As events were to show, we had been extremely lucky with our allocation of sector of the front and had a better chance of survival than most. First, we were hit far less often in the general firing and bombardments than the remaining parts of the Neustadt, and secondly we were able to withdraw towards the railway station and west to the Warthe when the Russians attacked on the 7th March.[16]
Officer Cadet Corporal Hans Dahlmanns was also caught up in the chaos:
In the following days, to give us something to do in the Engineer Barracks, which were right behind the front line, we had to knock rifle firing holes in the walls while rifle bullets whistled through the windows on the east side. Then came engagements on a small scale. Once we lay the whole night in snow water, the thaw having started, without firing a shot, while bullets whistled past. Following this nature cure, a bad cough that had been troubling me for some time vanished completely.
An 88mm flak gun stood not far from the barracks. It controlled large parts of the north-eastern area to the extent that the gunners did not pay much attention to their cover. However, whoever showed himself at a window on the first floor in the building behind the gun position had to reckon with aimed shots from the enemy. It was an idyll for which the Soviet mortars had prepared a quick ending.
Immediately behind the barrack wall was a wood dealer’s yard, where we had to guard the barracks, not knowing where the Russians really were. It was there that I saw the first German dead. On his breast lay a shot-through pay book. I leafed through it and saw my father’s signature. This was the first letter he had to write reporting a hero’s death. Four or five days later I met a sergeant from my father’s company. He told me that my father was fine and that his command post was in the Oder Potato Meal Factory on the riverbank.[17]
Sapper Ernst Müller, recently arrived in Küstrin with other replacements, continued his account:
The ensuing siege saw me next as a number 2 machine-gunner near the Sparkasse Bank. We were lucky and only came under periodic fire from Soviet mortars, guns and rockets. We ‘Holzmindeners’ were divided into several platoons under Lieutenant Schröder:
1st Platoon: Second-Lieutenant Schröter (later Sergeant Berger), at the Stern.
2nd Platoon: Staff-Sergeant Haubenreiser, at the Warthe.
3rd Platoon: Sergeant-Major Peter Kaiser, Vorflut Canal, command post in the last building before the Altstadt station.
4th Platoon: Battalion Sergeant Major Gleiche, casemate on Friedrichstrasse.
5th Platoon: With demolition squads, Second-Lieutenant Storm, Sergeant-Major Schulz and Staff-Sergeant Kukei for the Oder road bridge, and Second-Lieutenant Lülau for the Oder railway bridge. The latter had a command post in a casemate on the railway.
During the course of the siege, Engineer Replacement and Training Battalion 68 and Territorial Engineer Battalion 513 were combined as the Fortress Engineer Battalion under the command of Captain Fischer. The command post of Captain Dahlmanns’ company was in the Potato Meal Factory. Captain Fischer had his command post in the Law Courts, as did Lieutenant Schröder during the last third of March. (Previously, until the fall of the Neustadt, Schröder’s command post was in a casemate on the Warthe and subsequently in a building on the edge of the Altstadt.) In the Law Courts was also Staff-Sergeant Tewes with his men.[18]
Officer Cadet Karl-Heinz Peters, another sapper replacement, related his experiences as a member of the garrison:
Following my time with the Reichsarbeitsdienst, I began my military service at the end of May 1944. After training as an armoured engineer, I found myself in the officer cadet company of Armoured Engineer Replacement and Training Battalion 19 in Holzminden.
In the second half of January we were entrained for the East. It was very cold. We went in cattle wagons with peat deposits on the floor. The rail journey lasted several days and ended at Frankfurt/Oder, from where buses took us to Küstrin. There we had to dig in on the outer defensive line of the Neustadt. Next day we heard the sound of tanks. We were soon withdrawn and deployed at the Warthe bridges. During the first days of February we received massive artillery fire. At this time there were two Königstigers in our sector, an 88mm flak battery and a 20mm quadruple gun. When these were withdrawn we were left with no heavy weapons apart from Panzerfausts from then on.
The Warthebruch was still frozen over. Russian snipers had concealed themselves on the islands and promontories and gave us a hard time. They fired tracer bullets at the swans standing on the ice from the right bank of the Warthe. Before our 20mm quadruple gun was withdrawn, it managed to destroy several of the snipers’ nests.
Gradually the Soviet artillery fire diminished. At first we had made ourselves at home on a houseboat in the harbour. There was a gramophone on the boat with the record ‘My Golden Baby’. We also found a book, Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. That was the right kind of literature for our situation. But our time on the boat was not long, for the Russians literally shot off the stern.
When shells exploded in the water many dead or stunned fish came to the surface, including enormous pike. The Warthe and Oder must be very rich in fish. Formerly there must also have been sturgeon, for when I saw a photograph of the Küstrin Schloss courtyard, I noticed sturgeon on the surrounding relief.
Groups of refugees were still crossing the bridges in February, moving from the Neustadt to the Altstadt. The Russians deliberately aimed at them and inflicted some casualties. The enemy had drawn the ring tighter around the town. That Küstrin had been declared a fortress meant virtually a death sentence for us soldiers, bringing an enormous emotional strain.
The effect of the Soviet artillery was reinforced by the blanket barrages of Stalin-Organs that we found frightening. For lack of our own heavy weapons, we were practically defenceless against the enemy fire. The Soviet artillery was deployed in open fields near Sonnenburg and fired at us without pause. There were some 30 batteries, including 152mm cannon. At first the enemy fire was directed by an observer on the chimney of a waterworks until our flak destroyed the chimney.
The Russians must have taken considerable casualties from the flak at first. One morning I counted 19 burning trucks on the Sonnenburger Chaussee.
The continuous artillery and mortar fire destroyed all our cover. We thought that every Russian must have a mortar. The calibres ranged from 50 to 120mm. As we were getting direct enemy fire from the Warthe Island and the Sonnenburger Chaussee, we built a screen at night of interwoven textiles and paper, but it was shot away again within a few hours.
I had temporarily dug in with my comrade Franz Jürgens in the front garden of a house standing right next to the railway leading over the Warthe. We moved some railway sleepers from a nearby yard on a wagon and used them to cover our hole with a triple layer. That was just as well for shortly afterwards we received three direct hits from a 120mm mortar without damage.
The Russians had such a good view from the Sonnenburger Chaussee that we dared not let ourselves be seen in daylight. Once when I was attending to a call of nature outside our hole, an anti-tank gun fired at me and I had only a shallow dip in which to take cover. The anti-tank gun fired about ten times at me before I could dive back into the hole.[19]
Luftwaffe Auxiliary Fritz Oldenhage, whose unit had fled from the Cellulose Factory when the Soviet tanks appeared the previous day, continued his account: