I could hear the gramophone music at quite some distance from the base. My comrades were happily trying out their acquisition. The gramophone was wound up and soon the steel needle was scratching the tracks in the shellac disc. I think it was Richard Tauber, whose hit ‘Schön ist die Welt’ blared out triumphantly from the walls of our hut. The disc had a small gap and was also lacking a bit from the edge, but that did not bother us much. The second piece that Richard Tauber sang was an evergreen, his unspoilt ‘Sonny Boy’. Tauber’s voice sounded tinny and had a slightly nasal tone through the loudspeaker. The gramophone played all day long. Star tenor Richard Tauber had to keep on singing. The defect in the disc did not matter. Our little Küstrin world was not perfect either.
I took my books with me to the machine-gun position at the bridge. I was able to read and smoke undisturbed. The railway traffic over the Warthe had terminated the night before. Although we were unable to leave our defensive position, an opportunity arose during the day to visit the underpass. I wanted to look over the American Sherman in Russian service.
My impressions of the previous night were confirmed. The American tank in comparison to the trusty Russian T-34 was unusually tall and narrow, despite its rounding on all sides. Especially conspicuous were the narrow tracks. I doubted that they were much good for cross-country work, better for roads and reinforced tracks. The long-barrelled gun with a thick cylindrical front plate I took to be a Russian 76.2mm cannon. The olive-coloured steel colossus had been stopped here abruptly after passing through the underpass. I found the hole caused by a direct hit from a Panzerfaust on the rear of the turret. It was cleanly curved, round, coloured blue by the heat and with lightly frayed edges. The diameter I calculated as 80mm. The tank was closed. The crew had not survived the fatal shot. The escorting infantry seated on the tank had been thrown off by the explosion and the men lay on the far side of the street, all dead.
I went a bit further along Plantagenstrasse. Near the junction with Forststrasse stood the next steel monster on the left-hand side of the street with its turret turned to the right. The fatal shot appeared to have come from a cellar, but I could not be certain. Where the shot had been fired from was a small square bordered by several storeyed buildings.
I was particularly interested in the question of the type of this tank. I could not identify it. A Russian T-70 looked quite different. It was smaller, flat surfaced and with a gun that I calculated as being 75mm. The small entry hatch was on the left side of the tank. One could see the gun layer at the gun with his back to the hatch and the trigger in his right hand. The exploding Panzerfaust had prevented the gun firing by a few seconds. I also noticed that this tank had been travelling without carrying infantry.
However, a few days later the gun did fire a shot. It hit the building it was aimed at and tore a hole through the wall of the first storey. The furniture of a living room could be seen covered in dust and mortar.
I discovered several years after the war that this was a Mark III Valentine. Although we were often engaged against tanks, the tank recognition service had provided us with no material about this type.
The small tank appeared to have driven ahead of the Sherman. It could well have shot the hole in the façade of the building. In order to be able to be mobile in all directions, it had taken no escorting infantry with it.
Several soldiers joined our little battle group, those that had become separated from their units seeking an intact one. They were also seeking shelter from the military police and fanatical SS officers. One of those who joined our group was Bombardier Horn of the artillery, who was a typical old soldier, quiet, calm and reliable. There were also two Waffen-SS soldiers, tall young lads, whom the war had not yet deprived of the joy of living. These two SS men proved to be a stroke of luck for they were real artists at scrounging. Every day they surprised us with fresh bread, but refused to betray their source.
It was quiet at the bridge at first. Although we did not drop our guard, we could not detect change or movement at the Cellulose Factory. But we did not trust this quiet. Instinctively, we regarded the factory as not clean. We would gladly have tackled this uncertainty but our group was too small to search or occupy the factory. There were innumerable places of concealment on the factory premises and with the inability to oversee the ground we could easily fall into a trap.[15]
Hitler Youth Hans Dalbkermeyer recalled:
Beyond the Oder bridge and before the Artillery Barracks, Feldgendarmerie and Wehrmacht officers were filtering all men of military age and soldiers out of the refugee stream fleeing westwards and sending them into the nearby barracks. We five schoolboys from Birnbaum were also filtered out, although with our full approval as we wanted to assist in the defence of Küstrin. Either that day or the next we were attached to an officer-cadet company and incorporated in it. Together with three other soldiers and a sergeant we formed a section. We Birnbaumers received 1898 carbines as weapons and a Panzerfaust each. Our clothing was replaced with field-grey uniforms without insignia. Thus equipped we joined a long marching column of several units and marched along the same way back into the Neustadt.
On the edge of Drewitz, or it might still have been Küstrin, our section moved into a suburban house that had been abandoned by its owners. It lay on the outermost edge of town on the west side of a road leading north and was right forward in the front line. In front of us and westwards towards the Warthe and Oder were snow-covered open spaces providing a clear view to the next village, where the Russians settled down opposite us during the next few days.
The property, almost a small farmhouse, served us nine men well as accommodation. Apart from hens, there were no longer any animals. Thanks to our careful and rich feeding, the flock of hens thrived and enriched our menu with their eggs. We never suffered hunger here, nor did we during my whole time in Küstrin. We could almost live in luxury, using only those parts of our rations that we wanted to.
We catered for ourselves with what we could find in our house and a neighbouring cellar. We calmed our thoughts with the well-known belief that stealing food in emergencies is not punishable. In addition we received front-line fighters’ packets, which also contained cigarettes. No one protested when we youngsters smoked, but I was not interested and would swap my cigarettes for a bar of chocolate.
The civilian population had completely vanished from our sector. We lived as if on an island and learnt very little of what was going on in the town and on our front line. A radio in the house provided us with the daily Wehrmacht Report. Nevertheless it was said that Küstrin had been almost completely surrounded by Russian troops. I only heard about the publication of a Küstrin Fortress newspaper fifty years later. Nothing much came through to us in the front line. Possibly there was little interest in negative information. We hardly left our position at all, as the central area of the Neustadt was under heavier artillery fire than our north-western sector.