Stuka Pilot (15 page)

We fly on towards our objective. Considerably further west I meet a strong enemy force; there is no longer any sign of German troops.

Now we fly back and take a closer look at the tanks. They are all T 34s—Russians. Their crews are standing beside them studying a map: a briefing. Startled by our approach they scatter and crawl back into their tanks. But at the moment we can do nothing because we have first to land and remunition. In the meantime the Soviets drive into the town. Our airfield lies on the other side of it. In ten minutes I am ready to take off again and search for them among the houses. When they are being attacked the tanks dodge round the buildings, and in this way are quickly out of our sights.

I hit four of them. Where can the rest have got to? They may appear on our airfield at any minute. We cannot evacuate it because some of our personnel are in the town and we have to wait till they get back. Now, too, I remember that I have sent a car with one of our Q.M. staff to the Army Q.M. stores in the eastern section of the town. Unless he has extraordinary luck he is for it. Later it transpires that a T 34 came round the corner of the Q.M. stores just as our car drove up. With an open throttle and his knees knocking together he got clear away.

I go out once more. The squadron cannot fly with me, otherwise we shall not have enough petrol for the now inevitable move to Pawlowka. I can only hope that by the time I return all my men will be back at the airfield. After a long search I spot two tanks in the western part of the town and knock them out. Apparently they were headed for us, to smoke out the hornets’ nest of Stukas. But it is already high time to pull out, and after first setting fire to all unserviceable aircraft which have to be left behind we take off. While we are making a circuit of the airfield preparatory to taking up squadron formation I see tank shells burst on the perimeter. So they have got there, but we are there no longer.

The compass points W.N.W. After a while we fly off at low level over a road. Intense flak comes up at us from a long motorized column traveling through be low us with an escort of tanks. We break our close formation and circle round the vehicles Soviet tanks and lorries, mostly of American origin, therefore Russian. I admit I am puzzled as to how these beggars have suddenly turned up here so far west, but they must be Russians. We gather height and I give the order to engage the flak, which must be neutralized first so that we can come in for a low level attack undistracted.

After we have for the most part silenced the flak we split up into sections over the length of the column and shoot it up. The daylight is slowly fading; the whole road looks like a fiery serpent; a jam of burning motor vehicles and tanks which have not had time to drive off the road to right or left. We spare hardly one, and the material loss to the Soviets is again considerable.

But what is this?

I fly ahead above the first three or four vehicles, they all carry our flags on their radiators. These lorries are of German manufacture. For two hundred yards further on white Verys are being fired from the ditches at the side of the road. That is the signal of our own troops. It is a long time since I have had such a sickening feeling in my stomach. I would willingly crash my aircraft somewhere here on the spot. Can it have been a German column after all? Everything is ablaze. But why then were we subjected to such a heavy fire from the lorries?… How come that they are American-made trucks?…

Besides, I actually saw men running in brown uniforms! Sweat breaks out at every pore and a stupefying sense of panic overcomes me.

It is already fairly dark when we land at Pawlowgrad. None of us utters a word. Every one is preoccupied with the same thought. Was it a German column? The uncertainty chokes us. I cannot find out by telephone from any Luftwaffe or Army unit what column it could have been. Towards midnight some soldiers arrive. My operational officer wakes me out of an exceptionally restless sleep, he tells me it is some thing important. Our comrades of the army wish to thank us for helping them to make their escape today. They tell us that their lorries were overtaken by a Russian column. They just managed to put on a spurt of a few hundred yards in order to find cover from the Russian fire in the ditches at the side of the road. It was at this moment that we appeared on the scene and shot up Ivan. Our chaps took immediate advantage of the situation and sprinted on for another two hundred yards. This is a load off my mind, and I share the elation of my brothers in arms.

A short time after this incident we are at Dnjepropetrowsk. Our station is the airfield on the east bank of the Dnieper, it is a long way to our billets in the centre of the town. For a Russian city the place makes a good impression, like Charkow. Soviet bombers or ground attack aircraft make almost daily raids on the bridge over the Dnieper in the middle of the city. The Reds hope by destroying it to cut off the line of retreat for the German troops and material, and to make it impossible to bring up supplies and reserves to this army group. Up to now we have not seen them have any success in their attacks on the bridge. Perhaps it is not big enough. The civilians are exultant. As soon as the Soviet raiders have gone they rush down to the Dnieper with buckets because they have noticed after a raid quantities of dead fish floating on the surface of the river. Certainly so much fish has not been eaten, in the town for many a long day. We fly alternatively N.E. and S. as the Soviets are driving forward from the Don in order to prevent us from establishing a line on the Dnieper and consolidating our positions there. At the same time as we move our base from Dnjepropetrowsk to Bolschaja Costromka, 80 miles further W., I lose Becker. He is transferred to the Wing staff. I fight his transfer for a long time as he belongs to our “family circle,” but it is useless and after a good deal of palaver the decision is final.

12. FURTHER WESTWARD

B
olschaja Costromka is a typical Russian village, with all the advantages and disadvantages these adjectives imply; for us Central Europeans mostly disadvantages. The village is scattered and mainly consists of mud houses, few buildings are of stone. One cannot speak of a layout of streets, but the village is criss-crossed by unpaved lanes at the most peculiar angles. In bad weather our vehicles sink axle-deep into the mud and it is impossible to get them out. The airfield lies on the northern edge of the village on the road to Apostolowo, which is generally unusable for motor traffic. Therefore our personnel have lost no time in adapting ourselves—to the use of horses and ox-drawn carts so as to retain our mobility for all contingencies. The air crews often have to ride to their aircraft on horseback; they then dismount on to the wing planes, for the runway itself is not much better. In the prevailing weather conditions it resembles a sea of mud broken by tiny islands, and if it were not for the broad tires of the Ju. 87 we should never become airborne. One can tell how close we are to the river Dnieper. Our billets are scattered all over the village; the squadron staff is quartered in and near the schoolhouse at the southern end of it. We have a common room, a kind of “officers’ mess,” in the so-called H.Q. building.

The square in front of this building is frequently under water and when it freezes, as it sometimes does, we play ice hockey in front of the house. Ebersbach and Fickel never miss the chance of a game. Recently however both of them have become rather skeptical as a result of the many bruises on their shins. In the worst weather the ice hockey goal posts are occasionally erected indoors, only the shortening of the field always makes it even more uncomfortable for the goal-keepers. The furniture cannot possibly suffer any damage because there isn’t any.

The Russians are dumbfounded by the many little things our soldiers carry on their person. They think the snapshots of our homes, our rooms, our girls, are propaganda. It takes a very long time to convince them that they are genuine, that all Germans are not cannibals. They presently even doubt the truth of the indoctrinated catchword:
Germanski nix Kultura
. In a few days time, here as elsewhere, the Russians come and ask if they may be allowed to hang up again their icons and their crucifixes. Previously under the Soviet regime they have had to keep them hidden away because of the disapproval of a son, a daughter, or a commissar. That we raise no objection to their dis playing them evidently impresses them. If you tell them that there are any amount of crucifixes and religious pictures to be seen in our country they can hardly believe it. Hastily they re-erect their holy niches and repeatedly assure us of their hope that this permission will not be revoked. They live in terror of their commissars, who keep the village under surveillance and spy on its inhabitants. This office is often undertaken by the village schoolmaster.

At the moment we are having a muddy spell and consequent difficulties in getting up supplies, even our rations. When flying low over the Dnieper I have often seen both our own and the Russian ground troops tossing hand-grenades into the water and by this means catching fish. We are at war, the Dnieper is a battle zone, every possibility of feeding the troops must be exploited. So one day I decide to try my luck with a little hundred pound bomb. Gosler, our Q.M., is sent out ahead with a small fatigue party to the Dnieper.

I show him on the map beforehand the exact stretch of the river where I intend to drop my bomb inshore. After waiting until I have identified our chaps I drop my missile from between sixty and ninety feet. It falls into the river very near to the bank and explodes after a short delay. The anglers down below must have been a bit scared by the explosion, for they all suddenly fall flat on their stomachs. A few smart alecks who are already out in midstream in an ancient boat, so as to be quick off the mark in picking up the fish, are almost capsized by the wave caused by the explosion and the resultant fountain of water. From above I can see the white bellies of the dead fish floating on the surface. The soldiers join in the scramble to haul the lot in as quickly as possible. The native fishermen come out from their hiding places and also pull into the bank as many fish as they can. The lorry with the fishing party returns from the Dnieper a few hours after me; they bring back with them several hundredweight of fish. Among the catch are some monster specimens weighing 60 to 80 pounds; mostly sturgeon and a kind of river carp. For ten days we have an orgy of fish and find this an excellent diet. Particularly the sturgeon, smoked or boiled, tastes delicious; even the huge carp have no slimy taste at all. A couple of weeks later a fresh fishing operation is carried out with equal success.

Our almost daily sorties take us in the most different directions. To the east and the southeast the Soviets are continuously battering against our bridgehead at Nikopol, chiefly from the Melitopol area. The names of the key points on the map are many of them German: Heidelberg, Gruntal, Gustavfeld. They are the homes of German settlers whose forebears colonized this district centuries ago. Further north the front runs eastward along the other bank of the Dnieper beyond Zaporoschje and after crossing the river, into the Krementschuk sector. Dnjepropetrovsk lies behind the Russian lines. As so often, the Soviets exert pressure at different points and frequently succeed in making local penetrations of our front. The situation is restored by counter-attacks, generally by armored divisions. The industrial town of Kriwoi-Rog, which is in the front zone to our north, has a concrete runway, but we are not able to use it.

One morning one of the Soviet thrusts reaches Kriwoi-Rog and the airfield. The brunt of the Soviet attack comes from the north from the direction of Piatichatki. Here Flg./Off. Mende is reported missing. Despite the most strenuous search we fail to find this good comrade swallowed up in the vastness of Russia. The situation here is also restored by a counterattack, and the front pushed back a few miles north. Supply traffic feeding this group is rolling forward uninterruptedly, so we attack the Dnieper bridges. Our target is then generally between Krementschuk and Dnjepropetrovsk. One morning, because of a fresh advance by the Russians pressing forward from the north, I have to go out in bad weather. My mission is to obtain an overall picture of the enemy dispositions and to assess the chances under prevailing met. conditions of attacking with a larger formation. Before taking off I am told that a certain village in the battle area is still held by our troops, but that they are being very hard pressed and urgently need relief. Operational contact is to be made with the unit in question and an operations officer is on the spot.

With low cloud cover we fly in threes into the target area, and presently I hear the voice of an operations officer I know; at all events I hope he is the one I have been told to contact and not another. I should mention that every one wants our support for his own division. We always have to insist on being given the call sign of the unit. The demands on us are so heavy that to satisfy them all we should need twenty times as many men and aircraft. Judging by the voice it is once again the footballer Epp speaking from the ground, but without waiting for his message I have already made out strong enemy concentrations 1 ½ to 2 miles ahead. I am still flying over our lines and banking round when I observe the flash of many flak batteries. I cannot see the shell bursts up in the air because they are hidden in the clouds, but now something hits the cockpit and the engine. I have flak splinters in my face and in my hands. The engine is likely to stop at any minute. It putters for another couple of minutes and then conks out. During this interval I discover a meadow west of the village. I feel sure that I have not yet been spotted by the Russians. I bring off a smooth landing on this meadow. Quickly Fickel brings his aircraft down beside me. We have no idea how long this area will remain in our possession; therefore Henschel and I take out the most essential things, our weapons, clock and parachutes and climb into Fickel’s machine. The third in the section has already flown home and reported the incident. Not long afterwards we, too, make a safe landing at Costromka. In these days Flg./Off. Fritsche also has a stroke of luck. After being hit by fighters S.E. of Zaparoschje, near Heidelberg, he bails out without mishap, although in the act of jumping he smashes something on the empennage. This grand flight leader and Knight of the Iron Cross is back in operations after a short convalescence.