WE BEGAN THE WAR AS SPECTATORS early on a bright May 10th morning. In the sky high above our bunkers, German pilots engaged their French and British opponents, putting on an aerial display that we observed with fascination. The chatter of their machine guns resonated to us on the ground as the planes chased and dodged each other in a relentless duel for position.
When an aircraft spun down from the sky in flames there was applause for the victor of the dogfight, as if we were at a sporting event, despite our inability to discern whether the loser had been the enemy. Within a short time, five or six planes came down, some as close as three or four miles from us. Only then did word reach us that some of the burning wrecks were German, quickly sobering our mood.
After moving up to the frontier with France, the 58th Division directed a small force to cross the Moselle River just south of Luxemburg. The detachment’s subsequent frontal assault against a short sector of France’s heavily fortified Maginot Line may have accomplished some larger strategic purpose, but it did so only at the cost of heavy casualties among the attackers. On May 18, our division was relieved by other German forces and moved back to the rear.
This operation reflects the contrast between our approach to military objectives in France and the conduct of our future operations. In France, we simply followed orders as we had been trained. If commanded to seize a position by a certain time, we typically would attack the objective in a head-on manner, suffering heavy casualties in the process.
Later in the war, our officers generally would not carry out operations until first determining the most efficient tactical approach and the type of support necessary to minimize infantry casualties. These types of deliberations occurred to some extent in France, but the old Prussian attitude of “Do it” prevailed more often.
Two days after pulling back toward Orscholz, our division crossed into Luxembourg strung out in a long procession of men, horses, and vehicles. The most common type of vehicle in our company was a squad supply wagon, pulled by two horses. Hauling our personal belongings such as clothes and food, these wagons allowed us to march with only our rifles and ammunition. Despite being freed of the backpacks, water can, gas mask, and other gear that we would have carried in the field, long treks on foot were still exhausting.
To get off our feet, most of us managed to grab a temporary seat on a supply wagon or somewhere on a Protze. This was a combination of two separate two-wheeled carriages, one which carried ammunition and one on which the gun crew rode, with the howitzer towed behind. While a Protze with the 75-millimeter howitzer required four horses, a Protze with the far heavier 150-millimeter howitzer needed a complement of six horses.
As was the privilege of every company commander, Rittmeister Reincke rode a horse that had its own designated handler, but most handlers were responsible for the care of four or five horses. This added up to a substantial amount of manpower given the number of horses involved.
In order to obtain an adequate number of horses in the period leading up to the war, the Wehrmacht requisitioned them from farms all over Germany, with some farms having to surrender up to half their stock. Because the requisition was supposedly a temporary measure that would only last for the duration of what was expected to be a short conflict, farmers received no compensation. Not surprisingly, the Wehrmacht ceased such unpopular measures as soon as it could obtain horses from conquered territories.
Our rapid march through Luxemburg’s immaculate towns and villages soon took us into southern Belgium, allowing us to pass well north of the Maginot Line. Despite signs of much prior activity on the roads, we were unaware that only a few days earlier German Panzer divisions had broken through the French defenses in this same area.
These armored formations were now approaching the English Channel far to the west, completely undermining the French and British position. The French campaign had already been won in a strategic sense, but there was still another month of fighting ahead.
At the end of an 80-mile march over five days, the 209th and 220th Regiments of our division entered France on May 23, taking up a position on the frontline about 10 miles southeast of the city of Sedan. Replacing other German units, these regiments spread out in the four-mile-wide area between the French towns of Carignan and Mouzon. Meanwhile, the 154th Regiment was temporarily held behind as a reserve force on the north side of the Meuse River at Arlon in Belgium, until we could be relieved by other German forces.
Once our regiment reached the front, I learned how bitter the initial fighting had been. Advancing into action, our division had confronted ferocious resistance from a French-Algerian division from North Africa. In what proved the 58th’s toughest combat of the campaign, these Algerian troops were firing down at our infantry from concealed positions up in the trees. To make progress, our infantry had to deploy snipers and spray machine-gun fire into the trees. In some cases, they even used flamethrowers to burn the Algerians out.
During these types of battles, the front often became fluid, intermingling our troops with the enemy’s forces. In such circumstances, a regiment’s heavy gun company could not safely employ the fire support of its howitzers. Instead, the infantry would have to rely on the division’s long-range artillery to hammer the French rear areas in order to prevent enemy reinforcements from reaching the front.
By May 25 our regiment had marched the 45 miles from Arlon, reaching the division’s new frontline in the French town of Beaumonten-Argonne. That afternoon, I received orders from Staff Sergeant Ehlert to carry a message on foot to one of our units posted on the front. My objective was the small village of Pouilly-sur-Meuse, situated in a valley on the banks of the Meuse River about three miles to the west of Beaumont-en-Argonne.
There was no hesitation or deliberation on my part; an order was simply obeyed without question. Generally more gung-ho than most of the other members of my platoon, I was anxious to prove myself in combat, though my enthusiasm was tempered by a certain apprehension since I did not know what to expect.
The road to the village ran down a hill bereft of any tree cover, leaving me fully exposed to enemy observation and artillery fire. As I proceeded forward down the slope, there was no one else in sight. Spotting my movement, French artillery almost immediately opened up. Hearing the first round streaking toward the hill, I lunged into a drainage ditch beside the road just before the shell exploded about 100 yards ahead of me.
Later, I would learn how to interpret the sound of a shell’s whistle through the air to determine its proximity and actual threat. In Russia, I would have said, “One hundred yards away, let them shoot.” In my first encounter with enemy shellfire, however, everything sounded dangerously close.
Shells continued to impact to the right and left of me, with the closest landing perhaps 50 yards away. Each time I heard the whistle of another incoming round, I would jump back down into the drainage ditch that ran beside the road. If all remained quiet for a minute, I would leap to my feet and make a crouched run until I heard the sound of the next shell. Repeating this process more than a dozen times, it took me about an hour and a half to advance perhaps a mile.
At dusk, I finally arrived at our forward position in Pouilly-sur-Meuse and delivered my message to the officer in charge. While no longer out in the open, the village afforded little protection from the French artillery, which was slamming in a merciless barrage of five or six heavy shells a minute.
That night, I took shelter in the large wine cellar of a fieldstone house, huddled with 20 or 30 soldiers from another unit. The violent shaking of the earth was almost constant as round after round crashed into Pouilly. With a steady rain of dust from the ceiling in the pitch-black darkness, it was hard not to ponder the consequences if the house received a direct hit.
When the artillery fire ceased toward daybreak, I departed the ruined village by the previous day’s route before it became fully light. With no one targeting me on my climb back up the hill toward my unit in Beaumont-en-Argonne, the return trip was far more relaxed. Happening across a fully intact 75-millimeter French artillery round that had failed to detonate because it lacked its explosive charge, I decided to retain it as a souvenir of my baptism of fire and lugged the heavy shell back under my arm.
For my performance in this mission and a series of other assignments, I would subsequently receive the Iron Cross Second Class for bravery on December 10, 1941. Yet, I already felt that I had achieved something greater. If combat can make a man out of a boy in a day, my experience on the hill and in the cellar had made me grow up fast, even if it was only a prelude to what I would endure in the coming years.
The next day, on May 27, the 209th and 220th Regiments made an assault through a wooded area in an attempt to seize the village of Inor, located another mile or so beyond Pouilly-sur-Meuse. With Inor still in French hands at the end of three days of bitter fighting, the 71st Infantry Division relieved our exhausted troops in the eastern portion of the 58th Division’s sector.
Meanwhile, following the evacuation of British and French forces in the north from Dunkirk to England in late May and early June, the entire German Army was reorienting itself toward the south to attack the remaining French forces. On June 5, Germany began the “Battle of France” with a massive offensive. Four days later, our 154th Regiment staged an attack to seize control of the forest at Bois de la Vache (Wood of the Cow), which bounded the main road to the southeast about a mile from Beaumont-en-Argonne.
As we began our advance south, the French artillery again began to fire on us—but this time they were using gas shells. Having trained for just such an eventuality, we hurriedly yanked on our gas masks. Much to our amazement, the shells turned out to be duds. A subsequent examination of these rounds revealed that they had been manufactured by the German company Krupp in 1918 and delivered to the French as war reparations.
Our assault on the Bois de la Vache met further fierce resistance from the North African division and quickly broke down, forcing us to pull back with heavy losses. However, larger developments in the Battle of France soon forced the enemy troops to our front to join in the general French retreat to the south.
By June 11, the way was open for the renewal of our advance.
Now the campaign in France progressed more and more rapidly. Our troops and horse-drawn vehicles were constantly on the move as the French steadily retreated before us. During the advance southward it only proved necessary for our infantry and howitzers to deploy into combat formation about three or four times.
Most of these actions turned out to be brief skirmishes lasting less than an hour. They typically began with a sudden barrage from French artillery that forced our infantry to spread out and seek cover. If our infantry encountered significant defensive positions such as entrenched enemy infantry or a French bunker, the regiment would request supporting fire from our heavy weapons company.
The 13th Company would then station our howitzers and ammunition as far forward as possible without coming under fire, generally within a half-mile of the first line. In most cases, our 75-millimeter howitzers were capable of dealing with any problems that arose and the 150-millimeter guns would not be brought into action.
Unless the resistance from the enemy appeared to require sustained support from the heavy guns, the ammunition would not even be unloaded from its carriage. Meanwhile, the horses and the Protzen would retreat to the Tross some miles further back, but remain ready to retrieve the howitzer and ammunition on short notice.
Except when this deployment was very brief, my communications platoon would string the telephone lines between the forward observer at the front and the company’s gun positions, company headquarters, and regimental headquarters in the rear. We also had to maintain the integrity of these lines, which were highly vulnerable to enemy artillery fire.
Due to reports of poisoned wells, we were informed that we could not drink the local water. To quench our thirst, we began hunting for wine in the cellars of homes. At the end of a short search, several soldiers in my communications platoon “liberated” a wooden cask of wine and hauled it outside. Once the heavy barrel had been hoisted up on the rear of a still moving Protze, someone asked aloud, “Now how are we going to get the damned thing open?”
“I have an answer,” a soldier replied, and pulling out his Luger pistol, he fired a round into the cask. With red wine now spurting out through the bullet hole onto the road, dozens of us immediately began taking turns walking behind the barrel to catch the dark stream in our mouths as we continued to march.
Upon my arrival at a church in a small town a little farther south, I heard that two French snipers perched high in the steeple had picked off a number of our troops a few hours earlier. Following the capture of the two French soldiers, many of our troops wanted retribution for the deaths they had caused among our men. As punishment, an officer in our regiment ordered that the snipers be forced to spend a couple of hours kneeling on the concrete steps in front of the church’s altar before being led back to one of our prisoner of war camps.
On June 16, we entered Dun-sur-Meuse about 15 miles south of Beaumont-en-Argonne. The following day, my twentieth birthday, the 58th Infantry Division reached Verdun, a full 20 miles farther south. Up on a hill, a large cemetery from the largest and bloodiest Franco-German battlefield reminded us of the catastrophic cost our fathers had paid in the First World War. Whatever the historical parallels, there could not have been a more stark contrast with the relative ease of our advance after only a month of combat.
The next day, we accomplished another 20-mile march and entered St. Mihiel, where there were more small skirmishes. This progress was achieved despite the increasing numbers of French civilians who jammed the roads to the south as they attempted to flee ahead of our advance.
Forced to the side of the road to permit our passage, the mostly women and children refugees lingered among their horse-driven wagons and cars, crammed with their household possessions. From their despondent faces and blank stares, it was clear that their spirit was crushed. It was impossible to regard such a heartrending scene and not feel pity.
After St. Mihiel, we made our fastest advance to date, covering the 30 miles to Toul in a single day. Finding a position on a ridge overlooking the city, I looked down on Fort St. Michel where a number of French troops were making a stand. Our 150-millimeter and 75-millimeter howitzers soon arrived and went into action with the division’s heavy artillery to pound these fortifications.
In these circumstances, the fire support mission for our heavy guns and the artillery was to prevent the enemy from offering effective resistance or to force them to retreat. If our infantry could move forward under our suppressing fire, it was not necessary to obliterate the target. At the end of a 20-minute barrage, our troops were able to take control of the fort as the French inside either pulled back or surrendered.
Once Toul was occupied, we halted our march. On June 22, word began to filter among us that the French government, realizing that further resistance was futile, had agreed to sign a Waffenstillstand (Armistice) to come into effect on June 25. Despite accomplishing in six weeks what our fathers had failed to achieve in four years of fighting, there was momentary jubilation but no real celebration. If this was war, it was a lot easier than we had imagined.
After a brief stay on the outskirts of Toul, we traveled a short distance to the neighboring Champagne region, where we gladly seized the opportunity to relax in relative luxury for a few days. Since the owners of the abandoned home in which several of us were quartered had obligingly stocked their cellar with a couple of hundred bottles of the region’s dry sparkling wine, we naturally swigged down all we could handle. Indeed, there was so much of the stuff that my comrades and I even used it to brush our teeth and spray clean the floors of the rooms.
Back in Germany, the victory made Hitler and the Nazis more popular than they would ever be again. While most citizens at home probably attributed the rapid defeat of the French army to the superior quality of German officers and troops, I believed that our success resulted at least as much from the failings of the French military leadership and the lack of will to fight on the part of the French soldiers.
The national stereotyping that portrays the French as more focused on enjoying life and the Germans as more task-oriented seemed to have been borne out on the battlefield. The French troops appeared to have low morale and a higher concern for saving their own skins than for winning the war.
In contrast, the German soldiers around me were highly motivated and determined to complete the designated mission. In a tough fight, a French soldier’s mentality was, “Things look bad, let’s get the hell out of here.” In the same situation, the German soldier would say, “Let’s fight that son of a bitch and win this thing!”
Still, the 58th Infantry Division had not escaped losses. The fighting had killed 23 officers, 120 NCOs, and 533 other enlisted personnel, most of whom had served in the infantry companies that always bore the brunt of the combat. Finishing the mission that the army had assigned us, our main wish now was to return home.
Following our victory over France, most Germans believed that Great Britain would soon be forced to accede to a negotiated peace settlement. At the same time, we soldiers knew that as long as the British still confronted us, the war was not yet over. Some of us expected that an invasion of England might be necessary, but no one imagined that a year later we would be fighting in Russia.
In early July, we departed the Champagne region, heading north to occupation duty in Belgium. At one point, our route of march took us behind part of the Maginot Line, which now seemed a symbol of all that had gone wrong for France.
Covering roughly 200 miles in 10 days, the 58th Division finally arrived in the town of Tongeren, located in the Flemish region of Belgium about 15 miles north of Liege. Our posting to Tongeren proved to be very brief. At the end of July, we made a 25-mile march to the town of Verviers in the French-speaking region of Belgium.
In Verviers our regiment was billeted in rooms and entire homes requisitioned by the army in a little village on the southern outskirts of the town. Sleeping three or four to a room, we bunked down on makeshift beds on the floor. Because I spoke a little French, I was assigned to serve as our company’s translator to deal with various problems that arose with the local civilians, though fortunately there were no major difficulties.
With light responsibilities in Belgium, our company commander soon began issuing leaves from duty. His selections were based on the recommendations of Senior Sgt. Jüchter, who kept track of which soldiers were due a furlough based on the length of time since their last leave. On average, a furlough lasting three weeks would be granted about once a year.
Obtaining my first leave since Lüneburg on August 10, I caught the train from Verviers, not forgetting to stow the souvenir shell from my baptism of fire in my luggage. Upon my arrival in Püggen, I received a warm welcome from my family, who treated me like I was a military hero.
Feeling more like I was on vacation than on a furlough, it was easy for me to reenter the routines of life on the farm. My brief experience in combat during the French campaign left me feeling like a man, but had changed me relatively little. In the middle of my leave, I made the 100-mile train journey to Hamburg to visit Anneliese for a few days. After over half a year apart, we decided to wait to meet her family and instead spend our short time together seeing the city.
Following my return to Verviers from Püggen on August 30, I settled into the relaxed routine of occupation duty. On a typical day, we spent about four hours drilling in order to maintain and sharpen our combat skills. The earlier training had prepared us well for the rigors of combat and we did not want to lose our edge. Our regiment also organized a couple of large-scale sporting competitions for the troops. Running in a tight 400-meter race, I hurled my body across the finish line at the last second, just barely pulling out a win over my opponents.
On weekends, there were frequent opportunities for us to take the 15- or 20-minute tram ride into the downtown area from the village where we were based. Normally, the regiment allowed us to leave about noon and required us to return to our assigned quarters by nine o’clock. While encountering occasional hostility from the Belgian population, most civilians behaved in a correct manner, or at least treated us with indifference. We felt at ease as we shopped and roamed around the city.
Perhaps surprisingly, some of the local girls were very receptive to a German soldier in uniform and would flirt with us shamelessly. They were often willing to join us for coffee or a drink at one of Vervier’s sidewalk cafés or restaurants. While German troops ordinarily would enjoy the pleasure of female company for an afternoon or evening of innocent relaxation, a few of our soldiers developed more intimate relationships with Belgian women.
About this time, we received a small black, white and red cord to wear over our left shoulder, indicating that we were members of the 58th Infantry Division. Like other German divisions, the 58th’s conscripts and future replacements were drawn from a specific region, in our case almost exclusively from northern Germany and the region of Nidersachsen. Reflecting the importance of horse farms in the traditions and economy of the region, the 58th Division introduced two horse heads facing in opposite directions as our divisional insignia, which we sewed on the left shoulder of our uniforms. This common regional background enhanced our sense of unit pride and camaraderie.
A couple of months after our arrival in Belgium, we received a lecture from our company commander, Rittmeister Reincke. Since he had English relatives, he may somehow have learned that the British were anticipating a cross-Channel invasion and wanted to prepare us psychologically. As we stood at attention, he warned us, “Boys, what you have seen in France is nothing. In the coming fight, you will be happy to dig yourself into a foxhole as fast as you can. It will be a lot tougher than what you experienced so far.”
As a combat veteran of the First World War, Reincke knew from firsthand experience how much worse war could be. We were sorry to lose this respected officer soon afterward when he was promoted to take over the 2nd Battalion of the 154th Regiment. He was replaced by First Lt. Von Kempski, who had previously commanded one of our company’s platoons.
During our time in Verviers, we tried to keep up with the news, but found it difficult to closely follow the course of the Battle of Britain that was then being fought by the Luftwaffe against the Royal Air Force. Though we knew nothing about it at the time, our divisional staff scouted out training areas in Holland, preparing for a possible move to the area for an invasion of Britain. Selected elements of our division actually conducted specialized training on boats in Antwerp and Rotterdam, but our heavy weapons company did nothing in particular to prepare for an amphibious operation.
There was broad recognition that any such assault from the sea would be costly, yet most of the men around me favored making the invasion, believing that it was the only way to bring a true end to the war. We were unaware that plans for “Operation Sea Lion” called for the German 9th and 16th Armies to seize a stretch of coast in southeast England.
As part of the 16th Army, the 58th Division was slated to arrive in the third echelon of forces, landing in the area between Folkestone and New Romney about 70 miles southeast of the center of London. When we finally realized in April of 1941 that an invasion would not occur, some of us felt a sense of disappointment, wondering how Germany could ever achieve a final peace if Britain remained undefeated.
That fall, I met two sisters who were relatives of the Belgian family with whom I was billeted. They would try to speak German with me and I would practice my French with them. On perhaps 10 occasions, they invited me to visit their family’s home in town for a couple hours to exchange language lessons.
During these meetings we cracked jokes and laughed a lot, but it was harmless flirting rather than anything romantic. For me, it was simply a pleasant way to pass the time as well as to improve my French. Sometimes, it was easy to forget the recent fighting, but I never forgot that I was an enemy soldier in an occupying army.
Upon completing her three-year florist apprenticeship with honors at the end of September, Anneliese, meanwhile, had left Lüneburg and returned to Hamburg where she had found work at a flower shop in the main station. We agreed to see each other there on my way back to Verviers from Püggen at the end of my second furlough, which lasted from November 17 to December 12.
When the train reached the Hamburg station about noon that day, I headed over to the shop where Anneliese was working. Taking off her apron, she joined me for a stroll through the station and into the adjoining neighborhood. Reaching a quiet spot at the north side of the station, I presented her with an expensive bottle of perfume that I had purchased in Verviers. As she embraced me in thanks, the bottle slipped from her hand and shattered, filling the whole area with a powerful aroma. It did not seem like a promising omen.
Anneliese and I were still involved, but had never agreed to pursue an exclusive relationship. In fact, there was a very pretty girl from the Ruhr city of Duisburg who I had encountered fleetingly back in 1937 when she had been visiting her relatives in Püggen. Three years after this initial meeting, I decided to renew our acquaintance and somehow obtained her address.
After we had exchanged a couple of letters, the girl agreed to allow me to come visit her in the Ruhr on my way back to Belgium, unaware that I would be coming from my brief visit with Anneliese in Hamburg. Our subsequent evening together in Duisburg inclined the girl to favor a more serious relationship, though it made me realize that my attraction was only to her looks.
Less than a month later, I joined in a drinking session with Schütte, my comrade from boot camp, and a few other enlisted men in our quarters in Verviers. Growing increasingly inebriated, we began to complain about our difficulties with our girlfriends back home. When the suggestion was made that we should write letters dumping them, we all swore to one another we would do just that.
This drunken promise gave me the final push to break off my close relationship with Anneliese, something that I had already been considering. Composing my thoughts in a letter on January 10, I told her that I was not ready for the serious commitment that she sought. We were too young to get married, especially when it was uncertain whether I would even survive the war.
While there had been no further correspondence with the girl in Duisburg in the weeks since my visit, I still felt compelled to inform Anneliese that I had met someone else. Without going into detail, I said that the relationship was not serious, but that I did not wish to go behind her back and cheat on her. Even if I had no intention of seeing the girl in Duisburg again, it just seemed to me that Anneliese and I should both feel free to see whom we desired. Concluding my thoughts, I conveyed my sincere wish for us to remain friends and keep in touch. Much later, I learned that she cried for days when she received the letter.
Late in 1940, meanwhile, each regiment of our division had been ordered to surrender one of its three battalions to serve as an experienced nucleus for new divisions. Similar to the earlier pattern, the loss of these battalions was made up by freshly trained recruits. Clearly, the army was still undergoing an expansion in size, though none of us were aware of the ultimate purpose.
That spring, our division traveled 25 miles to the east for a week or two of intensive training at a sprawling facility beside the Belgian town of Elsenborn, just across the border from Germany. In bonechilling rain, we carried out battalion-sized military maneuvers in close coordination with Panzers and the Luftwaffe. While we in the communications platoon repeatedly practiced stringing telephone and telegraph lines from the front to the rear, our company’s gun crews drilled on the howitzers with live ammunition. By the end of the exercises, our skills were honed to a fine edge.
On April 21, 1941, our Vorkommando (advance team) left for the east. Two days later, our division was issued 24-hours notice to prepare to leave Belgium. Even if some of the staff had been involved in advanced planning for our transfer, organizing a move was a time-consuming task due to the number of horses and volume of equipment. The lack of more advance notice was inconvenient to planners, but was intended to keep our relocation as secret as possible.
Late in the afternoon of April 24, most of our division’s troops were ready to leave, though some elements would join us later. Boarding our trains in Verviers, we still lacked any information about our destination. Not even our company commander knew where we were headed. During our journey across Germany, everyone around me was wondering out loud, “Where the heck are we going?” “What will happen next?”
A funny thing about military life is the prevalence and power of rumors. The atmosphere was charged with excitement and anticipation as various theories raced around the train about our mission. Conjecture focused on a destination somewhere up north. Some predicted, “We are headed to Finland.” With equal confidence, other troops maintained, “We are going to Sweden.” Both rumors proved wrong.