War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942 (31 page)

Harald Henry declared, ‘the dust covered us all uniformly; blond men had dull-white brilliant hair, black hair made the men look like Frederick the Great’s soldiers with light powdered wigs, others had their hair tousled like negroes.’ Soaking wet uniforms took on a cardboard consistency as they became impregnated with rising dust. Fluid did not come only from sweat, there were ‘sometimes even tears’, Henry confessed. ‘Tears of helpless rage, of doubt and pain over these unbelievable demands placed upon us.’
⁽¹²⁾
Bayonets irritatingly slapped the hip with each step. The day, even by late morning, was unbelievably long.

With luck, the main company meal appeared at midday, carried on so-called
Goulash-kanonen
(soup cannon). These horse-drawn mobile kitchens on wagons were the most important company support vehicles in the battalion
Trost.
It would rumble forward. The cauldron, filled with vegetables and available meat early in the morning, stewed as they marched, with a capacity of either 175 litres of fluid or two smaller 60-litre containers. A glycerine lining prevented the contents from burning. This simple but very functional vehicle developed an unforeseen morale role during long campaigns. It became the accepted collection point for infantry companies, a rallying area where psychological bonding took place. Units which had suffered considerable casualties in retreat or failed attacks were pulled together with difficulty by officers of the
Feldgendarmerie
(military police). Field cookers provided focal points where fragmented units or dejected survivors would gather for mutual comfort. Letters were handed out here and news or announcements given in its vicinity. Most importantly it catered for the soldiers’ fundamental need to confide in each other, proving a haven in an otherwise hostile environment and one of the few locations offering respite from the normal day’s pressures. The midday meal on the march, invariably the main meal and often the only sustenance, provided the essential respite that kept tired columns moving for yet another half day. An hour’s rest was generally ordered.

‘And then everyone sank into a sleep of total exhaustion. Motorcycles racing by do not disturb the sleepers, one of whom has made a pillow of his helmet, lying so comfortably up on it that it seemed like an eiderdown. Sleeping, even within the background sound of the guns, is a soldierly virtue, because he knows the day is yet long.’
⁽¹³⁾

Bodies would have to be reluctantly coaxed to get working again. Company commanders forced columns along in these conditions by the power of their personalities. Pressure was applied to encourage soldiers to close the inevitable gaps that appeared between company columns. Although a young man’s profession, many infantry battalion and company commanders were ex-World War 1 veterans. Despite this, feet reduced to burning raw flesh were kept moving between clenched teeth and wan faces. Oberleutnant Knappe continued to force the pace toward Minsk:

‘As we marched, low hills would emerge from the horizon ahead of us and then slowly sink back into the horizon behind us. It almost seemed that the same hill kept appearing in front of us. Kilometre after kilometre. Everything seemed to blur into uniform grey because of the vastness and sameness of everything… Fields of sunflowers stretched for kilometre after kilometre after weary kilometre.’
⁽¹⁴⁾

An officer with the Potsdam 9th Infantry Regiment recalled that the next days ‘meant marching, marching and again marching and the heat was always unbearable’. They plodded forward in columns of threes.

‘“Come on men, grit your teeth, the gap to the next company is much too big,” announced one company commander, whereupon conversations that had just started died and were replaced by the monotonous clatter of gas mask cases, field spades, hip bayonets and ammunition belts. The view of the marchers sank and remained on the back of the man ahead.’
⁽¹⁵⁾

Few of the fatigued soldiers took much notice of their immediate surroundings. They focused haphazardly on feet, the end of a rifle, swinging equipment and on the back of the man ahead. Losing themselves in personal thoughts or maintaining a psychological vacuum enabled them to endure pain and discomfort more easily. Leutnant Haape remembered how ‘the sun sank slowly through the dense clouds of dust that we left in our wake. And into the darkness our march continued.’

Skirmishes with the enemy might almost be welcomed as a release from the monotony. Adrenaline would surge and after an outpouring of fear and nervous energy there would be a strength-sapping relapse as the steady eastward slog was resumed.

‘We wished that the Russians would make a stand – anything, a battle even, to relieve the painful monotony of this ceaseless, timeless tramping. It was 11p.m. before a halt was called at a big farmhouse. We had covered close on 65km that day!’
⁽¹⁶⁾

There was only about three hours’ sleep before preparation for the next day’s march began. Personal administration or letter-writing could occur only during this period. Some soldiers would have to stand sentry. There was never enough time to rest properly. All along the three army group fronts the infantry strove to catch up with the Panzers. By 1 July the 6th Infantry Division had covered a 260km stretch in Army Group North’s sector from Memel to Riga – 10 days traversing bad roads and fighting en route. The 98th Infantry Division marched 40–50km each day between 9 and 30 July in the central sector.
⁽¹⁷⁾
Its official history described the
Rollbahn
as ‘seemingly endless, no wayside trees and totally devoid of shade. Wide and dead straight, it stretched ahead to the horizon disappearing way into the distance.’
⁽¹⁸⁾
Harald Henry wrote home:

‘Nobody can convince me that any non-infantryman can imagine what is taking place here. Think of the most brutal exhaustion you have ever experienced, direct burning sunlight, weeping sores on your feet – and you have my condition not at the end but at the beginning of a 45km march. It takes hours before your feet become insensitive to the painful wounds at each step on these roads which are either gravel or sand at the edges.’
⁽¹⁹⁾

Numerous factors accounted for this remarkable stamina. Service in the Hitler Youth and
Arbeitsdienst
often included long route marches. This was also an age when everybody walked. Boys walked to school and adults to work. The transport and communications revolutions of the late 20th century had yet to come; people were fitter and psychologically disposed to walk long distances to work or for pleasure. None the less, this does not prepare the body for the brutal forced-marching required in war. Some motivation would have come from stoic veterans of the previous French campaign. It was clear that sabre-like Panzer slashes across the Low Countries could be blunted by prolonged heavy resistance or indeed snapped off if over-extended.

One such event had occurred at Arras on 21 May 1940 when a determined British flank attack had taken advantage of a developing Panzer-infantry gap. Panzer advances were dangerous because they unhinged the defence after plunging into the depth of the enemy hinterland. They ignored threats to the flanks because the enemy was more concerned with the vulnerability of their own and the rear. Terminal lethality in German Blitzkrieg terms was conferred by marching infantry. It was their fighting power which ensured eventual annihilation and a decisive outcome. Veterans sensibly assumed casualties might be reduced if the momentum of the advance convinced the enemy further resistance was pointless and surrender. Infantry following close on Panzers sensed that the nearer they were to the Panzers the less fighting would be required. With luck, the tanks would do it for them. This was motivation indeed. ‘A powerful and shocking impression was left by our Panzers and Stukas from the destroyed armies on the follow-on march routes,’ declared Harald Henry, marching toward Mogilev in the central sector.

‘Huge craters were left by Stuka bombers always precisely accurate along the edges of roads. Their air pressure had lifted the biggest and heaviest tanks in the air and turned them over. Our Panzers had settled the rest after the surprise bombing attacks, and we marched for 25km along a scene of unbelievable destruction.’
⁽²⁰⁾

‘As we march the enemy continues to withdraw eastwards,’ observed Leutnant Heinrich Haape with Infantry Regiment 18. ‘It seems as if our battalion is never to catch up with him.’ The monotony of the march transcended everything, even the approaching horror of combat. So far as Haape was concerned, it appeared ‘as if our war is to be an uninterrupted marathon march to the Urals, perhaps even further’.
⁽²¹⁾

‘These marching hours were endless,’ declared Harald Henry, marching on to the Dnieper river, ‘25 or 30km alongside smashed and burned out tanks, vehicle after vehicle, onward past skeletons of totally shot-up and fire blackened villages’. He had a sensitive eye for the incongruous picture of tiger-lilies blooming in the gardens of gutted buildings within ‘black and ghostly surrounding walls’. These forced marches were no victory parade. They were a remorseless brutal and physical ordeal required of the infantry to keep up with the Panzers. Casualties apart, they exerted their own psychological toll. ‘One breathed in the distinctive characteristic smell this campaign had already permanently etched on my mind,’ admitted Henry, ‘a mixture from burning, sweat and horse carcasses.’ Strong sunlight swiftly transformed bodies into grotesque black shapes.

‘The most dreadful [
sight
] was the horses completely bloated and eviscerated, with their intestines spilled out and muzzles bloodily torn off. Overall there hung the stench of destruction: a disturbing mixture of the abattoir and putrefaction pervading the air with a stagnant decadence over our column. The worst was a pig gnawing with noisy relish at a horse carcass, because we realised the logic of the food chain meant we would one day taste some of this horse flesh ourselves.’
⁽²²⁾

Slowly but surely the massed German infantry formations closed up on the Panzer advance. ‘We are happy, we can laugh at the dust, the heat, the thirst – for only another 30km marching lies ahead,’ declared Leutnant Haape. ‘Our vanguard and the Panzer units are already involved in heavy fighting.’ There was to be a battle. Resistance on the east bank of the Dvina river was stiffening by the hour. ‘At last the war is waiting for us!’ proclaimed Haape exuberantly.

‘The column swings cheerfully along the road. There is point to the marching, and the objective is only a few kilometres away.’
⁽²³⁾

Closing with the enemy, the realisation that one must kill or be killed was a different and more emotive experience for the infantryman. ‘As a soldier in action,’ remarked Leutnant Hubert Becker after the war, ‘I know that others will die, that I might die – might get killed at any moment.’ Individuals mastered pre-battle fears in their own intensely private way. ‘Killing,’ Becker explained, ‘that word, was never used; it was never a topic for us.’ Nevertheless it had to be faced.

‘During attacks, when the Russians charged or when we advanced, we would be extremely fearful and uneasy. One didn’t know whether one would survive the next minute.’
⁽²⁴⁾

The physical burden was part of this psychological pressure. Infantry soldier Harald Henry’s experience was typical. Having marched 25km by day, he spent the night standing guard with other members of his infantry section in a soaking meadow. His following day was ‘also very demanding’. There was a few hours’ rest during the afternoon before marching resumed to an objective 44km distant. When at midnight a halt was declared, they were fired upon as they rested. This resulted in a series of manoeuvres and countermarching for two and three-quarter hours, having discarded packs, so as to attack the enemy. ‘But for me,’ said Henry, ‘that meant carrying a 30lb ammunition box.’ A largely uneventful night action ensued, following the collateral damage produced by fighting up ahead with an occasional burning tank lighting up the night. They did not close with the enemy, but did expend a lot of nervous energy at the prospect of doing so. Henry complained:

‘The effort required for this attack with its rapid advances was immense, and now, with dawn coming up, the second part of our 44km long stretch lay before us. I was totally drained and worn out with absolutely no reserves of strength remaining.’
⁽²⁵⁾

The burden on motorised infantry units, far ahead with the Panzers, was no less unremitting. They had to drive constantly, fight a containment battle, then continue the advance with the same bleak prospect of relentless meeting engagements. These produced a steady, but increasingly apparent, casualty toll. Haupt-sturmführer Klinter, commanding a motorised 3rd SS Division ‘Totenkopf’ platoon near Daugavpils, recalled Russian infantry attacks at 05.00 hours, following an eventful night. Countless figures in earth-brown uniforms surged toward their position ‘like an avalanche – or more accurately like an unstoppable stream of molten lava’. Artillery support was not available; there had been no resupply of shells.

‘Ever closer came the earth-brown flood. Even closer and uglier was the rifle and machine gun fire whining about our ears. Enemy artillery fire grew even heavier. And then, they were 100m – 60m – 30m away. A shrill and, until then, unprecedented nerve-racking “Hurrah!” rang out like a thunderclap. And then they began to fall here and there as our machine guns began their work. They were into my sector on the right… Dull thuds from hand-grenade explosions rang out and then they all ran back.’