Stephen Fritz - Frontsoldaten

If only for a moment, the war stopped as the men engaged in the familiar and comforting celebration of Christmas, complete with a decorated tree in each bunker.

To forget the war, the death and destruction all around, the anxiety over his own fate—that remained the goal of every Landser. “At many of the sentry posts I confronted the powerful reek of alcohol,” Grupe confided to his diary. “To be sure the consumption of alcohol while on duty is punishable, but… after weeks of hard, difficult fighting, after all the blood and death, they have earned such pleasure and rest.” Moreover, this urge to blot out the fear could come at any moment, even in battle. “Everything rumbled, blazed, trembled,” Harry Mielert noted during one particularly savage Russian artillery bombardment. “Cattle cried, soldiers searched through all the buildings, barrels of red wine were taken away in small panje wagons (horse carts), here and there men were drinking and singing, in the meantime explosions again and new roaring fires.” During a frightful retreat through dense woods, in which he was under constant fire, Prosper Schücking likewise recorded, with no comment, “In the evening I passed a camp of an infantry battalion in which the men were drunk.” As Grupe commented laconically, “Beer played an essential role.” And vodka, Guy Sajer noted, “is the easiest way to make heroes…. We drank everything we could get hold of, trying to blot out the memory of a hideous day.” 8Little wonder, then, that the Landser referred to alcohol as Wutmilch , the milk of fury, the means to summon courage for yet another game of chance with death.

Humor, as well, served to distract the Landser from daily reality. Grupe recorded that in his sector of the eastern front the nightly appearance of an antiquated Soviet biplane—known to the Landsers alternately as the “sewing machine,” the “coffee mill,” or “iron Gustav”—occasioned many jokes. The wooden plane, would drone overhead and then suddenly turn off its motor, the sign that the pilot was going to toss a bomb overboard. The arrival of this nightly ghost gave rise to “many crazy stories told by the Landser : One night a paymaster was underway with a full keg of good brandy in his panje wagon. Gustav fluttered over. Just as our little paymaster had stooped down over the open spigot of the keg in order to enjoy the aroma, the airplane flew devilishly low over him and to his horror out of it came, while the motor was turned off, a deep, jovial voice: ‘Giddap, giddap, pony!” Another version of the story, according to Grupe, had it that “both occupants of the airplane loudly and clearly scolded the paymaster.” 9Through such a story the Landser not only ridiculed, and thus minimized, the irritating nightly “air raid” but also mocked the “hardships” of those in the rear—and to the Landser the rear was any area behind the front lines—who didn’t live in the land of mice, lice, bugs, and constant danger.

Men sought to maintain a sense of balance and alleviate their common suffering by sharing humor. Some jokes poked fun at the conditions around them: “As we were marching to the front as a relief unit a comrade’s helmet slipped off his head. He poked around in the mud with a stick to find the smelly hat again. Suddenly he discovered a human face. Dumfounded, he asked: ‘Gee, how did you get there?’ At that the face said: ‘You’ll be even more surprised when you learn that I’m sitting on a horse and riding.’” Other tales spoofed the involuntary situation in which they found themselves, although the humor often betrayed more than a hint of bitterness or jealousy: “A butcher bought a pig from a farmer. The wife, however, made as a condition that first her husband, who was at the front, had to give his consent. Her husband thereupon wrote the following postcard: ‘Dear Mr. Butcher!! Am in agreement with the sale of my wife, and you can pick up the sow tomorrow.’” Or, as one Landser supposedly wrote to his girlfriend, “Honey! I’m sitting in my bunker and writing to you while all around me here it is continuously creaking; you are probably now already in bed, and hopefully that is not the case with you.” 10

Not surprisingly, many jokes ridiculed those in authority: an alleged inscription on an officer’s quarters in the field read, “Entrance for shells, shrapnel, and bombs permitted only with the approval of the commander.” One bit of humor managed to make fun of both those in authority and the often limited rations for those in the field: “At an inspection tour of the kitchen by the Captain. Everything is in the best of order. He asked the leader of the group: What is your occupation? ‘Cook, Herr Captain!’ And you!: ‘Butcher!’ Finally he asked yet another soldier standing off to the side: ‘Smith, Herr Captain!’ What do you do then in the kitchen? ‘I administer the iron rations [the emergency field rations], Herr Captain!’” And again, with a similar play on word meanings: “The captain held personal instruction today. ‘What is a Kriegsgericht [court martial]?’ was his first question. Our Langer, who otherwise never pushed himself to the front, reported immediately and said: ‘Peas with bacon is a Kriegsgericht [war dish], Herr Captain.’” And again: “A man was washing his mess tin in a nearby pond which was completely overgrown with so-called duck weed. A general passed by, hesitated, and asked the soldier: ‘Tell me, do you not know bacillus?’ The soldier answered, standing to attention: ‘No, Herr General, he is not on the staff, he probably must be in the first company.’” 11

Yet other witticisms expressed the all too real wistful yearnings felt by many for the pleasures of nonmilitary life, as did a rhyme titled “Bunker Fantasy”:

And one alleged sign read: “Notice! Those who don’t leave fast enough for furlough will in the future be punished with arrest.” 12

In addition to humor, many Landsers found music an important form of comfort and escape. Nervous and worried on the eve of Operation Barbarossa, Friedrich Grupe found solace in the “sounds of the accordion coming from the men’s quarters and the singing of the familiar soldiers’ ballads!” Not even the rigors of combat in Russia negated the need for music. “From the tent of the company commander comes familiar music over the gray Wehrmacht radio,” Grupe wrote in his diary in the summer of 1941. “I sit there in the evenings before the loudspeaker and through these melodies sink into reminiscences and dreams of the future. The Landsers listening outside also have become still and don’t let the muffled sounds of the firing in the distance disturb their reverie.” On another occasion, Grupe described hearing Lale Andersen sing “Lili Marlene” over the radio as “like a dream.” “In the transmitter car next to my tent they’ve turned on the wireless,” recorded Wilhelm Prüller. “They are just playing ‘Hörst du mein heimliches Rufen’ [Do you hear my secret call?—a popular song at the time]. My God! How wonderful this Sunday morning at home would be.” Noted another soldier from the devastation of the Normandy hedgerows, “Last night we had a little ‘soldier’s hour’ and sang our soldiers’ and folk songs into the night. What would a German be without a song?” 13