Nigel Cawthorne (11 page)

About half an hour later, after the exchange of fires, we make a jump across the road as one body. We land in a very deep ditch with a lot of tree-roots in it and a small streamlet at the bottom … The comrade next to me has been shot through his right shoulder. Another had his thigh grazed by a bullet. He is groaning in pain. Hardly recovered from the shock, we hear a vehicle coming nearer. ‘It never rains but it pours,’ someone whispers to me. The vehicle comes near. We slip even deeper into the mud. There is dead silence. An American armoured scout car is passing by us at low speed … Small wonder the Americans are searching for us after our escape from their encirclement. More than 800 men simply cannot vanish into thin air.

The comrades take turns linking arms with or carrying the wounded. The Americans’ assault has noticeably stirred us up. No wonder we have almost forgotten hunger and cold. Now somehow we must cross the Salm River … All the bridges are watched closely by the enemy. On either side stands an enemy tank. We continue on our way – again steeply uphill. The silence of the ‘Holy Night’ is every now and then broken by the barking of dogs. From the near distance we can hear American machine-gun fire. We hear the yells for help from comrades who have been shot …

Ahead the path leads steeply downhill. The ground is frozen and slippery. We sit down on our behinds and slide from tree to tree downhill. Down at the bottom we talked in a whisper. In front of us the River Salm runs along the valley and we can clearly make out the rushing water of the mountain river.

The water is cold as ice and with all our remaining strength we lean against the strong current. Though I stand 1.93m high the water reaches my chest. We balance on the big rocks that lie on the river bed. The 30 to 35m width of the river seems endless. The chain gets broken frequently by the strong current. Some comrades are carried off and drowned.

By the time the last comrades cross the river, it has become day. All the time an American tank has been along the road beyond every 20 minutes. This time will be sufficient.

When the American tank returns we have already reached a considerable height. The wags we are wave good-bye to ‘the comrades below with the enemy Field Mail Number’. Some hours before we would rather have said a silent prayer. It is about 10am on Christmas Day 1944. We are in no-man’s land and feel safe. The path leads over an open plain. A biting wind blows the snow in our faces and we are soon frozen in our wet rags.

Baggage of our own we do not have. All things that were part of our personal outfit we had to leave behind at the hurried escape from La Gleize. Only things that we had on us were left. Not even a shirt for changing, no pants, no socks, no razor, not even a bar of soap were left in our possession – absolutely nothing!

On a nice clear afternoon between Christmas and New Year’s Eve we start out to search for the American trenches. Some days ago the Americans had dropped everything and rushed out of them … The fresh fall of snow over the last few days has almost covered them and hidden them completely. Suddenly we find a large area, covered deep communication trenches, storage silos, covered with thick stems and made weatherproof.

We crawl into the storage silos. Our hearts leap with joy at what we find there. It seems as if we have come to paradise all of a sudden – unimaginable. If we did not know that the Americans have fled from here we would assume that the troops have gone to the leave centre or the front-line theatre for a few hours.

The wealth presented gives us difficulty in choosing. In the ghostly darkness of the silos, we ransack the sea-bags that we find in large quantity. We dash out the contents to fill the bags again with things that we need and that our hearts desire. We have enough to choose from: unused clothes, food, toilet articles, chocolate, cigarettes in whole packets, best alcoholic drinks and many more things. We have put on some American furred uniform parts. On the whole, we are totally Americanized, only the language is not right. In our joy we act crazy, talk double-Dutch to each other, partly American, Russian, French – and German, some of everything. The things we are saying have no sense or meaning. We are suddenly so jolly and cheerful like little children who have been surprised by a belated Christmas present.

When we are to enter the house we meet inhabitants and we ask them for the cause of those mysterious thick dark clouds. We learn about the disaster that had come upon Saint-Vith a few days ago. We find it hard to believe and understand what is covered by the impenetrable wall of cloud that we had seen in front of us. Still there is smoke rising from the burning and smouldering ruins and the remains of the houses, under which a lot of people are buried.

On the first day of Christmas, in the afternoon, a sentence of death was carried out upon the small German-speaking town of Saint-Vith. Countless American bombs had turned a small town completely into rubble and ashes on the day we talk of peace on earth – an event of which no sense can be discerned even in the cruellest war.

Sergeant Geiger, a man from Swabia, had an idea. We started digging holes in the hard-frozen ground – as if we were going to defend the village. A captain approached and enquired what we were doing. Geiger explained that we were the rearguard – the Americans had broken through. He unfolded a map and showed the captain a ‘gap’ of about 5km which they could escape through. His unit, he said, was going to defend the place to the last man … Ten minutes later a combat-ready company on bicycles, young fellows, rushed out of the place with their commander in an attempt to escape through the ‘gap’. Everywhere inside the buildings they had left behind meals they had prepared. So we had plenty of food and a good chuckle too. Furthermore they left four Type 42 machine-guns and several
Panzerfausts
that we could use.

When I came back to the kitchen I can see that my crew have made themselves comfortable. They have unbelted and are now lying on beds which they have organized. My row about it makes them jump up. ‘Gentlemen, we are at the front now. Now there is no more unbelting. Everyone stays with his belongings. Put your steel-helmets on.’

Suddenly a shell hit somewhere near the house. We stumble into the basement. It is deep and crowded with civilians. They look at us with anger. ‘C’est la guerre,’ I say apologizing. But I cannot stand to stay down there very long. I go back upstairs. There I find soldiers plundering. I chase them off and tell the civilians to take their belongings down into the basement. They do as I say and thank me kindly.

The house was full of soldiers. The inhabitants, however, had a room in an upper storey. A soldier sat with his gun in front of him. While falling asleep, his finger touched the trigger and the gun fired. The bullet went through the ceiling and through the leg of a woman upstairs who had lain down in bed.

To me this is a death-command, and I start thinking of how I could escape from this danger. I will certainly ‘not find’ the tanks and my crew will never betray me if I do not carry out the order …the whole show will end in total failure for sure. It can only take a few days before the enemy has enough reinforcements to beat us to hell. Our dash has come to an end. We have spent ourselves completely. For replacements we have a lot of airmen who can hardly handle a machine-gun. The first sergeants with the German Cross and a war-fighter badge cannot even be appointed section leaders, because the old soldiers will not follow them.

We have only a few tanks and we have no more assault guns. So we depend on our infantry weapons only since Guderian took the heavy trench mortars and heavy machine-guns away. In Russia, the Panzer Grenadier Company still had 32 light machine guns, four heavy machine guns and four heavy trench mortars. That was a force that represented something. But now it means nothing any more … It is getting towards the end.

The advance made by the
Führerbelgeitbrigade
[Leader’s Escort Brigade] was met by a concentrated American tank assault which penetrated and again encountered the left flank of the blocking unit with full force. Needless to say they pushed though the time switch-lines, causing heavy casualties. Three companies were rolled up and only a few soldiers were able to escape to safety. From my battalion command post I could watch the assault rolling on, and helplessly I saw the American tearing a wide gap into our front line. With breakneck speed on a motorbike and sidecar, my adjutant and I advanced behind the gap in the front line in an attempt to close it. This was the first time I encountered panic among German soldiers. In a stampede, with no one to lead them, and in utter confusion they ran about and made the situation a complete mess. Only here and there a few determined people clustered around leaders who had not yet lost their nerves. I saw officers and NCOs literally steam-rolling their soldiers under cover. This all happened in a matter of a few minutes.

We had been encircled by US troops. There was no escape after the ammunition ran out. At about 0900 hours we showed the ‘white flag’ and the Americans stop firing. In the barn we put down our weapons and belts. I tried to hide my pistol somewhere with the intention of picking it up in the near future. Then we left the barn … The GIs were close to the door already. We never thought they were so close to us. One of them tore the helmet off my head. At once my fellow soldiers took off their helmets … We unhinged the doors and carried our wounded on them. I still remember that, when we were marching to the rear, the last American to the rear was hit by a German shell and disappeared completely. We were all white from terror. Continuing the march we noticed a V-1 which tumbled down the rear side of ‘Haussart’ hill. We were only 200m from the place of impact. Fortunately the rocket did not explode. All of us, including the GIs, were paralysed with fear … German guns and mortars continuously exploded near the column. Could it be that we were the target of our own troops because of our ‘capitulation’? We were very angry. Then we thought that could not be the reason, for they would not have been able to identify us from such a distance. But there was a rumour that German soldiers who had been taken prisoner without being wounded would be called to account at some later date …

We arrived at a road crossing. There we were shown shot US soldiers, half-covered by snow. We had to pass to and fro in front of the killed, still with our hands raised, and a one-star general addressed us about this being done by the SS. There were war reporters present too, and we were filmed and photographed marching up and down the scene with our hands raised … I felt something like being shot could happen to us. In my confusion I took the star on the general’s helmet to be that of a Bolshevist commissar. However, nothing happened to us. We wondered about being so many reporters and staff officers so close behind the front line. I had never seen a thing like this on the German side. Then we had to continue the march towards Malmedy, our hands about our heads all the time. They had taken our gloves and so we had to suffer from cold … I found myself a prisoner of war instead of having a furlough at home. However, a vacation at home at that time would not have turned out a pleasant one in so far as my home town Beuthen in Upper Silesia had been occupied by Soviet forces on 22 January 1945.