From my correspondence I note that I must have visited my Father in Vienna. He was in the Reserve Military Hospital there, on the Rosenhügel. It was only while in the position at Gschatsk that I had found out he had had a surprise move to Russia. During the course of the advance in the south, which then led on into the Caucasus and to Stalingrad, his military hospital group had got as far as Stalino and Artemovsk, in the eastern Ukraine. We suffered considerable casualties in the offensive. They led to the associated overload on the resources of the dressing stations, the field and main military hospitals. It also led to the overwork of the medical officers and other medical unit staff. At the age of fifty, in a state of nervous exhaustion, he himself had to be taken into hospital. But he was able to tell of his good fortune that he was not sent back to service behind the lines on the Eastern Front. Instead he was sent to the West, to Cambrai.
On 13 September 1942 I was back in St Avold. From there we three active officer cadets, Henschel, Popovsky and I, were sent to Metz for a preparatory course for War College. About sixty Reserve officer candidates were assembled there for ‘a revision of the ABC’, as I wrote home. Once again it was a matter of cleaning our boots and belts. Apart from the danger of being killed, life in the field, I said, ‘was far better’. I asked Mother to send me fifty marks because we were hungry, and were being ‘woefully shoo’d about’. In the evening we went into the town to eat un-rationed standard meals in the inns. The course was supposed to last until 9 October and the course at the War College to begin on 12 October. But we still did not know to which school we would be sent. On 29 September I asked Mother to send immediately, and by registered post, my certificate of Aryan ancestry and my fifth-form German essay exercise book. Father sent me a textbook on stenography on which I worked from time to time. At the grammar school I had not taken that option so as not to further increase my workload. The course in Metz ‘gradually petered out’ at the beginning of October. In the mornings we were supposed to undertake duty with a company, but ‘since no-one is bothered, we lie in really late in the morning and then go into town’.
We three from Regiment 7 were ordered to ‘School I for Probationary Officers of Infantry’ in Dresden. It was the War College for the active junior infantry officers and could be found in Neustadt under the really civilian-sounding address of 11 Marienallee. I arrived early on 12 October and as the first to arrive had rung them up. Then in the afternoon I went out by tram to the War College. I did not meet the prescribed requirement of at least two months’ probation at the front, so at first it seemed doubtful whether I would be accepted. It was with relief that I noted the positive decision. Part of that was doubtless due to the fact that the regiment, which knew what the entry requirements were, had sent me there nevertheless.
It was a pleasant surprise for Popovsky and me that almost half the course participants and a large part of the teaching personnel were southern Germans. I even found a room with Popovsky. In fact it was an apartment. The rooms, each provided for four men, consisted of bedrooms and living rooms. As it was war-time, by means of double beds they were occupied by twice the normal complement of men. So there were eight of us. As well as the two of us there were six more Gebirgsjäger, among whom we immediately felt at home.
I can still remember Ernst Lauda from Kapfenberg, Hubert Melcher from Obdach, Adolf Aschauer from Goisern, Dauth from Munich, Jakoby from Konstanz, and Zilinski from Stettin. The man from Stettin had reported to the mountain troops for the same sort of reasons that many southern Germans and Austrians went into the Navy. At the War College I also met Bäuerl from Stockerau, the brother of one of Rudi’s classmates, and my fellow-pupil from Sonneberg, Klausnitzer. Once again, I wrote urgently for my Ariernachweis, because non-Aryans, covering those who were up to one-quarter Jewish, were not allowed to become officers (translator’s note: the certificate of Aryan ancestry required under the National Socialist racial laws before an individual could be admitted to many institutions).
The accommodation was unbelievably comfortable. We had white bedclothes, running water in the bedroom and the rooms were cleaned by cleaning ladies. I wrote that the War College was ‘the best time I had had as a soldier so far’. It required not only physical, but also mental and spiritual qualities. The superiors, all officers, were selected men. The head of the Inspektion was a Hauptmann from Infanterieregiment 19 Munich, the Group Officer Oberleutnant Maltzahn. I also recall the tactics teacher, Major Rousen from Infanterieregiment 49 Breslau. The Inspektion corresponded to a company, the Group to a platoon. The aim of the course was to train us to become platoon commanders, the normal function of a Leutnant. The exercises took place on the famous Dresden troop training ground, the ‘Heller’. We had little free time. What little time I could spare I spent with my relatives, mainly with Uncle Rudolf and Aunt Hanni Löhner. At that time Rudolf had much to do. He was working on commissions for the memorial to Richthofen, the fighter pilot, at the Invalidenfriedhof in Berlin. He worked too on figures for the Dresden Opera and the Reich War Ministry.
In our room we often had a ‘beano’, to which the Styrians, Ernst Lauda and Hubert Melcher from Gebirgsjägerregiment 28, especially contributed. Their Ersatz troop unit was at that time in Marburg on the Drau. A short time previously they had heard a production there, of Verdi’s Traviata. Erni Lauda was really taken with the champagne aria and sang, over and over again, ‘Up, drink in thirsty draughts from the glass that Beauty presents to you’. The two of them teased each other with the amatory adventures they had had in Marburg. It emerged that Erni had once spent the conclusion of such an evening in the Marburg municipal park. He had got so hot that in no time he had taken off at least his field tunic, as well as his belt.
Ernst Lauda was killed in April 1944. Hubert Melcher lost a leg. Adolf Aschauer survived the war in one piece. (Once after the war I looked him up in the Rassingmühle in Goisern, his home. Ernst Lauda’s father at one time entered into correspondence with me and I met him in Schweidnitz.) He was at the time on the Staff of Heeresgruppe Süd with Feldmarschall Kesselring and he told me of one absurd order from the Führer. This order required that the sarcophagus of the Hohenstaufen Emperor Friedrich II be brought back with the Army on the evacuation of Sicily. However, Kesselring refused the order on the grounds that he needed every cubic metre of ship for troops and ammunition.
The star of our group was Arnold Suppan, a smart Kärntner with brown hair and brown eyes. He already held the Iron Cross First Class and the silver Infanteriesturmabzeichen (Infantry Assault Badge). The Gebirgsjäger told a lot about the Murmansk front from which they came, about the bright summer nights and the dark winter days in the Arctic Circle.