Hans Boche My Story (8)
Our Commander, General, soon to be Field-Marshal, Erwin Rommel, did not sit still. The Italians had been surrendering in thousands after disastrous battles in Tunisia and Libya, and were in retreat. We had to get into action before they were completely finished. There were no trains in the desert so we had to wear out our Panzers on the coast road. We engaged the British forces at El Agheila and after a fight where my squadron were well blooded, we had them in retreat. They had the Cromwell and Valentine tanks which we had the measure of. We lost eight tanks, either disabled or on fire. Unfortunately two of our losses were from my squadron as we had been in the spearhead of our forces. In total we left fifty of their tanks destroyed. A very favourable rate of exchange and we would soon clear up the British at this rate. The losses from my own troops hit me very hard. Digging graves for German soldiers in the desert was awful. These dead men had their own parents and 'Lottes', and we were fighting over land which was no good to anyone. Nothing grew there, no one lived there, only a few dirty Arabs occasionally wandered across going from nowhere to nowhere. In the engagement we had employed rapid movement to outflank the enemy and enfilade their tanks with our cross fire. The enemy soon pulled back. Their tank guns were not particularly effective, even when they actually hit our Panzers, but they were supported by many field guns. It was these which did the damage to us. They used their own twenty-five pounders and some French 75's, whose rate of fire was phenomenal. After the battle they were able to pull back the guns, covered by their remaining tanks, hull down. We had won the field but for now we could go no further. We should have been supported by Italian tanks but for my part I never saw one actually on the battlefield. In any event they were no good at all. Tall unwieldy things with minimal armour and a popgun. There was no fault attaching to my crews that were lost. After the enfilade we were all dashing back along the left flank, stopping to fire every few hundred yards. At one halt the British gunners had obviously got the range and plastered us. One tank was hit twice and we could do nothing. The other was turned on its side by a near miss. The crew got out but the driver was hurt. He'd got it in the leg just as I had in Poland. I couldn't help wondering if he'd go to Berlin and meet Lotte. It seems quite incredible to write it but one year later, in February 1942 I was still fighting the British Eighth Army in the Desert. We fought the British all the way along the coast and by the end of 1941, had pushed them back out of Benghazi and Tobruk and virtually into Egypt by constant pressure. The superiority of our armour made all this possible until after we had taken Tobruk. The British then held their lines near Gazala, and it was here that we first saw some new tanks in the British lines. They were tall ugly looking things with two guns, a large bore howitzer type in a side sponson, for dealing with infantry and anti-tank guns, and a high velocity gun in the turret. The latter was of small bore and would not deal with anything much bigger than a motorbike. Our intelligence section identified them as American Grant tanks. This was evidence of the 'Lend Lease' supplies that we had heard about. I didn't understand that scheme at all. So far as I could see they were American tanks simply given to the British. The Americans were not in the war at all until about two months ago. Would they have given us tanks if we'd asked? I doubt it, they had been the Allies of the British in all but name and action during the whole war, whilst professing neutrality. Now at least, spurred by the Japanese attack on their fleet, they were genuinely in the war. There were many minefields in the desert now and progress was halted for a time. We were waiting for reinforcements, specifically more Panzers to replace those we had lost and some that were just worn out. As it stood we were simply not strong enough to break right through to Alexandria. Our new tanks did not come. I'm afraid most went to the bottom of the Meditteranean again. There were more British and Commonwealth ships in the Mediterranean now, and less Italian. In our skirmishes with the Grants we were still superior but not by much. They were very heavily armoured at the front but their guns were still inadequate. It did not come to a real reckoning though, as the British just sat there behind their minefields and artillery for weeks on end. The desert was too soft inland to outflank them and we all wondered what Rommel would do after his return from Germany where he now was enjoying a well deserved holiday. We were still very frustrated by the lack of new tanks. (only forty had arrived in the last five months) Conversely the British were not very aggressive, content to sit in their fortified lines for the time being. This was the fairly static position in the Desert in February 1942. As I have said it did not seem that I had been here for so long. I was lean and sunburned. An experienced officer in the Wehrmacht. Now I was a full Lieutenant (Oberleutnant), well out of the probationary period that pertains in the German Army. News regularly came from Germany. We were always hungry for it as we sat baking in the heat. We knew of course that our Armies had attacked Soviet Russia six months ago, in the middle of 1941. So much for the Russian non-aggression pact which they flagrantly breached. That must be where our new tanks were going. No doubt the British were pleased as it took the pressure off them, here and in the air across the German Sea.. We were initially a bit concerned as Russia was a big place, but as the news reports told us how easy it was proving to be, and how many Russian soldiers, whole armies, were captured, we were exultant and confident of the outcome. The previous agreement with Russia may have served a purpose but we could never relax with these arch-enemies, the Bolsheviks, powerful on our continent. The start of the conflict with Russia, which we called Operation Barbarossa was started by Communist duplicity. What happened before Barbarossa was disgraceful. Battalions of Russians had treacherously dressed in German uniforms and had attacked vital German radio installations in our (Polish) territory. Our Fuhrer's contingency plan came into operation and we had surged forward and driven them deeply back into Russia and were still advancing. Now was the time to cut the head off the Bolshevik snake once and for all. It was perhaps regrettable that we had not yet dealt the knockout blow to The British Isles and we only needed the supplies to finish the job in Africa. We now needed to concentrate on Russia. I understood that and we could hold this desert front easily enough. So it was at the end of February 1942, I , and six other tank Commanders were posted to report at once to the Eastern Front. A three engined Fokker transport plane lifted us, and some casualties, out of North Africa. There were not many Allied fighters in this area so we had a calm flight to Italy. We refuelled in Rome, Milan and Munich and finally arrived in Warsaw, which was a staging post for the Eastern Front. At least we were rid of all that damned sand, and flying back, we did not have to run the gauntlet of Cunninghams's British ships. It would no doubt be much easier to deal with the Russians and their crude equipment than the obdurate British in the Western Desert. This was confirmed by the troops I met at the transit camp in Warsaw. They told me that we had advanced as quickly as tanks could run. The Russian forces were absolutely pathetic. Armies of Slavs and Mongols were still surrendering to our forces. There can have been very few fighting men left in Russia by now. I hoped they would leave a few for me and I was impatient to get to the front as soon as possible. 'Front' is perhaps a misnomer, we just went forward as we pleased rounding up large gangs of poorly clad and armed Rusians as we went. They could hardly be called soldiers. Chapter Eight. Chicken Kiev. By the time I reached the Eastern Front we had encircled Leningrad in the North and it was about ready to fall as the population were starving. Army Group Centre were in sight of Moscow. In the South we were attacking Kharkov in readiness for going into the Don basin, towards Rostov-on-Don and then Stalingrad. I was to be part of the Southern Army. I changed my role now, and also, by the way, was promoted to Captain. Fine thing for me, I still had a sort of distaste for Officers and now was being promoted at a fast rate up the chain of command. At this rate I'd finish up a General. I was one of four Captains who commanded the mobile guns. We each had ten of them. These guns were a brand new development of our armament industry. Their correct name was Sturmgeschutze (we knew them as 'Stug's'). They were super 75mm guns on Panzer IV chassis. No turret and limited traverse and not for mobile tank battles, leave that to the Panzers. With the right tactics and in the right place they were invaluable and were the only thing we had which could stop the Russian T34 tanks, which had recently arrived, and were a very nasty shock as they were quite formidable. These Russian T34's looked pretty rough things with lumpy welds all over, but they were better than they looked. I think they were turning them out in hastily erected factories in the Ural mountains. We knew we had new tanks coming along which would be much better than these, but for the time being, and for the first time, we were very wary of them. On one occasion a T34 stood defiant against a squadron of Mark IV Panzers and their 50mm shells bounced off it. The T34's gun on the other hand was good enough to brew up our Panzers and we had to learn to adopt new tactics. This change of weapon superiority came very hard when we were used to having the toughest and hardest hitting tanks in the war. My new 'Stugs' were very closely allied to the infantry of the 'Das Reich' Division. The infantry wanted to be in close company with us, as the T34's couldn't get at them with a 'Stug' handy. I reached the front in March 1942 at Rzhev. As I have said my Division was part of Army Group Centre under General Von Bock. Our forces further North had just withdrawn a little from Moscow having been with a few miles of the capital. Unfortunately the winter was very bad and we would have to take Moscow when it eased a little. The weather was just as bad further south at Rzhev. I have never before experienced cold and frost like it. I had to make haystacks on top of my 'Stugs' to keep some frost off. The town of Rzhev was virtually destroyed so my men had very little good shelter. The population had almost all gone away, God knows where to. Our supplies came from Germany and I couldn't see what the few locals who did remain were getting to eat. Most of my troops had been with the campaign since the start of 'Barbarossa' and were hardened veterans. It was clear from the start that this, the major part of our war, was different. War is hard and horrible, men trying to kill each other is bound to be like that, but here it was conducted with absolute savagery. It had been different for me up to now. Beating the British and French had been a fair battle. In the desert it was a relatively civilised joust, civilians and prisoners and wounded all receiving as good treatment as the prevailing conditions allowed. In any event the Desert campaign was on a very small scale compared to this massive war in Russia. Eighty percent of our Armies were here, locked in a struggle with the Bolsheviks and the weather. Whole Russian armies had been taken prisoner, but the area behind us was so vast that many overtaken Russians still roamed free with Partisans, especially in the Pripet marshes. In front of us despite the depredations we had made in their numbers, there seemed ever more Russians opposing us. My first action with the 'Stugs' was to relieve the Demyansk pocket. Our Sixteenth Army had been surrounded there in early February 1942. In March, when the weather had improved a little, we advanced towards them and relieved them by the end of the month. We relied upon the Russkis attacking us in order to advance, strange though that may sound. The 'Stugs' had to stay still, they had a low profile, and dug in and camouflaged would wait for the T34's. When they came we could knock many out making it safe for our own armour. Our Panzers would then advance and we would move up behind them and take up new positions. We defended the infantry and the infantry defended us. Despite this we lost two 'Stugs' as we were digging them in one night. It was a wooded area, rare for this part of Russia, and six T34's had burst out of a wood and got behind my guns before they could turn. My 'Stug's' were quickly shot up and as each could carry over a hundred shells, the two that were hit went up with immense explosions. The Russian infantry formed a defensive position in the wood, with the T 34's at this point and it was going to be difficult to shift them. We had one 88mm located back from the 'Stug's'. It had the range to reach the wood but the T34's hidden just behind the first line of trees were constantly changing position. It was not possible to make an infantry advance until they were destroyed or driven off. We called for support from the Luftwaffe and the indefatigable Stukas came to our aid. I believe they were led by Rudel. They plastered the tanks as they could see them in the sparse wood from the air. They hit two and the rest were withdrawing when, for the first time for me anyway, Russian planes put in an appearance. None of my troops who had been in Russia for a year had seen this type before. We would have preferred not to see them now. There were three of them and they looked like Spitfires. I was told they were Lavochkin fighters. They were very fast and unfortunately two of our Stukas were shot down. We knew the Stuka was not capable of holding it's own with a modern fighter but we didn't know till now that Russia had any modern fighters. We knew that we also had a brand new plane coming. It would be twice as fast as even our own Messerschmidt fighters. The sooner the better, they would avenge the Stukas. The Stuka's had done enough despite their losses and we pushed on through and past this wood which we left behind as just another episode in this vast theatre of war. We left behind two Stuka Pilots, two 'Stug' crews, and eighteen infantry soldiers. My lost two Sturmgescuhtze 'Stugs' were soon replaced, production in Germany was at a high level, and we fought on and relieved the Demyansk Pocket. Back went the Russians again. In mid June we joined the advance towards Stalingrad, quickly took Rostov-On-Don and continued East. We would soon be in comfortable beds in the city named after the arrogant dictator of Russia. Though the population of Russia is not very advanced so far as civilisation is concerned, there are a lot of them. Perhaps the population of the various parts of Russia is altogether about 200 million. In the Germany of pre-war days I think there were about 50 million proper Germans. Fortunately war does not come down to numbers. The bigger they are the harder they fall and Russia was falling. The Bolsheviks fought us every inch of the way into their second city but by October 1942 we had taken over three quarters of Stalingrad. The cost had been high to us. Horrendous to the Russians. The frost and snow came early and this time it helped the remnants of the Soviet 62nd army which opposed us. Gott knows what the civilians went through. Many had fled the city but many were trapped. We saw them sometimes scuttling amongst the rubble, desperate for food. We became increasingly aware of an unexpected problem while were concentrating on finishing the job of taking the City. The problem was that more Russian troops were arriving to reinforce the defenders. We saw some of these new arrivals as casualties, they looked like Chinese, but were Mongolian I suppose. Whatever they were, they were fighting back hard and were encircling us. If I had been in charge instead of Von Paulus, I would have pulled back in strength and left their bloody ruined city to them for the time being. Had we done so and been reinforced in a resting situation in the Don Basin we could have walked through the place next spring. As it was the Russian strength continued to increase and though I kept an optimistic outlook in front of my troops, I could see the position deteriorating every day until it was too late to get out. We would have to be extricated by another German Army. In the meantime the fighting in the city was just as fierce as ever. The Russians had heavy casualties but it did not seem to worry them as they seemed able to infiltrate extra forces all the time. Every man we lost was not replaceable. I still had five serviceable 'Stugs' and the Luftwaffe were landing ammunition at the two airfields we held. There were no Soviet tanks in Stalingrad to oppose us, so we were reducing buildings to rubble where defenders were defying our advance. We were even reducing some rubble to smaller rubble, such was the ability of the Russians to make a strongpoint in piles of debris. Day by day this continued but we did not have it all our own way by any means. Though the Russkis had no tanks in the City they had plenty of their damned high velocity anti tank guns (PAK35). They were a scourge to us. We took our toll of them but they took their toll of us. They could generally get one shot off at us before we saw their position. If we survived that opening shell they had generally had it. Regrettably our vehicles did not always survive that first shot. Corner by corner and street by street this duel continued. If only we had more armoured vehicles coming through to replace our losses our advance would have continued, but there was no way new tanks or 'Stugs' could be brought in. Eventually we had only two 'Stugs' left in the whole Division. In this parlous state I commanded one of them personally. We were ordered to attack the Tractor Factory, half of which we held by us, and half was held by the Red Army, such was the close nature of the fighting. As we clattered down the rubble strewn streets, still some distance from our objective, the other remaining 'Stug' blew up in front of us in a tremendous explosion. Ambushed by anti-tank gunners, there was no hope for any of the crew. We could not pass it as it blocked the rubble strewn road, and our infantry was crouching behind my machine waiting for me to do something to retrieve the situation. We reversed slowly and I saw a Russian anti-tank gun poke its ugly barrel round the corner in front of me. As I have said, the 'Stug' was very slow to traverse. Too slow in this case and everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Our barrel came slowly round. I could see the fur hats of the Russians. A belch of flame from their gun and with a clang we lurched backwards and went down on one side. Our left track was broken. We could not traverse at all now. I ordered my crew out as bullets smacked against our armour. We tumbled out and I actually saw two of my men hit as they reached the ground. One was spun round by a bullet in the shoulder. He was dragged backwards by his mate who was then hit himself, I don't know where he was hit but he fell backwards. The infantry, on their bellies dragged them back to safety and I was isolated next to my crippled machine. I crouched down, aimed my Schmiesser machine pistol at the Russian anti tank gun, and fired the whole magazine. As I fumbled for another magazine, I was hit. All I felt was a hot sensation in my lower chest and looked down. Blood was already coming out of me. I still tried to reload my gun but felt myself getting weaker and weaker. I had the odd feeling that if I could only reload I would be alright and we would win the war! I fell forwards and still feebly tried to cock my Schmiesser. I then felt hands grab me and pull me onto my back and drag me behind the 'Stug' At this point I lost consciousness and next came to on the floor of a filthy hall with a plasma bottle above me. I was aware enough to thank heaven that our soldiers had dragged me to safety from a situation where all might have ended for me there and then. I was lightheaded and felt no pain at all. I guessed this was due to morphia, which all our medical orderlies carried. We still had a few trucks in the part of Stalingrad which we occupied, and after a few hours I was loaded onto one with four others. There were two other 'ambulance' trucks. We formed a small convoy and zig-zagged through the rubble strewn streets to one of our airfields. Fokker Trimotor transport planes (JU52) were still coming in and out with supplies and some few reinforcements. Wounded were taken back and I and forty others were crammed into one plane. This was well above the normal load for these planes and the airfield was already under artillery fire. We made a hazarous take-off and got away from that awful place. The Fokkers were operating from Rostov and, after landing there, we were transferred to a train and spent two agonising days getting back to Germany. I had been at the Russian front for nearly a year, now I had come back to Lotte with bullet holes in me. During the journey I never really emerged from the haze of pain killing drugs which were injected into me every day. I guessed I was in a bad state, but beyond a bloody pad over my abdomen, I knew nothing. In a strange way I didn't really want to know as I feared the worst. At the Hospital I knew I was in the best hands in the world. The confidence that gave me was very great. If all was to be well this is the only place that could do it. Lying in the filthy icon-plastered hall in Stalingrad I didn't give much for my chances. Here in the Berlin Hospital, with smart nurses, efficient surgeons, the best equipment and drugs, I gained optimism. It transpired that my spine was not damaged and thanks to expert surgery everything was repaired inside me. So far as I could understand I needed a good deal of stitching and patching of the intestines, but vital organs, like liver and kidneys were not damaged. After the operation, which took many hours, I woke up feeling very feeble. I was not allowed to eat for two weeks and everything in and out of me was carried by tubes. Proof of the insides starting to work again was the simple act of passing wind. I had always been a good 'farter' and after two weeks managed a feeble squeak. Everyone was very pleased with me just for 'farting'. I was going to get well again but I was now warned that my convalescence would be a long one. I felt very weak and fully believed that. Whatever the needs of the Reich at the present I had to concentrate on my own fight back to health. To cut a long story short, by the time we had lost the battle in Stalingrad, where our forces capitulated in February, and Von Paulus had been shamefully taken to Moscow, I was on my feet in the Hospital. The confidence of our Nation, shown by the people in the Hospital and all the country, was shaken to the core by the tragedy of Stalingrad. Where had the Russians got all their new soldiers from? I knew. We were allies of Japan and that is what defeated us at Stalingrad. What a paradox. The Japs and Russians had agreed not to fight each other in the Far East, so the Russian armies kept there for that eventuality were freed to come to Stalingrad. When we had won this war in Russia and if the Japanese were struggling against the Americans they could get on with it as far as I was concerned. I wouldn't help them for one. Many other wounded from the Russian Front were in the same hospital as I and we were all very dejected at the news of the surrender. Only we knew the savagery of the war out there. Only we knew what fate awaited our comrades. Prisoners of the Russians were not treated well, but I knew that when we took Russian prisoners I'm afraid their prospects were not much better. At this time there was optimistic news from Our Fuhrer, thank goodness. We had developed weapons well beyond the capability of any of our opponents. The Russians weapons were rudimentary, the British were committee bound and were on strike most of the time, as for the Americans, they could produce vast quantities but it was fairly inefficient stuff. One of our new weapons was ready. It was the unbeatable 'Tiger' tank. I saw one on display in Berlin. What I would have given to fight with one of these. In comparison our old Panzer Mark IV's were puny things. With equipment like this we would win this war, and I heard that we were even now regrouping in Russia under General Von Manstein, a brilliant soldier, to take the initiative again.
Go to part: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Copyright © 2000 Peter Perkins |