War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942 (30 page)

The solitary bomber returned and languidly circled the fortress while final aiming instructions were radioed to it. All attention focused on the Ostfort. Soldiers moving through the devastated wasteland of surrounding parkland and on the scarred walls of the citadel paused and gazed skyward. Another 500kg bomb whistled into the fort with minimal impact. The scene had taken on a relaxed, almost bizarre troop trial atmosphere. Cameras rolled to capture the moment on film. Interested spectators from the 45th Division headquarters staff gathered on the roof of a nearby building to watch. Circling above, the lone Luftwaffe bomber steadily came on line and lobbed a solitary 1,800kg bomb. The black cylindrical speck descended with slow effortless ease until it struck the corner of the massive ditch-fronted wall. A violent crack and boom echoed around the streets of Brest. Windows shattered and the whole population started as a huge pall of smoke spurted up above the stricken fort. This time there was massive damage, signalling the end for the survivors. Russian soldiers began to emerge from the fort: there were women and children among them. By dusk, some 389 men had surrendered.
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During the early morning hours of 30 June the Ostfort was searched and cleared of Russian wounded. German bodies, which had been pathetically sprawled for days around the fort’s deadly apertures, were finally recovered. Jets of bright flame marked by incandescent eruptions of black smoke marked the progress of flamethrower teams burning and incinerating likely hiding places rather than risk a look inside. Victory appeared complete. The town and fortress of Brest-Litovsk had been cleared. Panzer ‘Rollbahn 1’ moving eastward and the Warsaw-Brest railway were open to uninterrupted convoy traffic. Elements from two Soviet divisions, the 6th and 42nd, with over a hundred officers and 7,122 NCOs and men, were captured. In addition, 36 tracked and 1,500 badly damaged vehicles of other types were taken, along with 14,576 rifles, 1,327 machine guns and 103 artillery pieces of various calibres. Although victory appeared total, and the Panzer spearheads were already hundreds of kilometres into the Russian interior, psychologically it was an empty result.

PK-cameramen filmed the last exhausted Russian survivors as they emerged from the devastated Ostfort. Dirty and bandaged, they looked directly and unashamedly at the cameras. Adopting a relaxed stance, smoking cigarettes, they exuded a grim confidence that was not lost on their captors, and probably not the message intended for the cinema audiences in Germany who would later view the weekly
Wochenschau
newsreel. The 45th Division report stated, ‘they were in no way shaken, appearing strong and well fed, giving a disciplined impression.’ The major and commissar who had maintained resistance to the last were never found. They had committed suicide.
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The 45th Infantry Division had entered the Russian theatre as a veteran formation, having lost 462 men in France. Its chaplain interred 482 men in the first divisional cemetery of the Russian campaign at Brest-Litovsk, including 32 officers. Another 30 officers and about 1,000 other ranks were wounded.
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Some 2,000 Russian dead were actually found in the vicinity of the citadel and fortresses, but it is estimated as many as 3,500 may have died. The experience of the 45th Division at Brest was to prove a microcosm of the fate soon to befall its sister divisions in Russia. It lost more men during this initial action in the east than it lost during the entire campaign in the west the year before. It was a sobering calculation. The 45th Division became part of the newly formed Second Army on 3 July and marched eastward far behind the renamed Fourth (Panzer) Army, with which it had started the campaign.

Even after 30 June, and following 45th Division’s departure, German soldiers needed to be alert in the vicinity of the fortress, because isolated sniping continued. Frustration at this ‘unfair’ – to the German mind – form of guerrilla warfare was vented on innocent bystanders. Gefreiter Willi Schadt, a motorcycle NCO from the 29th Motorised Division, recalled how Unteroffizier Fettenborn from his company shot dead 15 defenceless civilians in Brest, ‘before,’ as the perpetrator explained, ‘these red swine start something’. The hapless victims were forced to dig their own graves before execution.
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Security had improved little by mid-July. Helmut K___
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a 19-year-old Reichsarbeitsdienst driver employed in Russia immediately after the invasion, wrote to his parents about continuing resistance in Brest. Even as the battle at Minsk was concluded he wrote on 6 July that ‘the citadel was still held’ and pockets of resistance were still active. ‘Twice the Reds had hoisted a white flag, and every time a company of Waffen SS were sent in, the doors were slammed in their faces.’ Driving close to the citadel walls with another truck, Helmut narrowly missed being killed during a reprisal Stuka dive-bombing raid. The strike was only 300–400m away, and ‘if I am truly honest, I wet my pants a little,’ he confessed. On 11 July two German officers were shot in the streets of Brest. Helmut K___ wrote again the following day, complaining:

‘There are tunnels beneath the earth in a 3km stretch from the citadel to the barracks, inside which the Russians are still sitting. Our unit is in the barracks. The streets are often strewn with scattered nails. We have already patched up our tyres many times … our troops are already 300km ahead en route to Moscow’
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Even today, messages carved into concrete by bayonets in cellars and casemates throughout the old fortress of Brest-Litovsk are preserved. ‘Things are difficult, but we are not losing courage,’ reads one. Another proclaims: ‘We die confidently July 1941.’ ‘We die, but we defended ourselves. 20.7.41.’ is crudely scratched elsewhere.

Isolated shooting incidents carried on throughout July. Few people knew about these lonely deaths.
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The infantry

On 8 July 1941 the Fourth (Panzer) Army staff had established their headquarters at Borisov on the River Berezina. Problems lay ahead. It was vital, in order to avoid the catastrophic implications of the developing gap between Panzers and infantry formations, to hurry the foot soldiers forward. General Günther Blumentritt declared:

‘A vivid picture which remains of these weeks is the great clouds of yellow dust kicked up by the Russian columns attempting to retreat and by our infantry hastening in pursuit.’
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The Smolensk pocket offered the tantalising prize of effecting much of the destruction of the western group of Soviet Armies originally planned, as well as securing the vital ‘land bridge’ for the eventual advance on Moscow. At Borisov there were traces of Napoleon. A few kilometres north, almost 130 years before, Napoleon’s Grande Armée had been compelled to cross the frozen River Berezina during the winter of 1812, and suffered appalling casualties doing so. It was not an auspicious omen. General Blumentritt, the Fourth Army Chief of Staff, noticed, ‘when the water is clear the remains of the props driven into the river bed to support the bridges built by the French engineers are still visible’.
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The German bridges had been built. They awaited the arrival of the infantry.

Further to the rear, Harald Henry, a 22-year-old foot soldier, was marching forward with an Army Group Centre infantry regiment ‘in scorching heat with rest stops whereby one slept like the dead’.
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Leutnant Heinrich Haape, a doctor with Infantry Regiment 18, recalled the briefest of rests by night during early campaign days:

‘The hour and a half’s sleep had done more harm than good. It had not been easy to awaken the dog-tired men. Our bones were cold, muscles stiff and painful and our feet were swollen. We pulled on our field boots only with great difficulty.’
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German infantry equipment had altered little since the turn of the century. Each soldier still wore traditional calf-high jackboots and fought with a modified 1898 rifle. He carried in excess of 30kg of gear, on top of which might be added rations, reserve ammunition and components for machine guns and mortars. Harald Henry complained:

‘I don’t know exactly how heavy our equipment is, but in addition to all of it there was a thick woollen blanket, an ammunition box that could drive one crazy and that lamentable packet with the books in it I should have sent back.’
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Soldiers on the march quickly discarded extraneous items or left them in regimental transport. The pack, usually transported separately, would hold a blanket, stove, tent poles, rope, spare underwear and clothes, toiletries, a ‘fat’ box (for cooking) and personal effects. Standard marching equipment weights would be about 14kg. The leather harness would hold together pouches for 60 rifle rounds, a spade, gas mask (often discarded, but its carrier utilised to carry other effects), water bottle, bread basket containing some bread and meat or sausage, a small fat tin and bayonet. The helmet, weighing 1.5kg, was not worn marching, but would be attached by its chin strap to the harness equipment. The rifle, another 4kg weight, would be slung on or across the shoulder.

Every soldier carried an aluminium identity disc around his neck pressed into two halves, which were snapped off if he became a casualty. One half would go to the unit chaplain if the soldier were killed, or to the administrative unit. Small bread bags and tunic pockets bulged with all the other necessities and comforts each soldier felt he needed to carry. These items became fewer as march distances increased. ‘All the roads in this land are uphill,’ declared one veteran. ‘The countryside is flat, but all roads go up regardless of which horizon they are leading to.’ This phenomenon ‘represents little more than the earth curvature with its constantly disappointing “false crests”.’
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A typical infantry regiment’s march routine would be to wake the soldiers at 02.45 hours in order to be on the march by 03.15, when it was becoming light. Morale so early in the morning, with the prospect of a further brutal day of forced marching, was rarely good. Harald Henry lamented:

‘We only had a little sleep. Once, when we finally managed to secure accommodation in a barn, our section [squad] was assigned to sentry duty, and we spent yet another night in a soaking meadow.’
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Sleep was a precious and often elusive commodity. Personal equipment was pulled on and all straps and accoutrements secured. Unnecessary clothing would be placed in packs and handed across to be ferried by the regiment’s logistic transport (the
Trost).
Some companies marched as many as 50km in one day. One veteran calculated a single step covered 60cm – ‘one took shorter or longer paces, but this was the average’ – so 50km meant an estimated 84,000 paces.
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Breakfast was a hasty affair, perhaps a cup of tea or ersatz coffee with bread, butter and some jam or a can of liver-sausage. After the order ‘prepare to move’, there was still time to crack and drink a raw egg. Companies would then begin to form up on the road in the half-light of dawn. At first, soldiers strode energetically along the route, with rifles properly slung as the sun slowly rose. Within an hour or two rifles and weapons were festooned haphazardly about the body. Fingers began to worry absent-mindedly at swinging helmet rims fastened to belts or dangling from rifles. Artillery Oberleutnant Siegfried Knappe said:

‘Our feet sank into the sand and dirt puffing dust into the air so that it rose and clung to us. The horses coughing in the dust produced a pungent odour. The loose sand was nearly as tiring for the horses as deep mud would have been. The men marched in silence, coated with dust, with dry throats and lips.’
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Feet already bruised by rutted roads began inexorably to rub on boots. Friction with each step produced blisters and calf-high boots became excruciatingly hot. Such discomfort stymies interest in all but the most immediate issues. Leutnant Heinrich Haape with Infantry Regiment 18 observed white puffs of smoke in the sky – Flak – as Russian aircraft flew overhead.

‘But the marching men had no eyes for something which was not their war. Each man’s war at this stage was circumscribed by the next few steps he would take, the hardness of the road, the soreness of his feet, the dryness of his tongue and the weight of his equipment. Beckoning him on was the thought of the next halt. Just to stop, to have no need to put one foot in front of the other for a few hours, was the dream of every man. There was no singing, no joking, no talking that was not strictly necessary’
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After five hours of such exertion, one observer remarked:

‘the repetitious rhythm of the march had produced a mask of monotony on every face; a cigarette would dangle in the corner of the mouth. Smoke would not be inhaled, the aroma would simply waft around the marching soldier.’
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During brief halts stabbing pains from disconcertingly soft and malleable blisters now swelling and bursting were apparent. Stiffening limbs began to ache. Friction burns in the crutch of the trouser might necessitate readjustments of equipment and rearrangement of clothing. This left less time to relax or drink. Sweat was everywhere, soaking between arms and legs, streaming down backs and faces, making leather harnesses pinch and rub skin. Shoulders burdened by heavy weapons or containers ached with constant pressure of applied weight. Sticky wet hair caused a clammy itching and irritation if the helmet had to be worn.