Erich Zeschke described his experiences as a ‘pipeline’ truck driver:
In 1945 I belonged to 6 Company, Transport Battalion 532. In February and March, until the final surrounding of Küstrin, we were stationed in Mühlenstrasse, Seelow, while the battalion was in Müncheberg. We had about 20 tracked vehicles, two-and four-ton Opels, which the soldiers nicknamed ‘Mules’. Our task was conveying supply deliveries from Seelow to Küstrin and bringing back people and materials. We only drove at night in complete darkness.
We collected ammunition and mail from the station in Seelow. Then we followed Reichsstrasse 1 to the crossroads from Alt Tucheband and Golzow, where we turned left and crossed the Berlin–Küstrin railway line, leaving Golzow station to our right. From Golzow we turned right and followed the Oderbruch Chaussee to Gorgast. Here we crossed the Alte Oder and entered the ‘corridor’–a narrow land connection to the beleaguered fortress of Küstrin. The length of our route from Gorgast to the railway bridge over the Vorflut Canal in Kietz was about 6 kilometres. At first the route was along a road and led south-eastwards of the Alt Bleyen manor farm over the fields. From Kuhbrücken we then drove south along the dyke road, passed the track junction and then on to the railway bridge over the Vorflut Canal.
In order to avoid Soviet artillery fire, we drove as follows: Stop before the bridge. Each truck crossed the bridge individually. The interval between vehicles varied from half to two minutes and even longer pauses under heavy fire. Then we were on the Island and often across the Oder to the Altstadt. Mainly we went to two places, the Artillery Barracks and another complex in which equipment was stored. The ammunition was unloaded at a park-like place. Often I had mail to hand over to the fortress commandant’s staff.
On the return journey we took wounded, six to eight men per truck, and ten to twelve light wounded. When there was still room, we took items of equipment and raw materials, such as leather. We unloaded again in Seelow. Except for a few wounded, we had no casualties to complain about.
Our last trip took place on the night of 21/22 March, after which a Soviet offensive shut off the fortress again, this time for good.[21]
The news-sheet of 8 February reported: ‘The army commander-in-chief has expressed his appreciation to the brave garrison of Küstrin for its fierce resistance until now and its considerable success.’ The local situation report noted ‘lively reconnaissance and assault troop activity’ and gave enemy losses as 113 killed. As usual, nothing was said about the extent of German casualties. The dressing stations were still adequate, but the number of casualties they held had increased with every action since the interruption of transportation to the hinterland. The large garrison hospital in the town woods offered excellent facilities as a main dressing station, but this extensive complex had been on the front line since the very beginning, so additional dressing stations had been improvised in two of the Altstadt schools, their old walls giving ample protection against the now dominant mortars. Since the rocket salvoes had started landing on the Neustadt, the wounded had been shaking with every explosion. Some were even lying in the gymnasium of the Boys’ Senior School in Friedrichstrasse. This single-storey functional building of recent construction only had a light, flat roof and thin brick walls with wide expanses of window. Nobody went there voluntarily.
When the artillery was relatively quiet, the street traffic livened up. Cars, apart from those bearing the Red Cross, were rarely seen for lack of fuel but horse-drawn carts and tractors were common. Those who begged could, with the right words or cigarettes, according to the mood of the driver, reach their destination more quickly. Because of the extensive flooding resulting from the thaw, there were no other means of conveying people to and from the more distant parts of the town. The trams had given up even before the fighting started and the depot with all its trams in the Neumarkt had since been destroyed by the first salvoes, and there had never been a town bus service except to Drewitz and, for a while, to Kietz.
Even the most fragile wagons were in use transferring civilian and military stocks from the Neustadt into the presumably safer Altstadt. Volkssturm men not deployed in the front line for lack of weapons or on health grounds were ordered to clear the Army Supply Depot, which had been prepared for demolition with explosives. They were in no great hurry, for there were always more difficult and dangerous jobs for them to be allocated to. But neither the willingness of the labour force nor the capacity of the transport was the decisive factor here, for it was the capacity of the almost 200-year-old military barn in the Altstadt that set the limits.
Next Hitler Youth teams quartered in the Hitler Youth office building on the Marktplatz began moving the stocks of abandoned private wholesale and retail businesses into the Altstadt, this being momentarily the main task for those not yet called up for the Volkssturm or military service. The boys often had difficulty convincing their parents of the quality of the household articles, textiles and foodstuffs they were moving from the partly ruined Neustadt, for everything was still strictly rationed in the few shops still open.[22]
Then came a restless night, the most disturbed night since the refugee trains and treks had passed through in January, as windows shook to extensive booms that arose in irregular waves, only to diminish and then resume at full strength. The cannonade was far enough away that one could not distinguish between the firing and the explosions, but too near to enable one to sleep peacefully. The flashes of gunfire and exploding shells were like sheet lightning in the sky. For days there had been talk of heavy Bavarian artillery regiments unloading at Müncheberg. These were only harmless rumours like others that arose daily and often developed into dramatic legends before being quietly forgotten again.
The thunder of the artillery kept soldiers and civilians fully clothed until morning in expectation of having to take shelter in bunkers and cellars. (So far the use of shelters for permanent residence had not been necessary.) After eight days of only candles or paraffin lamps for illumination, it was now possible to enjoy the luxury of electric light. The power plant of the Potato Meal Factory in the Neustadt, which with its 1,000 or so employees was the biggest business in the town, had become the town’s power station after all the cables to the outside world had been cut. An announcement in the news-sheet warned everyone to be exceedingly economical in order to avoid overloading the system. Heating appliances and suchlike were not to be used.
The artillery battle died down but in the early morning all parts of the fortress came under harassing fire, the main concentration being on the Altstadt, and Küstrin suffered its first civilian casualties. A man and a woman in a side street near the town hall fell to shrapnel splinters while taking advantage of a pause in the firing to attend to their needs. The roneoed news-sheet that afternoon described the night’s exchange of fire. Contact had been made with the formations attacking from the west. This was the first official acknowledgement of the existing encirclement and almost complete isolation of the town. Its restrained formulation and its position at the end of the situation report showed that success was not taken as certain. In fact the 21st Panzer Division had pushed through to the town on the general line of the railway and opened a roughly 2-kilometre-wide aisle in the Soviet encirclement. However, both the railway and the road remained impassable.[23] The fortress situation report for 9 February read: