Traveling east-northeast into Germany, our train passed through the hometowns of many of the troops in Hamburg and Lubeck without stopping. During the 30-hour trip, only brief halts were made to change the locomotives before the journey continued. After traveling roughly 625 miles from Verviers, we finally disembarked at the city of Elbing in East Prussia.
From there, our division immediately set out on the first of two night marches. When dawn broke, we halted in the woods beside the road for a meal of cold rations. Hidden from any air surveillance by the trees above us, we rested on our canvas bedrolls in the warmth of the day before returning to the march as darkness fell.
On reaching Heiligenbeil about 25 miles northeast of Elbing at the end of April, we took up our quarters in barracks. During the next six weeks, our training exercises intensified, which only increased speculation regarding our mission.
The majority of those around me continued to anticipate that we were going to be part of a military operation somewhere in Scandinavia. Most of us found it very difficult to imagine that Germany would attack Russia. The Russo-German Nonaggression Pact signed in August 1939 probably influenced our mindset, but it was also simply the scale of the Soviet Union that tended to make the prospect of invasion difficult to conceive.
By this time, war news had grown to be routine and received scant attention. The Afrika Korps’ arrival in North Africa to assist the Italians in early 1941 as well as Germany’s occupation of Yugoslavia and Greece later that spring elicited only limited interest among those around me. Though I personally attempted to follow the German air assault on Crete at the end of May, such distant developments seemed to be of little direct consequence to us.
On June 8, our division departed on a further series of night marches to another undisclosed destination. The journey ended three days later at Labiau, about 50 miles northeast of Heiligenbeil. Billeted at a concealed site in the woods, we continued to prepare for an unspecified large operation, but now did so covertly.
Positioned so close to Soviet-controlled territory in Lithuania, there was increasing suspicion that Russia might be the target after all, though a degree of uncertainty still prevailed. Isolated in the woods, we failed to see the massing of infantry, Panzers, and artillery around us that would be necessary for a major operation. With the port of Memel nearby, it also still appeared possible that we might receive orders to embark on ship for a voyage across the Baltic Sea for some type of mission in support of Germany’s ally, Finland. As far as the timing of any potential operation, we remained completely in the dark.
Just after my twenty-first birthday, on June 17, orders came down to us that the invasion of Russia was at hand. Almost immediately after receiving the directive to prepare for the attack, we set out from Labiau on a long but rapid march to another forested bivouac area in the northeastern corner of East Prussia at Heydekrug, a little north of Tilsit. This would place us less than 10 miles from Russian-controlled territory in Lithuania, which the Soviet Red Army had occupied just a year earlier.
Perhaps surprisingly, there was no real discussion or debate over this momentous news among the troops around me. Instead, there was almost a sense of relief that our weeks of waiting and uncertainty were over. We now had our orders and we immediately focused on preparing for war.
It is also true that, as young men, we possessed little tendency to ponder matters deeply. That may indeed be an essential quality for a soldier. If you ordered a company of middle-aged soldiers into combat, you would probably have a problem getting them to fight without convincing them of the necessity of their action. It was not that we soldiers were unconcerned about what was going to happen, but we were conditioned to obey orders as soldiers in a fighting unit.
Though most of the men around me had little or no interest in politics, it was nonetheless apparent to all of us at the time that war between Germany and Russia would be of great historical significance. When German troops and the public back home learned of the invasion of the USSR, most reacted with a deep sense of uncertainty, very different from the mood prevailing at the start of the campaign in the West. The questions that circulated reflected these concerns. “Why is this attack occurring before we have defeated the British?” “Are we going to repeat the experience of Napoleon?” “What will happen next?”
Few Germans doubted our ultimate triumph, but many wondered about the duration of the struggle and the price of final victory. Almost no one questioned the morality of a crusade to destroy Soviet Bolshevism, but there were some like me who shared practical misgivings. Germany’s forces were already engaged all over Europe and it appeared to me that Hitler risked overextending our manpower and resources by undertaking such a colossal campaign in the East.
For the large majority of Germans, the war was never about the Nazi dream of conquering Lebensraum (living space) in the East for colonization by “the Aryan master race.” Like most other German soldiers, I was fighting for my Fatherland out of a sense of patriotic duty and the belief that Soviet Communism posed a grave threat to all of Europe and Western civilization. If we did not destroy the Communist menace, it would destroy us.
In eliminating this danger to Germany and Europe, we would also be liberating the Soviet peoples from their oppressive Communist masters. Though Nazi propaganda presented the Slavic population as Untermenschen (subhumans), none of the men around me embraced such extreme racial views. For us, the Slavs were not a biologically inferior race of human beings; they were simply the ignorant inhabitants of an uncivilized and backward country.
At the start of the invasion, Germany possessed a large army of veteran troops who maintained supreme confidence in their ability to overcome any enemy. In the wake of our string of earlier victories in Poland, the West, and the Balkans, we could not have been more assured of ourselves. A few lines from a letter I wrote to Anneliese later that summer expressed the personal optimism that I had come to feel: “It’s tough here and we fight, but we fight for a reason and I am confident we are going to win. I am positive about that.”
On Sunday, June 22, 1941, the pre-dawn silence was shattered by the roar of guns, as three million German troops commenced “Operation Barbarossa,” the invasion of the Soviet Union along an 1,800-mile front from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. The tremendous cascade of thunderous booms echoed around us as German artillery delivered a short but intense hurricane of shells against the Russian lines, producing flashes of light all across the eastern horizon.
As dawn broke, the dim sky above us was filled by waves of Luftwaffe Heinkel and Junkers bombers, Stuka dive bombers, and Messerschmitt fighters droning overhead on their way east. The appearance of this aerial strike force was quickly followed by the rumble of tank engines revving up, but the noise soon faded as the German Panzer units raced eastward. The shock of this combined Blitzkrieg (lightning war) routed the Red Army forces defending the border and sent them into a full retreat.
Late the following morning, the 58th Division received orders to advance as part of the second echelon of troops in the XXXIII Corps of the 18th Army. The 18th Army, 16th Army, and Fourth Panzer Group made up Army Group North, one of the three massive army groups—North, Center, and South—created by the Wehrmacht for the invasion.
As we crossed the frontier, no border defenses were visible, but we noticed an immediate difference in that roads were not as good, though a few were paved. The next evening, the 154th Regiment staged brief assaults against Soviet positions in the small Lithuanian towns of Pajuralis and Kvedama, located about 25 miles east of our jumping off point in Heydekrug. These short actions against what might have been border troops did not even require the support of our heavy weapons, and we were ready to press on the next morning.
Advancing about 15 miles a day, we reached Siauliai, about 60 miles northeast of Pajuralis, by June 28. Though the Panzer units were far ahead, the 58th Division’s rapid progress soon placed it in the lead among the infantry divisions of Army Group North. Despite occasional traffic jams, everything was moving swiftly east, boosting our confidence. In the midst of our success, there was growing optimism that we could defeat the Soviet Union by the coming winter or the following spring.
Our march pressed on through long summer days that lasted from an early dawn until a late dusk when our officers ordered a halt, typically establishing our encampment in a field beside the road. Following a filling meal, the entire company would seek sheltered positions in which to sleep, in case of a Red Army attack. If camped in a village, we might sleep behind a home, but never inside, knowing that any structure presented a potential target for enemy artillery.
Unless posted to guard duty, I would prop my head on my steel helmet and instantly fall asleep. Anywhere from two to four hours later, someone would wake us with a kick in the rear. Within half an hour, we would eat breakfast and resume our trek.
Battling both stifling heat and thick clouds of dust, we plodded countless miles. There were few breaks from our march, except for the occasional chance to hitch a lift on one of our company’s horse-drawn vehicles. After awhile, a kind of hypnosis would set in as you watched the steady rhythm of the man’s boots in front of you. Utterly exhausted, I sometimes fell into a quasi-sleepwalk. Placing one foot in front of the other in my state of semi-consciousness, I somehow managed to keep pace, waking only briefly whenever I stumbled into the body ahead of me.
During our march across the open, flat country of northern Lithuania, we encountered no further enemy resistance, but could hear the perpetual din of gunfire and explosions in the distance as well as witness terrible scenes of carnage close at hand. In drainage ditches and out in the fields that lined the road, hundreds of still warm, contorted bodies lay where they had fallen. In many instances, there were ten or fifteen corpses grouped together, sometimes including uniformed women. The enemy tanks we passed were wrecked hulks, often still belching an oily black smoke.
Most of the Red Army’s troops and tanks had been caught in the open by German aircraft as they attempted to retreat to the east. Exercising complete air superiority over the battlefield, the Luftwaffe made sure that no enemy unit could move safely. When a fighter aircraft let loose with its heavy-caliber machine guns, it would decimate unprotected targets over a wide area.
Such attacks were particularly devastating when our planes swept along roads crowded with Russian men and vehicles. Everything in the path of their bullets would be annihilated; even soldiers sheltering in ditches alongside the road were not safe. In these strafings, nearly everyone who was not killed outright would at least suffer wounds.
The Red Army tanks that had not been destroyed had been driven back by German armor. If our heavy weapons company encountered one, a well-aimed round from one of our 150-millimeter howitzers could incapacitate it by damaging its main gun or its treads with a high explosive round. Our heavy gun company’s primary assignment, however, was to provide fire support for our infantry against Soviet infantry. We lacked the armor-piercing shells designed to penetrate the thick armor of these vehicles and would rarely engage Soviet armor except in a crisis. The division had a variety of other means to cope with enemy tanks.
On our march northeast, we covered the roughly 70 miles from the Lithuanian city of Siauliai to the Latvian capital of Riga within a week. Upon entering the city on July 5, small crowds along the streets greeted us with shouts of “Befreier!” (Liberator!) and presented us with flowers or chocolate in gratitude for their rescue from the Russian occupation. While some of the population remained fearful and hid in their basements, the generally positive reception we received here and throughout the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia reinforced our conviction that our cause was just.
As our column briskly proceeded down the streets of the city, it was easy for us to feel at home amidst architecture that differed little from that found in Riga’s Hanseatic counterparts along the German coast. Our swift pace was not even disrupted by the Red Army‘s demolition of the bridge over the Düna River along our route. Operating ahead of us, our Pioniers (engineers) had already constructed a pontoon bridge as a replacement. Within half a day, we had passed out of Riga and returned to the open countryside.
Just after our company had halted at a Latvian village late the next afternoon, a group of us spotted perhaps a dozen Russians scurrying through a valley about half a mile away. Apparently, they had been caught behind our lines by the speed of our advance and were attempting to escape eastward. A number of soldiers around me immediately began pouring rifle fire on the men from our vantage point above them. A couple of the enemy troops may have been hit, but most of the group scattered into the woods behind them.
This incident represented our first encounter with the enemy since the initial skirmishes near the border, causing some of us to wonder whether the Russian campaign would ever involve much more than long marches in pursuit of a retreating foe. The following weeks, however, would provide a much clearer perspective on the struggle we faced.
On July 7, we reached the Latvian city of Rauna, located about 50 miles east of Riga. At Rauna our division encountered our first real fighting with the Red Army since crossing the frontier. Our company deployed its heavy weapons in support of our regimental infantry, but the fighting quickly ended as the Soviet troops retreated.
Since our Panzer formations had already outflanked the enemy’s defenses, we were facing only rearguard forces protecting the Red Army’s retreat. The coming days would see frequent episodes of this type of skirmishing, but they produced no more than short delays in our advance.
A couple of days later, our company bivouacked among the homes of a village located along the road. Aware that any village presented an inviting target for Soviet artillery, I chose to sleep in a shallow hole in the ground a short distance away.
In the middle of the night, I came awake to the sound of voices, but the barely audible fragments of conversation that reached me made it hard to determine whether the speakers were German or Russian. Peering through the pitch blackness in that direction, my eyes could only make out the movement of shadows, though they were only perhaps ten feet away.
Straining my ears, I became increasingly certain that the speakers were not using German. While it could have been a night attack against us, my intuition told me that this was probably another small band of Red Army troops attempting to reach their own lines after becoming separated from the main body of forces. My first thought was that they had somehow succeeded in eluding our sentries, but then I realized that it was equally possible they may have been as ignorant of our presence as we were of theirs.
Unsure whether the men represented a threat to our company, I anxiously debated what to do. Firing my rifle or tossing a hand grenade might kill a few of the enemy, but my alarmed comrades would probably be mowed down by the enemy as they ran toward the noise. Weighing the risks, I concluded that it was better to remain quiet and allow the Russians to pass through our position. To my great relief, the shadowy figures moved on without incident.
Covering about 100 miles from Rauna in less than a week, our division entered the territory of Russia itself. On July 12 we reached Pskov on the southern tip of Lake Peipus, where we caught up with the Panzer divisions that were awaiting infantry support before renewing their advance toward Leningrad.
Turning north, we would now operate on the far left flank of Army Group North, with the 1st Infantry Division on our right and the eastern shore of the lake on our left. As we moved forward across the flat, lightly wooded terrain near its shores, Lake Peipus itself remained just beyond our field of vision a couple of miles distant.
In our advance northward, we began to be increasingly hindered by both the worsening roads and intensifying resistance from Soviet rearguards. Our advance was also complicated by maps showing main roads and highways that simply did not exist. Beyond problems with a lack of accuracy, there were also few maps to go around. While a company commander was lucky to obtain local maps, the ordinary foot soldier, of course, had little idea where he was or what significance a particular location held in the wider struggle.
Lacking radios, the only information we received came in twice weekly newssheets issued by the 58th Division headquarters. Excerpts of speeches by Hitler and Göbbels filled most of the space, but there would also be brief reports about battles and advances on the Eastern Front as well as news about the fighting in North Africa and the Atlantic. Despite featuring a great deal of propaganda and information that was heavily censored, these newspapers offered us at least a general sense of what was happening elsewhere.
Around this time I developed a high fever that left me feeling weak and exhausted. When the march temporarily halted, I entered a nearby abandoned home. Finding a bed, I collapsed into a deep sleep lasting six or seven hours. Feeling rejuvenated, I rejoined my company a short distance away. Since we were usually only able to catch short—and frequently interrupted—naps when we were on the march, my long slumber in a bed was a rare luxury.
Covering the 40 miles from Pskov in five days, the 58th Division reached the small city of Gdov on the northeastern shore of Lake Peipus on July 17. There was only light enemy opposition as we entered, but we now faced supply problems. The difficulty of transporting supplies from the south on the poor road network forced our division to instead ship supplies across Lake Peipus.
Still lacking adequate food, our division was able to put a Soviet flour mill back into operation, which helped to feed both German troops and the local civilian population. Because the retreating Red Army forces had contaminated the abandoned stores of grain with oil, the bread possessed an unpleasant taste that was barely hidden by the salt we mixed into it.
On July 19, our division renewed its advance northward and two days later reached the town of Niso about fifteen miles northeast of Gdov. Our mission was now to seize the corridor between Lake Peipus and the Baltic Sea in an effort to block the retreat of the remaining Red Army forces still trapped to the west in the Baltic states.
For the first time since the start of the campaign, our efforts to advance confronted stiff enemy opposition as Russian troops and heavy artillery battled fiercely to hold open the passage to the east. Though the key road junction in the Estonian city of Narva was only 15 miles north of us, it would be almost a month before we seized the city and sealed the escape route.
During the long marches into Russia, it was natural that my mind would dwell on my loved ones back home as well as my ex-girlfriend Anneliese, with whom I still maintained a monthly or bi-monthly correspondence. Since the end of our romantic involvement in January she had, however, already become engaged to marry the son of the proprietor of the florist shop where she had apprenticed in Lüneburg.
With the passage of time, I gradually came to realize that I had overreacted to Anneliese’s desire for us to enter a more committed relationship. It also became clear to me that my affection for her ran much deeper than I had previously acknowledged. Her engagement to the florist’s son made it improper for me to convey these feelings and pursue her openly, but I believed there was still hope that Anneliese would come back to me. I intended to see her again on my next furlough in Germany.
Separated from home, the bond of comradeship that I shared with other enlisted men in my company had grown deeper, even though I continued to feel myself to be naturally more of a leader than a comrade. For me, camaraderie in the army was distinct from friendship in civilian life.
In war, relationships form out of practical necessity among enlisted men forced together by circumstances, especially in the regular infantry. Camaraderie at the front reflects the soldier’s practical need to depend on those around him for mutual support and protection, while friendship in civilian life involves a more intimate bond precisely because it is a relationship created by choice. It is also only natural that someone is much more willing to form a close relationship when death is not a daily occurrence.
Perhaps because we realized that our deaths might occur at any moment in war, losing comrades affected most of us only in the short term. Within a couple of days, the pain of a comrade’s passing faded as other concerns took priority. By the end of a month, the lost comrade disappears from a soldier’s immediate thoughts altogether.
A soldier must focus on fighting. If the loss of a comrade caused some stress, the deaths of enemy troops caused almost none and became routine. They were battling us and would kill us with exactly the same lack of emotion. In combat, it is simply you or the enemy.
All the troops focused on fulfilling their duty, but there may have been some difference in outlook between those who had volunteered and those who had been drafted. Volunteers were naturally more gung-ho about their tasks, while the conscripts were by nature more cautious.
My enthusiasm matched that of the volunteers, though unlike some of these soldiers, I was never reckless with my life on the battlefield. My only real fear was being killed or captured. Otherwise, I accepted the austerity and all the hardships that we faced as a normal part of the life of a soldier in war.
Throughout the war, I would estimate that the casualty ratio remained roughly constant at four or five men wounded for every man killed. At the front, our company possessed trained medics for emergency field treatment, but they would typically just patch up the wounded for further treatment by regimental doctors. If the injury or illness proved more severe, the soldier would be sent back to a divisional field hospital or returned to Germany.
Our medical care and facilities were excellent and helped return about fifty percent of the wounded to duty within a week. Illness was not a major problem, though minor ailments like diarrhea were common. Sometimes our medical problems required specialized care that was not available at the front and thus called for creative solutions.
As my wisdom teeth came in, it was extremely uncomfortable for me to bite down hard on anything. Deciding to resolve the problem on my own, I went to the regimental doctor. In reply to my request for a scalpel, he asked, “What are you going to do?” I refused to tell him, but he gave me the scalpel anyway.
Finding a mirror, I cut open the flesh covering the incoming teeth to relieve the pressure. Though the absence of anything to numb the excruciating pain almost caused me to lose consciousness, my do-ityourself dentistry proved successful. In wartime conditions, a soldier learns to work with what he has and make the best of the situation.