So, ‘eleven’ of us remained together. Our service went on, apart from the normal work of the barracks, under the supervision of a Leutnant, a NCO, and a Gefreiter who, at the same time, was senior soldier in the barrack room. The ‘eleven’ of us were Hans Alterman from Gottesberg in Silesia, Walter Borrmann from Breslau, Walter Henschel from Reichenbach in the Eulengebirge, Hans Bernt and Gottfried Bergmann from Liegnitz, Jochen Fiedler from Glogau, Diesel and Helmut Überla from Trautenau, Pohlmann from Wuppertal, together with Popovsky and me.
Since Popovsky had a camera with him, I have some photos. The first shows us in a group on the parade ground. We are wearing field service jackets, with our top collar button undone, our belts buckled, army boots, and the ‘forage’ field service caps on our heads. My hands are still stuck into my trouser pockets in a quite unmilitary fashion.
After basic training was over we were moved to Mörchingen, halfway between Metz and Saargemünd. The place mostly consisted of barracks built after 1871, after Alsace-Lorraine had reverted to Germany. Here was the staff of Ersatz Regiment 28, to which the two infantry regiments 350 and 461 belonged. From then on our group was part of the 2nd Company of Infanterie-Ersatz-Bataillon 350. I scarcely have any recollections of St Avold, because at the time, during basic training, you were not allowed to leave the barracks. I can only remember one single trip out that we used to find a photographer’s studio. I recall Mörchingen as the place where all our training took place, carried out on the parade ground and on the firing range. Certainly, in St Avold we drilled on the parade ground and first practised with our weapons. That was only a little compared with the variety of the drill to which we were then subjected.
The ‘Training Regulations for the Infantry’ (A.V.I.), Army Service Regulations (HDV 130/2a) for Schützenkompanie was the ‘bible’ according to which our life as soldiers then proceeded. From the Individual Training I shall quote the following, concerning the ‘basic position’:
1) The soldier’s good bearing is an index of his training and overall physical education. It is to be improved whenever everyday service provides the opportunity.
2) Standing without weapon to ‘Attention’! In the basic position the man stands still. The feet stand with the heels close together. The toes are placed as far apart as to position the feet at not quite a right angle to each other. The weight of the body rests at the same time on the heels and on the balls of both feet. The knees are slightly straightened. The upper body is held erect, the chest slightly pushed forward. The shoulders are at an equal level. They are not drawn up. The arms are stretched gently downwards, the elbows pressed moderately forward. The hand touches the upper thigh with fingertips and wrist. The fingers are together. The middle finger lies on the trouser seam, the thumb along the index finger on the inside of the hand. The head is held erect, the chin a little drawn back into the neck. The eyes are directed straight ahead. The muscles are easy and at the same time tensed. Convulsive over-tension of muscles leads to a poor and forced bearing.
3) Should there be heard the cautionary part of a word of command, the call of a superior or the command Achtung! without these being preceded by Attention! the man of course remains still.
4) ‘Stand at Ease’! The left foot is moved forward. The man may move, but not speak without permission.
We had the old Kar 98 rifle. Rifle training was followed by training on the light machine-gun (LMG), the 08 Pistol, the machine-pistol, the hand-grenade and the anti-tank rifle. All that was followed by the infantryman’s training in combat and field service, and training in close-quarters fighting. No less important was training in the section, the smallest unit, which consisted of the section leader and nine men.
The section leader is leader and first of his section into battle. He is responsible for:
1) carrying out his combat task,
2) direction of the light machine-gun fire and, as far as combat allows, the rifle troops,
3) ensuring that the weapons, ammunition and equipment of his section are ready for combat and are at full strength.
Section training also included the section’s method of combat, its behaviour under fire, working its way forward, penetration, taking and holding a position, withdrawing, as well as the group being on reconnaissance service and picket duties.
HDV 130/2a of course also covered training in the platoon and in the company. All that was contained in 670 points. Infantry officer training, however, not only required the knowledge necessary to command a section, a platoon or a company, but also knowledge of the so-called heavy infantry weapons, i.e. the heavy machine-gun, the heavy mortar, the light and heavy infantry guns, and the antitank gun. It covered training in horse riding and driving, the latter including driving both horse-drawn and motorised vehicles.
By listing the material it can be seen that we spent most of our service time on the training ground. We began with simply moving around the ground in the respective formation, then to march training in formations of different, slowly increasing lengths, and finally firing practice. All that was preceded by a thorough process of training in firing positions. I proved to be a good shot. I soon found out that my vision in my right eye was not as sharp as that in my left. The eye test we had when we mustered had been a cursory one. It was only much later that I became aware that I had an astigmatism, with a clear decrease in visual sharpness of my right eye as against my left. Meanwhile, after I had successfully tried shooting left-handed, I stuck with it and achieved excellent results. At the exercises at 100m range, standing offhand, and 200m range, lying offhand, I managed to score 30 and 55 respectively, and thus was in the narrow range leading the group.
Firing practice, and the marches that regularly took place on Saturday, stood out from the drill on the parade ground. Firing practice involved bodily relaxation. Marches involved particular bodily exertion. If on the first march, which lasted an hour, we covered only 5km, within a few weeks that was increased in 10km increments to 55km. It all led to the very edge of exhaustion. As proper infantrymen, on the marches we wore footcloths instead of socks, and before the march we smeared our feet with deer tallow so that, provided our boots fitted, blisters or sores hardly ever occurred. Only once did I get so-called pressure points, that is, blisters under the hard skin. They were extremely painful but at least entitled me to sit up on the horse-drawn vehicle that followed behind us.
Everyday life in the barracks began with reveille, soon followed by the duty NCO’s (UvD) call ‘those detailed to fetch coffee step out’. Before work began, one-and-a-half hours after reveille, morning washing had to be done, beds had to be made expertly and lockers tidied up. Inside work included cleaning weapons, and cleaning barrack blocks. The weekly hour of polishing and patching also took place as part of the daily boot cleaning and occasional uniform cleaning sessions. We pressed the trousers of our walking-out uniform by laying them overnight between the sheet and the straw mattress.
In addition to the field uniform and drill clothing, every man also possessed a walking-out uniform. It was called Sarasani, because in actual fact it looked by no means smart, but resembled circus dress. While the field uniform was made of single coarse cloth of a green-grey-brown colour, the walking-out uniform had two different kinds of grey cloth. The jacket was vaguely green, but the trousers were more of a blue tinge. The collar was dark green, the collar patches and those on the forearms were of silver braid trimming.