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Forgive Us, Wolves
Forgive Us, Wolves
Forgive Us, Wolves
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Forgive Us, Wolves

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Drafted into the army after one and a half years at the university, I was one of twelve inexperienced reinforcements sent to northern Poland to replace 43 experienced soldiers of an Austrian artillery unit who were killed in battle. On our march through Lithuania and Russia, members of the invading army lived with peasants ruled, until now, by Joseph Stalin. Shocked by the primitive conditions, we were convinced that Russians would welcome life under the Nazi Regime.

At the front line, I was in charge of little more than the horses, as our artillery barrages secured the rapid advance of the Germany Army. But when large numbers of Russian soldiers surrendered, I was recruited as a sentry in a makeshift prisoner-of-war camp where provisions were lacking and our guns served as fences. There, under desperate circumstances, I lost my innocence as I took the lives of several Russian prisoners with my carbine.

Our advance slowed with the approaching Russian winter. Rain turned the roads to mud, until the temperature plummeted and our route turned to ice. We reached the outskirts of Moscow, tired and hungry, only to be turned back by bitter cold, lack of provisions, and collapse of the German lines. At night, unnerved by the eerie howling of wolves, I realized that we Germans could not solve the problems of Russia.

I survived the eastern front by taking my own course in the chaos of war. I escaped the devastating retreat from Moscow with the help and kindness of Russian peasants, a yellow medical tag for my frostbite, and a primitive train taking wounded men back to Warsaw. In the dark isolation of a crowded train car, memories flooded back of the rise to power of the Führer, of my love for family, church, and culture, and the forces that brought the Germans to war. But what could I tell my family and friends? I knew the Nazi lies about the Russian front. The home front wasn’t prepared for the horrific truth. I decided to continue the deception.

Returning to the front, I was assigned to a motorized artillery unit to the south, along the shores of the Black Sea and foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. Here, in the midst of artillery barrages and long standoffs with the Russian lines, I escaped to my own inner world, reciting literature and discussing the arts with newfound friends. We were enchanted by the beauty of this land, the people, and the villages that we would ultimately destroy.

Late in the war, an order arrived for soldiers at the front with physics backgrounds to return to Germany to complete their degrees. Assuming that this was a call to work on atomic wonder weapons, I was given a year-long furlough to attend the university in Göttingen. As Russian forces surrounded the German Army in Odessa, I slipped past guards at the airport to board a plane that took me home. The peaceful university setting of 1944, far from the battles in the Ukraine, saved my life, but it did little for atomic research or the war effort.

Having finished my physics degree, I was sent back to the front, now just east of the Austrian border. When news of Hitler’s death reached the Army, our unit raced west, away from the Russians and toward the American lines. Held captive in the pleasant open fields of a prisoner-of-war camp, we came to like the Americans.

In post-war Göttingen, faculty and students attempted to heal the wounds of the Third Reich and find a new path forward. Just as the war between Germany and Russia had ended, the Cold War began, fueled by the very misconceptions we had held about the Soviet Union and the Russian people.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 14, 2018
ISBN9780463314753
Forgive Us, Wolves
Author

Klaus Kronenberg

Klaus J. Kronenberg was born in Solingen, Germany (Mar. 28, 1921) and died in Redlands, California (Mar. 14, 2008). The son of a musician, Klaus Kronenberg developed a love for the arts and sciences, indulging in music, visual art, and literature, and playing piano, cello, and chess. At the age of 20, Klaus Kronenberg was drafted into the German Army, interrupting his college studies in physics and sending him to the eastern front as it advanced deep into the Soviet Union. At the Russian front, he witnessed and participated in some of the most cruel and hopeless engagements of World War II. His experiences, first during the Barbarossa advance, followed by the pivotal retreat from the outskirts of Moscow, reassignment to the Caucasus front and retreat by way of an airfield in Odessa, are documented in his memoirs "Forgive Us, Wolves!" As a foot soldier, Klaus Kronenberg came to know the Russian people and reassess the naive and patriotic views that young citizens of Hitler Germany had been taught. As a prisoner of war in Austria, he came to know and like the Americans. Following the war, Klaus Kronenberg returned to his studies, married Hannelore Schmitz, and obtained his PhD in Physics from Göttingen University. In 1953, Klaus and Hannelore immigrated to the United States where they raised their family, two daughters and a son. From 1953 to 1963, he worked as a condensed matter physicist with the Indiana General Corporation, Magnetics Division in Valparaiso, Indiana. Together with colleagues, he investigated the material properties, crystallography, microstructures, and magnetic domains of alnico and barium ferrite magnets. This work included pioneering applications of electron microscopy and diffraction. Klaus and Hannelore were joined by professional and personal acquaintances, Rudolf Tenzer and Hans Borchert, to form a string quartet. In 1963, Klaus Kronenberg accepted a position as an experimental physicist at the General Dynamics Corporation in Pomona, California. In 1965, he contributed to a patent for a system to probe the D-layer of the ionosphere. In 1972 to 1974, he submitted a patent and published results on magnetic bearings and levitation systems, and advocated for magnetic levitation (maglev) train technology in the U.S and Germany. He was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship and pursued research at the Ruhr University Bochum (1973-1974). He taught physics from 1975 to 1985 as an Associate Professor of the California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, California and then took up independent consulting. Klaus Kronenberg loved the mountains, deserts, and seashores of California. As a naturalist and member of the Sierra Club (1970-2008), he loved to wander and hike, sleep outdoors, admire wildflowers, conifers, and cactus, and gaze at the stars. He spoke German, English, Latin, Solinger Platt and Kölsch and often read late into the night. As a pianist and member of the cello section of the Claremont Symphony Orchestra (1963-2001), he played the music of Schubert, Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, Mahler, and Khachaturian. Days before he passed away, he recited the poetry of Wilhelm Busch.

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    Forgive Us, Wolves - Klaus Kronenberg

    FORGIVE US, WOLVES A German Soldier at the Russian Front

    By

    Klaus J. Kronenberg

    SMASHWORDS EDITION

    * * * *

    PUBLISHED BY:

    Klaus J. Kronenberg on Smashwords

    Forgive Us, Wolves

    Copyright © 2012 by Klaus J. Kronenberg

    * * * *

    Table of Contents

    Preface

    Chapter 1. Marching Eastward

    Chapter 2. Fever at the Front

    Chapter 3. The Creeping Misery

    Chapter 4. Forgive Us, Wolves!

    Chapter 5. Führer-Urlaub

    Chapter 6. The Garden of Eden Might Have Been Here

    Chapter 7. Artillery Fun

    Chapter 8. Retreat is Not Pretty

    Chapter 9. Furlough or Atomic Research?

    Chapter 10. American Prisoner of War

    Chapter 11. Mad World, Because You Blossom, You May be Forgiven

    Epilogue: Deception in the West

    Glossary

    Preface

    This book is a work of nonfiction. The names of fellow soldiers and friends, some of whom died or I never met again, have been modified for reasons of confidentiality; real names of individuals are used only for relatives and famous people of the time.

    Forgive Us, Wolves represents an admission of guilt to the Russian people, and a plea for forgiveness for my part as a foot soldier of the German Army that invaded deep into the Soviet Union during World War II. I would not have written this book if it were not for Mr. Gene Small, my daughter's high school history teacher, and his interest in learning about the German story at the Russian Front. When Gene Small and I first met, I had buried the memories of my war experiences deep in the recesses of my mind. As many Germans did, I put my letters and diaries away, and I did not want to remember. Having survived, I moved on to my new life as a physicist, father, immigrant, and citizen of the United States. My ability to return to the horrific memories as a German soldier at the Russian Front was facilitated by writing in English, a second language for me.

    I originally wrote this book as a memoir in the past tense, and I rewrote it in the present tense, to reflect how I felt and thought at the time. As a soldier, I was a confident, patriotic youth who believed in his country, family, and faith. I was convinced of the threat that Communism posed to the free Western World and the need to confront it. My convictions did not survive the war, but they were adopted by my new country and the Western World. I owe thanks to many who have helped me revise the manuscripts that led to this book, including Gene Small, Don Wright, Jeff Erdoes, Andreas Kronenberg, Michael Beilfuss, and Anne Raymond. This book benefited from critical reviews offered by Dr. Von Hardesty of the Smithsonian Institution (Washington DC) and anonymous reviewers.

    Chapter 1. Marching Eastward

    With a carrot patch in mind, I sneak out of the little, damp tent of four into the crisp air of the night. But then I stop, frozen, gazing to the north, riveted by a spellbinding sight. Half the sky is pierced with silvery-white beams that reach straight up, as if to touch the end of the sky. During the first twenty years of my life in Germany, auroras had been confined to books and stories of adventure. Now I am a part of an adventure myself.

    The magnitude of the adventure comes home to me on this September night of 1941 in northern Poland. We, the main German Reserve Army, stretching from horizon to horizon, creep through the Polish lands like a million-footed insect, crawling eastward, moving and reaching toward Russia, toward Moscow, toward the Ural Mountains and beyond, reaching toward the end of the East.

    We are destined to join that legendary battle army that had stormed and taken Western Europe. It has left the Old-World history breathless. The patterns of history prior to this had been traced in century-long periods of advance. That is all over now. We, the millions of us, the massive reserve for the final battle, are to enforce what doesn't need enforcing. But, our Führer makes sure, doubly sure, that this battle, somewhere in the heartland of Russia, will be the decisive one.

    After this decisive battle what is going to happen? There is a world to welcome us; for aren't we to deliver a billion souls from the oppressive yoke of Communism? How good it is to be part of this great plan!

    But, first, I have other business. Between our tents is a little garden patch of carrots, plundered many times and now almost trampled beyond recognition. Surely a few good carrots can still be found under the dirt rows. I grope through the crumbs of soil and pull up some carrots, strip the wet dirt from them and clean them on my trousers. I chew one without making much noise. Tents are scattered in every direction, full of soldiers, deeply asleep during this still night of the northern lights. Occasionally a hushed sound is heard, very human and warm, a cough, the breaking of wind, some snoring, and I can hear my own chewing. Before I try to find my tent again, I pull some more carrots for my friend, Hermann, and for myself to eat tomorrow.

    * * * *

    Hermann and I have managed to stay together through six months of boot camp and the selections for front-line duty. Although he is four years younger than I, we have known each other since our high school days. He volunteered for the army as soon as he graduated, while I squeezed in four semesters of physics at the university before I was drafted for military service.

    Hermann is a phenomenal chess player, the very best of our hometown Y.M.C.A. During the endless hours of marching, he teaches me how to play blind chess by imagining a board and the positions of the various figures upon it. He frequently has to help me as the game becomes more complex, and he is a regular winner. Beside these brain acrobatics, we talk hours and days away, giving ourselves to our memories and youthful philosophies. In this area Hermann needs help from me. Compared to the average soldier, who is about thirty-years-old, seventeen-year-old Hermann has had a shocking life. He was only eight when the fate of Germany was placed in the hands of Adolf Hitler. Hermann assumes that the orderly and disciplined life, of the Third Reich, is the only way of life. Before entering the boot camp barracks, he had never seen photographs of naked women, or read obscene literature. Dirty words and lewd stories were unknown to him. However, our instruction in boot camp was communicated in obscene language, and the walls of the barracks were decorated with pictures of nude women.

    I was twelve-years-old and in high school when the change to Adolf Hitler's leadership occurred on January 30th of 1933. I had experienced at least a few years of the pre-Hitler Germany. I had been pummeled and knocked to the ground by Communists, in broad daylight, and on the main street of our town. My school cap marked me as a high school student and thus a member of the upper class. I had trembled with fear for the life of my father, who was branded a parasite in the Communist daily paper, the Arbeiterstimme, because he was an insurance agent. He was to be exterminated on the day that Germany became Communist. I remember how my parents tried to keep the trash and filth away from me, which had abounded in the German public prior to 1933. I tell Hermann countless details of these disturbed years, which he experienced only as a child.

    How far away all of this seems to us now, we lucky ones! It is good to talk about it. Even more, we feel how blessed we really are to be living in a new time, with all the decadence and filth safely in the past. The Führer had branded it as the last attempt of the "Jewish-Bolshevik-Untermensch to poison mankind. How good it is to live in a new time, a time of decency, purity, patriotism, and heroism. Ours is the idealistic image of man in his strong beauty, achieving near perfection of body and soul, the Olympic man, as God had made us and wants us to be. We are thoroughly happy that we are the elected ones for this noble way of life. We feel pity for our older comrades, who seem to have so few ideals. They constantly criticize, curse and make obscene remarks. Hermann asks me again and again, How can they live with so much hate, so little belief, and such low morality?"

    One typical and devastating incident haunts our memory and keeps coming up in our philosophical discussions. One soldier from our room in boot camp, age 35, married, and a ditch digger by profession, was the first of us to be allowed a visitor, his wife. It was the day after our first leave for town. Hermann and I had used these blessed hours away from the barracks to attend the city opera. We had seen Wagner's Parsifal with Herbert von Karajan conducting. The older men had spent their free time in the taverns. The visiting wife of our comrade seemed to know her husband's usual behavior away from home. For us, the young, pure idealists, the words fell like crushing blows: "Ech hann nit jepuppt! On du has doch jepuppt!" This was the worst vernacular of our home town with which this wife accused her husband of adultery, and he, in turn, replied that he would stake fifty marks on the fact that he had not engaged in sexual intercourse. We did not know that such words were really pronounceable, that the air would accept them. And yet, these words were exchanged between husband and wife.

    Now in the days and weeks of marching, we have time to straighten out our confused minds. Whatever these old men without morals do, it cannot touch us. We are sure that we will never violate the doctrine of our Nazi education, that our capacity for procreation does not belong to the individual, but rather to the Fatherland. We will not waste or dishonor this capacity because it is the sacred source for creating more and more German people. Ours is an immense responsibility. Destiny has called upon us to march east and eradicate Weltfeind Nummer Eins: Communism.

    We face the possibility that we may never return home from this last battle; but how well spent our personal lives would have been. We are part of the history of mankind. We have to save the masses of Russian people from the cruel coercion of Stalin's commissars with our culture of light, strength, and healthy manhood.

    * * * *

    We are marching, always marching to the east, through the pleasant colors of the bright landscape of East Prussia, with one day's stay in Kovno, through Lithuania to Vilna and then into Polish lands and onward toward Minsk in old White Russia. Now the vivid colors vanish, and grays and browns predominate. Everything begins to look dreary and sinister. The huts, the people, even the trees appear sad.

    The poverty of these endless stretches of rural slums is sensational. Our officers do not have to say much. The way these people are accustomed to live in these satellites of the worker's paradise is more convincing propaganda than all the assertions that our politically sophisticated government could manufacture. In the hinterland near Vilna, Lithuania, I see that the livestock of a farmer consists of a solitary, scrawny chicken. At the door of many hovels the chicken is tethered, allowing it to peck in a circle in front of the dwelling. It is amazing to see how carefully plucked of all material this semi-circle is. When we ask these good, shy people if they were made so destitute by the war, they defend the honor of their village by pointing to our own condition, which is far from affluent. They reply that they are not poor, and that one farmer nearby is down right rich. He possesses a cow.

    Soon thereafter we encounter strange sights. Here and there, a huge manor house projects out of the plain. It had obviously been deserted for years. Former parks are overgrown with weeds and tall grasses. Marble walks, pergolas, and the fountains are all disrupted by the encroaching wilderness. The mansion seems to be lazing in a dream of faded glory and stares open-windowed out over once prosperous grounds like a gap-toothed old man surveying the ruins of his fortune.

    We are always hungry in this German Army of 1941 and, whenever possible, we look for forage. Occasionally the windfall of a semi-wild chicken can be found in the vicinity of one of the old landlord seats. With such a captured chicken, I enter one of the miserable little huts. Inside I hope to find a woman who can help me prepare it for dinner. There are no windows in these huts; neither is there a floor or ceiling. The open door and a fire burning on the dirt floor provides just enough light to enable me to see a tiny, thin woman swinging a baby in a wooden box suspended from the beams overhead. She looks at me with stoic disinterest. However, she comes to life when I hand her the dead chicken, indicating that I would like to have her cook it. Feeling that the chicken is still warm, she begins to frantically pluck the feathers from it, using them to cover the baby. She presses the feathers, her hands trembling with happiness, all around the tiny, naked body. When she is finished cooking the chicken I leave with only those parts of it that we need, and she, brimming with happiness, keeps the rest. I don't understand the words that she mumbles, but I take them as blessings because she keeps bowing to me. As I turn back into the open, I feel oddly touched by the warm, human love of this unspeakably lonely mother. And, by God, it hits me how much I am in need of blessings.

    * * * *

    Marching every day without exception has become our way of life. Every drill order is executed in such perfect detail that one could almost assume that this is a large training maneuver. When a Zigaretten-pause, a five minute smoke break, does nothing to relieve our weariness, the officer in charge issues the command for Singen! We sing verse after verse of our old and new marching songs. We dislike them, yet we recognize the invigorating effect of the vigorous singing. There is not one among us who doubts the necessity for all of this. Whenever we reach the crest of a hill and can see for miles, we cannot see the beginning or the end of the army. The rising dust and the steam from the soup-cooking feldküchen give visible evidence, for scores of miles, of the vitality of this creeping, gigantic monster composed of green clad men, horses, carriages, and cars.

    Curses are ground between sandy teeth. Obscene words are uttered in response to the meager food and to the fact that we have to carry all of our luggage on our backs. Men grumble because most of the officers don't have to walk - they ride horses or have found a place in some commander's automobile. Yet, there is the unanimous opinion in the minds and hearts of the men that somewhere, somehow, a miracle of organization is functioning. The respect for the spirit of such infallible leadership keeps every head straight and aching muscles on the job.

    As we approach the border of Russia, a tension envelops the minds of the troops. Rumors have it that Russia is richer than Poland. It is said that we can get more forage there; and once we have crossed into Russia proper, the change is indeed surprising.

    * * * *

    At night, after the long and tiring march, I have a chance to look carefully at this country of Russia, the place we have heard so much about, and of which we know so little. One of my first impressions is that Russia is richer and better maintained than Poland. I do not think that it is because Poland is more war-ravaged than Russia, for we see much more actual battle damage in Russia. It is obvious that the Kolkhoz system of Soviet collectivized agriculture has attempted and indeed achieved some gains for Russia. It must have had a broad range of support from the populace. The well constructed and maintained community barns and large wooden structures attest to this. The houses, the old ones as well as the newer ones, are sturdy, log cabins. Most of them have one room, the larger ones have two rooms. Wooden ceilings and floors are the rule. An occasional larger building is constructed of brick.

    The population seems stoic. They welcome us with reserved friendliness. When treated kindly, they respond likewise. A calm acceptance of their new fate goes hand in hand with the hope that this German army of the Third Reich might somehow mean a new life for them. But, what life will that be? They cannot imagine a life free from the feared commissars and police agents of Joseph Stalin.

    We enter towns and we leave towns. After we pass Minsk on the road to Moscow, the rollbahn is our main artery of travel. It is the only continuous, paved highway in Western Russia. We begin to feel as if we have been marching forever. We lock arms, four and six abreast in order to keep going, even after falling slightly asleep during the march on the broad and smooth highway. In between dozing and marching, I find myself constantly reminiscing about the train of events that led up to this challenge on the road to Moscow. Visions come back to me as brilliant, photographic flashes, not in slow seepages, as memories often do.

    I remember the first day in March of 1941 when I had been inducted into the army and sent to boot camp. I waved goodbye, one last time, to my mother, who became a Red Cross nurse the same day. My entrance into the service had been extremely orderly, even though the German invasion of Russia, the greatest military action ever prepared, was only three months away. There was no feeling of strain or hurry that so often prefaces the military efforts of great nations. My induction had come as a relief as I had truly felt that I was being left out of a great national undertaking. At the time I was drafted I had completed one and a half years toward my bachelor's degree in physics at the University of Göttingen. I was inducted as a common soldier, a Cannoneer, but my special education in physics placed me above most of the other soldiers of artillery, on a par, in education, with the officer class.

    The instructors had maintained the traditional pace in boot camp. By the end of August, 1941, the training had grown nearly unbearable. Many of the recruits felt that it would be better to be sent into the front lines and risk one's life than to continue under the dull tensions and personality-killing pettiness of recruit training. It ended in September 1941, when my unit was called up. We were assembled into a typical unit of the German Army's light, horse-drawn artillery. For all the frightening modern weapons possessed by the German Army, this was really an old-fashioned arrangement, with 240 horses to pull four small 105 mm field guns and their supporting equipment.

    * * * *

    The German Reserve Army of 1941, its rules and its structure have not changed since the invention of modern military training in Prussia over 200 years ago. In basic training, there was never any question that an order was reasonable or not. If it had been issued by a superior, it was an order and it had to be scrupulously obeyed, no matter how obviously stupid it might be.

    Now I feel beyond all this and I am ready to smile at the disturbing trivia from the home front. As we march along I indulge myself for hours, as in a triumph, going over these events of boot camp step by step. I revel in every disgusting detail of those events, which now seem so long ago.

    The Chef of our training unit was a truly pathetic sideshow of humanity. Every few weeks he would appear on the steps of the administration section of the barracks. He looked pompous, fat, and old as he would pronounce sentence on some hapless offender of petty rules who had been reported to him. That was all we ever saw of him during the entire half-year in his unit. He had been a retired district attorney, so what could we expect?

    How perverse were the punishments that he ordered. There had been cases of theft in our company. A wristwatch or some money was taken from a soldier. The Chef was swift in his decision to have the victim of the theft locked up for three days and placed on a diet of bread and water. The crime was called Verleitung zum Kameradendiebstahl or tempting a comrade to theft, and the victim of the theft had to be punished. Any attempt to find the thief never entered the head of this stiff old man. However, he had accomplished his goal; after a few of these punishments no more thefts were reported.

    By law a German soldier was not allowed to hold possessions like wristwatches, cameras, or more money than ten day's pay. This amount was to be carried next to one's chest in a little leather pouch called the Brustbeutel. It hung by a string around the neck of the soldier. All other valuables were to be delivered to the administration for safe keeping. Who would ever expect that such antiquated laws would be enforced? Well, our Chef most certainly enforced them, and quite neatly.

    There was that glorious day when I was found to have only two cents in my Brustbeutel. I admitted that I had the rest of the money locked up in my Spind, the soldier's personal locker. My money had not been stolen and had been safe under lock and key. So the Chef did not put me in jail. However, it was established that I had been guilty of Verleitung zum Kameradendiebstahl and for that I had to be punished by strafexerzieren. It was a penalty drill, which amounted to four torture sessions of thirty minutes apiece. Together with three fellow sufferers, I packed the prescribed twenty pounds, seven regular bricks, into my pack. With that we reported for those thirty minutes of torment in the intense summer sun, during the lunch hour. We had to crawl on our elbows across the drill yard, run around in a gas mask and do whatever else occurred to the commanding officer that might make us miserable.

    As a Nazi high school student I was used to physical challenges of the most intense sort. Our daily routine had included boxing, track, and other body-toughening sports. I had also been in the Arbeitsdienst, as was required of all young Germans. Six months of labor service were set aside to develop our young bodies to the limit of their capacity. Military drill, street construction, farm work, and more drill in the evening was our regimen. The work was done with the most primitive tools. It was a rare young man who came out of the Arbeitsdienst without bulging muscles and a toughened body. All of this exertion paid off now. I was able to stand the strain of recruit training and although this drill was calculated to be pure torture, it turned out to be a mere challenge.

    However, on the third day, one of my comrades in these punitive drills collapsed. He was a rather thin fellow and in poor physical condition. I never found out whether or not he was able to convince the unit-doctor that he really had passed out and thus became unable to follow orders. If not, his behavior was the serious offense of Befehlsverweigerung, the refusal to execute a command. Luckily, that very day, I had been transferred to another unit to be transported to front line duty. I felt doubly fortunate because my best friend, Hermann, had received the same order on the same day. While my three other comrades were serving their fourth and final day of the penalty, I was rolling along through another part of Germany on more pressing business, happily erasing my mental slate.

    I had not reckoned on the perfection of the army's paper war. After two more weeks of being transferred from the western part of Germany to the north and then to the south, miraculously always with my friend, Hermann, we had suddenly been sealed off from the world by a total postbann, canceling all leaves and preventing us from having any spoken or written contact with civilians. We knew from this that our next move would be the one that counted, the move to the front.

    During the march along the rollbahn toward Moscow, I snicker inadvertently while meditating on how the army's ridiculous preoccupation with trifles had caught up with me. When I was sitting in the train that would take Hermann and me on the first leg of our journey to the Eastern Front, a strange thing occurred. As I sat on the little share of wood bench in the crowded third class compartment that would be my home for many days, I was called back again to German soil. A telegram from my long-forgotten boot camp unit had arrived stating that my legal slate was not clean. There still remained the fourth and last part of my strafexerzieren to be executed. However, my train had steamed up and couldn't wait those thirty minutes. My new Chef had not been a district attorney, thank God. Yet, the law is the law and my new Chef did not want me to drag this unfulfilled business to the front. On his authority as Kompaniechef and with an expressed statement of my consent, this blessed man transferred the left-over thirty minutes of strafexerzieren into zugwache, train guard duty. Instead of sharing a wooden bench in a third-class compartment with nine comrades, I moved into a caboose with only two comrades. The caboose had sleeping facilities, a brakeman's lookout, and best of all, I had the incredible freedom to leave the train at every stop. This was punishment as I liked it.

    This train trip turned out to be one of the unforgettable experiences of my life. It was actually a last, prolonged good-bye to my homeland, as we traveled from Augsburg, in southern Germany, through the Alps, through Austria, through Czechoslovakia, back into Germany, then to Leipzig, and finally north to Berlin. For the first time I saw our gigantic capital. The view from my high seat in the caboose was marvelous. I cannot say that I ever loved Berlin like I did Cologne or Hamburg. Nevertheless, I took a deep feeling of awe and respect with me out into the East; a determination to fight for Germany, and this was a good feeling for a soldier to have.

    * * * *

    The Fatherland at this time was hard at work to win the war, almost ready to celebrate the endsieg, the final victory. How many part-victories had we already celebrated in the last two years? Now, obviously, Russia was on its knees and nearing a final capitulation.

    My train ride to the East had come one or two days too early for me. It had canceled my plans to participate in a long-prepared concert in my hometown. I was to have sung in the big choir together with my father. We were scheduled to sing the exciting oratorio of Handel's Der Feldherr, which was actually just a new and Nazi-purified version of the original Judas Maccabaus. The good city fathers had intended to perform it as a special event for the victory celebrations and as a special token of dedication to the Führer. The date set for the victory concert had, unfortunately, preceded the date of the final victory a bit, but that did not seem so important. This festival had to be performed without me as I was on my way to the front to do my share in dealing the enemy this final blow.

    How cruelly ironic history can be. When we hoped soon to enjoy our deserved rest on the sweet laurels of all those glorious victories, victories to be proud of for all generations to come, just then did history open the sorriest chapter in the book on Germany. Real war, the sacrifice, horror, madness, and debasement of mankind, was about to ring up the curtain for the German people at the moment when they thought that it was all over.

    * * * *

    The expectation of supplementing our regular food through forage and appropriation in the Russian villages, a technique called organizing, soon fades away. The people that we find now have nothing to eat themselves, and they are shy and downright afraid. Slowly we begin to understand a few words of their complaints. The army that has marched ahead of us is the famous "Spanish Blue Division." They have taken everything without asking: food, chicken, geese, pigs, cows, and women. We march in the wake of woes and curses left behind and we feel ashamed of our allies.

    Then the steel grip of the battle army falls upon us. It is a wonderful and amazing experience to see the action of the front line army. The front is still hundreds of miles away, yet before we arrive in Smolensk, halfway on the road to Moscow, endless rows of trucks of all sizes and makes rush past us from the East. They swing around, load us in, and hurry back to the East. The drivers say that we are desperately needed at the front. We wonder why we are so desperately needed, and the drivers tell us that the front line army has suffered heavy losses. We think this is impossible.

    At any rate, we enjoy the ride and the efficiency of the transport division. The entire atmosphere is one of speed and practicality. We are surprised at the sights that flash before our eyes. A little farther down the rollbahn we come upon a sight that more than any other resembles a cattle-drive. It is the Spanish Blue Division that had heroically volunteered to march on foot all the way from their homes in Spain, clear through Europe, to help us smash the common enemy.

    After months of marching, what had been the pride of the Spanish arms has turned into a strange assortment of men and beasts. There is hardly a regulation uniform anywhere, and the number of cattle and other livestock vastly outnumber the soldiers. It is a sight to behold. Even the most insistent meckerfritzen among us, our habitual critics, admit that there is something valuable in our Prussian discipline. It prevents us from devolving into such a Sauhaufen, a herd of pigs.

    As we ride through Smolensk, more strange sights meet our eyes. This once important city has been transformed into an endless field of devastation. A ghostly forest of chimneys is all that remains of the razed houses. As far as the eye can see, these conical towers of crumbling stone stand as if surprised, stripped of all warmth and life-like crippled fingers giving a warning. They make our breathing unsteady. In the central plaza the only upright structure, encircled with heavy military traffic, is an oversized roadway sign, loaded with hundreds of military unit numbers, coded signs and arrows. Close to this sign-tower are several military policemen, directing traffic.

    Here, another strange observation astounds us. The landsers, common soldiers, walk right by officers without giving any formal salute! We cannot believe our eyes, and we look forward to becoming accustomed to an informality that would have been treason in the home army.

    In the swift change of scenery, close to a demolished railroad yard, we see mountains of battle-scrap heaped up. There are thousands of broken enemy tanks and guns awaiting westward transportation. Our high-gear weapon production in Western Europe is hungry for this precious refuse of war.

    On some fields we see, and smell, horse carcasses, heaped up in piles. Hermann points and says that we should have that in our schoolyard for the bone collection. In every school class we had a corner for the collection of used materials. One box was for the used toothpaste tubes, a large, heavy box was for the collection of scrap iron, and there were stacks of old paper, and, of course, the piles of old bones. The bones had always been weighed and delivered on Mondays, the leftovers of the Sunday meal, which traditionally had been the one with meat for the better situated German family. How such a garbage can full of bones could smell in summer in one corner of the school yard! Well, weren't we superbly prepared?

    * * * *

    The next day our ride ends much too soon. We mill around in small groups, filling the vast panorama of a wide, flat valley of green pastures. It is a handy staging area for the regrouping and distributing of the thousands of us who have just arrived. Now we will meet and join our final units, the battle units.

    What medals we see! Not only the officers wear medals; even common soldiers display medals or the bands representing them on their left breast pocket. Some of these common soldiers even have the Iron Cross, First Class, believed to be unobtainable for a common soldier. Assault guns, tanks, and air defense guns are waiting for soldiers to re-man them. Almost all have the white rings around their barrels, each signifying an abschuss, a confirmed kill.

    A weird noise, an incessant irregular vibration, dominates the scene - a low and ominous rumble, distant but distinct. That, we sense, is the breath of the front. It seems to be far away. We are told that there is nothing to fear. It is just ordinary störungsfeuer, artillery shots fired for their nuisance value, just daily routine. Rumors are going around that three weeks ago some battles had been bad, very bad! It is said that some units lost half of their men. The Russians had made counter-offensive after counter-offensive against the salient at the Jelnja River. It is rumored that we had been able to hold our positions, but that we had suffered terrible losses. We think that this is impossible, but is it really?

    Some of the new arrivals get a peculiar stirring inside of them. They feel a strange pressure in the lower abdomen. Some do not show it, but others retire repeatedly to ditches to relieve themselves. All this is caused by a common emotion, fear. All of us now realize how close to the fighting front we actually are. The need for relief behind bushes is nothing to be ashamed of. It is a natural reaction of the nervous system. We are told that this form of distress is known to be prevalent away from the front. At the front line it occurs seldom, and in actual combat not at all. We had expected it to be the other way around.

    An officer explains some important Russian phrases to us. Sto dakoy and rooky vevyerch, mean Stop, who's there? and Hands up! He also gives us the password of the day so that we will not be shot by our sentries. Has the real war begun for us? We will soon find out; we can hardly wait. We will also find out whether or not we are suited for the heroic life. My friend, Hermann, is confident. He is the son of an officer. He must be worthy of battle. For him everything depends upon it.

    * * * *

    On these green pastures our fate is to be decided for years to come, but in a manner different from what we have expected. The badly reduced units in the area try to outdo one another to grab as many replacements as possible. Priority, the relative losses, the battle value of a unit, all these factors are balanced. They upset our preplanned destiny. All at once I find that I am to be a replacement not for a Rhenish division. This would have been normal for Rhinelanders such as Hermann and myself. Instead we are both assigned to an Austrian Division! The shield of arms of our new division is not the grapes (the wine symbol) of the Rhinelanders, it is a miner's pick because the name of the commanding general of this division is Bergmann, which means miner in German.

    I sense that this is to be a fortunate change. The Austrians had been named ostmarker by the Führer when they joined Germany in 1938. The Viennese-friendly way of life had been the theme of so many movies. The Austrians are known for their charming and easy going manners and their warm sense of kinship with all people. Their way of speaking is music to our ears; no sharp Prussian harshness for us anymore. An almost funny southern drawl, an exaggerated Bavarian slang, is to become our way of talking.

    Northern lights over Poland (1941)

    Author, Klaus J. Kronenberg in uniform (1941)

    Settlement in White Russia (1941)

    Chapter 2. Fever at the Front

    The only replacements the second battery of the 137th Artillery Abteilung gets is a bunch of kids. Twelve youngsters are to replace the 43 experienced soldiers who had been killed three weeks ago. Not a single one of these newcomers is from Austria, the Ostmark. The new ones are altreicher, from the old Reich, or Germany as it was before the merger with Austria. Two of these kids, Hermann and I, are just out of school. What a mess! What could they possibly do with us? The Austrians had been hoping for a few strong and steady homesteaders from the Steiermark. They could have told some stories from back home; stories from the Grinzing and tales about the fresh wine and the lusty girls. They would have been able to work the way they always had in the mountains and would have joined in the general disgust over the German Army's rations: the daily baloney, the half-loaf of heavy bread and only a trace of butter.

    Instead of these stalwarts, here come we altreichers, marmeladingers, boys who thrive on marmalade instead of ham and bacon. We don't know how to live. Worst of all, we have our heads full of the new times, and we even seem to be proud of our inadequate standard of living. What poor, miserable kids we are! Disgusting!

    * * * *

    A cold, gray drizzle falls between the large, dark log houses of the village. It pulls down the shades of the evening early and keeps the rumble of the front to a few single shots once in a while. The Master Sergeant looks the new ones over and has a sad, cynical grin on his tired, mellow face. He ignores our eager salute and mumbles some slurred instructions. From this soft-spoken, elderly man with a rounded back and poor posture, the usually tough spiess talk sounds almost obscene. When he voices his opinion about the goddamn-shit war, we young soldiers are shocked. Is this man a real spiess, the spearhead of the unit? From the boot camp we had our fill of those infamous spiesses, with their over-emphasized discipline and proverbial meanness. But this one seems to be really mean. We’ll have to watch out. When he turns back into the house with the warm red light inside, he mumbles something about quarters.

    We new ones stand on the dirty, wet court in front of the house confused. Where are we to obtain our rations? Where are we to set up our tents? Waiting for instructions, we stand at ease and watch a couple of Russians on the porch of the house. There is a fat woman, who looks like a round heap of rags, and a tall, thin man who is stripped to the waist. They are taking water from a wooden bucket into their mouth and spitting it out again over their hands. When the man finishes washing his hands he shouts in the broadest Ostmarkish slang: Wollts da net eeinikuumn? S'gibt wos zun schneeiden! Why don't you come in? We are going to eat! We look at each other in confusion, and then pick up our luggage and file in across the porch into the house.

    The thick, heavy door bangs shut behind us. There are rags wedged around the jamb to keep out the cold. A warm, steaming smell engulfs us. The room is filled by the humming noise of about twenty people sitting on long wooden benches all around the walls of the one-room house. A little oil lamp flickers on a small corner table, and a candle dimly lights another corner. The main light comes through the round arch, the entrance to the oven and the spacious vault with a pile of wood flaming deep inside. What an oven it is! The whole house is merely a wooden shell built around this massive whitewashed stone structure.

    An old woman wrestles with a long wooden pole, which she has thrust through the half-round opening. At the end of this long handle is a two-pronged iron fork, which she uses to push a large clay pot right up to the flaming wood. As the flames lick around the belly of the pot, the woman keeps turning it, so as to heat it evenly.

    Hermann and I watch the operation in fascination. We have never seen anything like it. Suddenly Hermann jumps back. From out of a dark corner something has nibbled at his pocket. The head of a brown goat with glassy eyes looks at us. How devilish he appears in the flickering light with his Mephisto beard! Then the funny head disappears back into its cage, while right under the oven opening we hear the oink of a pig. The old woman laughs a throaty giggle and tries to make us understand why the pig oinks. It has burned its greedy snout trying to lap up some of the boiling hot soup that has spilled. When we finally understand and join the laughter, the woman starts to tell her amusing story all over again, and then continues a few times more.

    The soup is good; in addition to our army rations, the Russians have supplied some smoked meat, some beans, and potatoes. We fetch ourselves a bowl full of this stew and return to our benches to eat. We try to be at ease as much as possible, but sitting down for a meal has become a nearly forgotten luxury for us. How comfortable life can be! This Russian-German family life is friendly, human and cozy. We understand each other and the needs of life without many words. I sense that Hermann feels easier about the Russians than about our disappointed Austrian comrades.

    Soon the early sleepers have spread themselves on heaps of straw in one corner of the room. The Russians retire for the night to the elevated platform behind the oven. Their bodies are so heavily clothed with rags that they need no covers. Besides, they lay right on the stones of the oven-fireplace. These solid stones still retain their heat from the formerly roaring fire. The Russians sleep close together in one large, brown heap.

    The talk gradually fades. The lights grow dimmer and the room quieter. From the corner with the illumination from a candle, one can hear the feeble voice of an old woman. She has knelt all evening in front of what is unmistakably a little altar. Some paper flowers, a white paper tablecloth, and the Greek-Orthodox cross with the three crossbars, the top one slanted, shimmers on the wall. We young school kids have not lain down yet.

    For the first time in weeks we finally have the opportunity to write letters home at the tiny table with the oil lamp. What in the world could be important enough to write in the middle of the Russian night? We send our new postal code number to our parents. This way, they will know that their sons are now at one of the fighting fronts, deep in the Russian heartland. After two more weeks, we will certainly receive word from our families. Besides the coming of Christmas, this moment appears to be the most blessed one imaginable to Hermann and me. Our minds are full of all these new and incredible impressions. We find it almost impossible to fall asleep. We keep talking after we finally lay down on the warm and dry straw pile. We talk until a raw ostmarker voice commands us: "Now, for heaven's sake, shut up, you altstatler, you goddamned!"

    After weeks of sleeping in primitive, moist tents, what bliss it is to feel warm and dry again! What is even better: Our letters have been written; we have reached out to our loved ones at home. We will hear from them in return, establishing the all-important bridge of thought and love.

    * * * *

    All the soldiers start their day's business with a rich stew out of the still hot oven. But then it's time for duty outside. The drizzle has been falling through the night and is now joined by an icy wind as morning breaks. We have to retrieve water for the horses from the well down in the middle of the wide street. Pails hung from telephone wires are thrown deep into the open pit, then dragged back up. Finally we carry the buckets around the house to some little shacks in back where the horses are stabled.

    The

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