The seriously wounded could not always be brought back to the middle of the town from some of the exposed front line before dark. Too often help came too late, but even a proper burial site was lacking, the town cemeteries lying outside the defended area. A provisional cemetery in the yard of a housing block near the main dressing station was soon overfilled, and consequently many of the dead were being buried indiscriminately wherever there was a patch of workable earth. Not all the dead were treated in this manner, for some were smothered under collapsing buildings or blown apart by direct hits. At least among the combat teams, even if the men had only been together for a short while, their names could be recorded, and there were some so-called grave registry officers keeping the lists of the dead of some units somewhere among the ruins. There were also many reported missing in the fighting. A list published by the German Red Cross in 1958 gave a total of 1,400 names of soldiers, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and policemen aged between 17 and 61 years missing in Küstrin at the war’s end.
Some of the severely wounded were buried in the collapsed beer cellar of a restaurant on the Marktplatz opposite the town hall. Shells and low-flying aircraft made transportation to the main dressing station impossible, so some were taken into the crypt of the nearby church, which was soon destroyed. That evening several shells hit the roof and flames immediately engulfed the straw-dry timberwork. The heat caused the bells to ring before the nave and bell cage collapsed, burying everything under them. The wounded could not be saved, and even their names remained unknown.
While the church was alight, soldiers on the equally shot-up roof of the nearby Schloss prevented the clouds of sparks from setting fire to Reinefarth’s quarters. There was no longer any organised fire-fighting. The firemen and air raid wardens had suffered casualties proportionate to the front-line troops, while their vehicles had become victims of the bombardment and could hardly be used in the rubble-strewn streets. A few portable, petrol-driven pumps provided an inadequate replacement. Sappers used the demolition of individual buildings and ruins to prevent the spread of fire, turning them into natural anti-tank barriers. Furniture, doors and floorboards–as far as they were available–were ripped up by the Hungarian troops no longer in the front line. Wood for reinforcement work had meanwhile become as rare as fuel for the stoves in the cold, wet earth bunkers, cellars and fortress casemates. Nevertheless, day after day the flames continued to consume.
Eventually there was only one motor pump left intact, which was used in the Marktplatz to draw water from a deep well. In a surprise air attack most of the men fighting the ensuing fire fled into the hallway of a partially ruined building, but a bomb ripped its walls apart and the few firemen that were left waited in vain for their comrades to reappear.[2]
Officer Cadet Corporal Hans Dahlmanns recalled:
When the Soviet troops reached the east bank of the Warthe, the situation on the peninsula became very dangerous. The way in, following the railway line, led in full enemy sight over an about 50-metre-long railway bridge spanning across the flooded land to our peninsula. Anyone moving on it could expect heavy machine-gun and mortar fire.
One of the two officer cadets that had come with me to the peninsula lay in a small dugout just a few paces from the bridge. He was wounded by a mortar bomb splinter in the upper thigh and had to wait until darkness before he could be extracted. He was in great pain, which he bore bravely. Presumably he got away from Küstrin as the fortress was not completely surrounded at this stage. The other officer cadet died from a mortar splinter to the head while delivering a message.
The route to the peninsula was little liked, but had to be managed every day, not least because of the water level report, which had to be read at the risk of one’s life at the foot of the swing bridge and reported to the company command post. Since the Russians had arrived on the Warthe, this had been located in a cellar of the first house on the edge of the Altstadt. If we did not receive the water level report, I had to do the job, something I particularly disliked.
My main task at this point was maintaining contact between the company commander and the individual platoons deployed near the bridge. Apart from this I had to deliver the Warthe water level report daily to the fortress commandant in the Schloss. This message carrying became increasingly dangerous as the fortress area diminished, as firing could come from all sides and there were big stretches offering little cover. More and more often I saw the bodies of soldiers lying on the streets and squares that had been hit by sudden barrages far behind the front line. The Red Army had plenty of ammunition and used it industriously.
On my messenger rounds I regularly came past the Oder Potato Meal Factory, where I could call on my father. From mid-February until the end of March I saw him practically every day.[3]
Teenager Hans Dalbkermeyer concluded his account:
It must have been between 15 and 18 March that a Führer-Order demanded all the youths be evacuated from Küstrin. Some 40 to 50 youths assembled in a casemate room one evening. We were told that we would leave the town with the nightly supply convoy. We were briefed about the route and the way the convoy operated between the almost completely surrounded town and through the Russian lines. We could put our packs on the tracked vehicles, but would have to walk behind. Meanwhile I had acquired a pack again with some laundry and utensils. All weapons were to be left behind, but I took a small 6.35 pistol and ammunition with me despite the prohibition. As well as our packs, the tracked vehicles took the wounded to the hinterland.
Long thick ropes were attached to the rear of one of the vehicles to enable us to walk behind without losing contact. The convoy set off, left the town over the Oder and Vorflut Canal bridges, and set off into the night as quietly as possible, without any noise and without lights. We three remaining Birnbaumers kept together with others behind an armoured personnel carrier, and during the dangerous section were protected by being in the middle of the tracked vehicles. Hardly ever on proper roads, mainly on tracks and fields, we went stumbling on, but never letting go of the life-saving rope, towards safety and freedom. We reached Seelow in the early morning, recovered our packs and felt saved and at peace.
After a break in a Wehrmacht shelter on the Marktplatz, 30 to 40 of us were ordered to go on by rail to a retraining camp. The train left Seelow at midday. The orders to go to the retraining camp did not apply to us, so when the train stopped at Eberswalde we secretly got off. There was a local train on the track alongside going to Berlin-Bernau, so we stepped straight across from one carriage to the other without using the platform. As both trains set off in opposite directions, we separated from that closed and supervised group.
We knew that the main administration of our Heim Schools was based in Berlin-Spandau, so we reported back there. After three days in Berlin with nightly bombing attacks and the exchange of our fantasy uniforms for civilian clothing, my war service came to an end. With some difficulty we went by train from Berlin to Thuringia at the end of March. In Haubinda, near Hildburghausen, we found our Birnbaum school encamped, and with them my younger brother.[4]
Officer Cadet Corporal Fritz Kohlase arrived at Alt Bleyen with the 303rd Fusilier Battalion on the night of 19/20 March to relieve elements of the 25th Panzergrenadier Division, which was being pulled out of the line for a short rest: