by bushes and woods, was not exactly pleasant. We travelled standing, squatting, or sitting on machine-gun boxes. The ‘oldies’ who had taken part in the advance and the winter retreat, said that it was no picnic which awaited us. We younger ones, ‘dropped in the shit’, again, did indeed feel the tension hanging over everyone. It could be read in the expressions of the officers. But it was more with curiosity and interest than with fear that we looked forward to the things that this ‘fire brigade’ action would bring.

Outside the village of Saawinki, some thirty kilometres north-west of Medyn, we were unloaded. Immediately, a security line was formed in platoon strength in the direction of the enemy. I lay with my section beside the road that led to the enemy. Somewhere in front there were still supposed to be German troops. No-one knew any more. A motorcycle with sidecar drove up from behind us. A strange officer got out. To my report he said, sounding surprised, ‘ Infanterieregiment 7! My God, that’s an active regiment!’ To my ears it sounded as if he had determined that from then nothing else could happen and that it was a dead certainty that the Russian breakthrough would be cleaned up.

Just as we had hastily dug in, I was taken by a runner to the battalion commander. He ordered me, and the section, to carry out a reconnaissance patrol into the woods that lay about two kilometres in front of us. The object was to find out if they were occupied by the enemy. It was my first reconnaissance patrol. It was the real thing, the active beginning of my probation at the front. On the successful completion of this depended my whole life’s ambition! I instructed the men and we set off.

The first signs of dusk were just becoming noticeable when we reached the woodland. We went in line, spaced widely apart, but could see no trace of the enemy. We crossed a tongue of woodland, while I, as I had learned during training, tracked our direction of march with a compass. Finally, we marched in a long curve leftwards as far as the road and turned back. Halfway the battalion met us. In the meantime they had been ordered to take up positions in front of the wood facing the enemy. The tongue of woodland we had just crossed was the edge of a larger forest that stretched over to the right. It offered the Russians a good opportunity to take us unopposed in the rear. An attempt was then made to counter the danger by having the 7th Company take up position almost at right angles to the forward-deployed 5th and 6th Companies. We would provide cover for the battalion from the direction of the wood.

To my disappointment, my section was held in reserve. We had to dig in again, but on fairly open ground. By that time night had fallen and it seemed to me that we would not be staying in that position for very long. I had the men dig only moderately deep foxholes, just deep enough to be able to snatch some hours’ sleep in them with adequate protection against shell splinters. The foxhole I had myself dug barely reached to my knees, so that my body, lying on bushes as a kind of bedding, and covered in the same way, did not protrude above the level of the ground. Within moments there crept over me the uncomfortable thought that I was lying in a coffin.