Our battery commander had been missing since noon on the 31st January. Perhaps he had been visiting a headquarters or another gun and had been surprised by events with another troop. It turned out that he had stood behind a Panzerfaust when it was fired and had been wounded by the back blast and taken to hospital.
Next day, the 1st February, the battery moved to Lunette B on the Island between the Oder and the Vorflut Canal. One or two days later, on the 2nd or 3rd February, I was under way as a runner looking for our packs. My route took me through Plantagenstrasse. Despite the impressive damage caused by the Soviet tank attack, the shot-up tanks were quiet. One could see from the small holes that they had been victims of our Panzerfausts. Beyond Anger Strasse I came across the destroyed position of our 37mm gun. My school friend Ostermann had been killed. A tank shell had penetrated the thin rampart and killed him on the spot. I do not know what happened to the rest of the gun crew.
Our packs that we had laid out in the open at the Cellulose Factory were no longer there, so I took a blanket from a wagon that had belonged to civilians killed in the fire in front of the factory.
On my way back I was shocked to see a German soldier hanging from a pole on the road bridge over the Warthe. The text of the sign hanging on him read: ‘I was a coward’, which upset me more than if it had said: ‘I was a spy’. Everyone was afraid, but I know of none of my comrades who nevertheless did not persevere. Our basic attitude was: Live decently, but not at the cost of your comrades or the people.
In Lunette B I could once more sit at a telephone exchange with a 20-plug switchboard. It was in a room about 1.5 by 2.5 metres immediately right of the narrow footbridge over the moat. One day a shell stuck in the earth above the door. Thank God it was a dud. There were many of them among the Russian 122mm shells.
Our rations were good. We also received fruit drops, biscuits, schnapps, vermouth and plenty of cigarettes. The issues were made in the pub close-by on the Pappelhorst. One of its rooms we used during the day as a rest-room and for cleaning weapons. We slept 500 metres away in the Artillery Barracks, where soldiers of various units slept together in a big, high hall. This gave us an uncomfortable feeling in our stomachs at night, because by day we could see Russian soldiers south of the Island and also when they were fired at by our 88mm flak with tracer shells, and should the enemy retaliate our hall offered a good target.
The position of the 37mm gun between the Vorflut Canal and Lunette B was so arranged that it could engage both low-flying aircraft and ground targets or boats south of the Vorflut Canal. In practice, however, it only fired at aircraft. After one engagement came a strong Russian reply with 122mm shells and our cook fled from the gun position to the pub, being fatally wounded on the way.
The day after the death of our cook, a superior handed me the briefcase of my school friend Dieter Gross with the dry information that he had been killed and asking that, as his friend, I should write to his parents in Hamburg. I did this, but beforehand went to see his last position, which was in the Neustadt somewhere in a commercial area between Warnicker Strasse and Landsberger Strasse. The last 200 metres of the way there were particularly dangerous, and my friend had been killed by well-camouflaged Russian snipers. The last 40 metres were outside the trench and could only be crossed by my escorting Luftwaffe auxiliary and myself under covering fire. A steel helmet raised on a stick above cover as a test immediately brought a shot through it. We were not fired at on our return, probably as a result of the firing of a German ‘Stuka zu Fuss’, which had a devastating effect where it hit.
One day a Tiger–some said it was a Königstiger–took up position near us. It drove from the Artillery Barracks to the road bridge, drove southwards and positioned itself noisily near the road to the alley leading to Lunette B. Its field of fire ranged from Lunette B to the south and south-west, so covering the canal and river approaches as well as the south-eastern boundary of Kietz. It hardly fired at all. At night it took shelter in the Artillery Barracks. This went on for several days.
On the Island we constantly expected an attack by the Russians. This was especially feared by our forward observer on the southern point, who recorded enemy activity either with his own eyes or through binoculars. I could even see this for myself when going yet again to check the telephone cable lying on the ground. Our 37mm gun was so placed as to be able to shoot at the water as well as the ground area.
Sometimes rubber dinghies went along the canal, apparently after specific reports from the forward observer. The paddling was so light and certain that it aroused our wonder. It was said that this was done by selected SS men.
During our Küstrin engagement we flak auxiliaries in our blue-grey uniforms got new photographs in our paybooks and the rank of gunner was stuck over that of Luftwaffe senior auxiliary.[20]
Luftwaffe Gunner Josef Stefanski recalled:
At the beginning of the fighting for Küstrin I was assigned to the Flak unit and dressed in uniform. We were deployed to various places. Our battery had four guns. In the middle of February these stood at the western exit from Kietz. The position was at the Weinbergshof farm. I once got leave from there to see the family off on the last goods train that was leaving Küstrin to take them to safety.
We lost two of our guns when we had to leave the Weinbergshof farm in the middle of February. Dug into the Oderbruch mud and dirt for cover they could not be moved. There were no tractors.[21]
On Friday, 2 February elements of the Soviet 8th Guards Army and 1st Guards Tank Army reached the Oder south of Küstrin apparently heading for those nine places where ferries were already located, although none was in fact operating due to the ice. Those units of the 4th Guards Rifle Corps on the right flank had a shock when they came to the little town of Sonnenburg, 14 kilometres east of Küstrin.
The town contained an old prison that had become one of the first German concentration camps in April 1933, later reverting to normal prison use. By the end of January 1945 it contained 1,000 prisoners from various countries. In the late evening of 30 January 1945 a twenty-strong special motorised Gestapo commando appeared and within four hours shot 819 prisoners selected from a card index. Five prisoners survived the shooting to be rescued by the Soviets and 150 others were marched off with the prison warders and their families at 0300 hours on 31 January towards Küstrin. Later in the morning a squad of Wehrmacht sappers appeared with orders to blow up the prison but soon gave up their attempts.[22]
At dawn on 2 February aircraft of two Luftwaffe divisions resumed the attack on the Kienitz bridgehead and Soviet units on the east bank of the Oder. Aerial reconnaissance reported that the ice on the Oder was continuing to break up; it was also raining and the day temperature rose as high as 8 degrees Celsius.[23]
Soviet troops managed to get men across at several places, despite problems with the thawing ice as it broke up. The resistance met was minimal as the only German forces in the area were armed Reichsarbeitsdienst personnel posted to assist refugees to cross. However, the crossing points were subjected to repeated attacks by German fighter and ground-attack aircraft as none of the Soviet antiaircraft artillery had yet arrived. There was no bridging equipment with the forward echelons, except in the case of the 1st Guards Tank Army, which managed to get a few tanks and self-propelled guns (SPGs) across at Reitwein on 2 February, only to have them and the bridging pontoon recalled on the next day for the East Pomeranian operation. Consequently, no heavy equipment could be got across and the bridgeheads were therefore limited to a depth of about 4 kilo-metres in order to remain within artillery cover from the east bank.[24]
22
Kohlase [Küstrin], pp. 42–3. The main responsibility for this massacre lay with State Secretary Klemm, Oberstaatswalt Hansen, Prison Director Knops, his deputy Rung, Inspector Klitzing, the leader of the special Gestapo commando Krause, and the SS men who had carried out the murders. Rung was later sentenced to death for his part in this crime, Klitzing died in prison, and Klemm was given a life sentence but released after only a short while.