A room in the cellars accommodated signallers, and another two engineer platoons guarding the nearby, still intact Oder Bridge. Those guards were happy when they returned to the sheltering cellars without having suffered any losses.
Volkssturm men carried wounded into the Middle School. Their platoon leader needed to use a lot of persuasion to get the men back out into the inferno.
The latest Wehrmacht Report contained nothing good: constant attacks on Küstrin, street-fighting in Gotenhafen and Danzig, further advance by the Americans in the Wetzlar area.
Towards noon and through the afternoon the situation reports worsened. ‘The Schloss is on fire!’ then ‘The Russians are in front of the Law Courts!’ And that was in a wing of the Schloss. The engineers too were restless. They had to keep the Oder Bridge ready for immediate demolition and the enemy were getting closer and closer.
At last came pleasant news. The enemy had been stopped and thrown back. But hardly an hour later darkness had fallen, the noise of fighting had died down, when came: ‘The Altstadt is to be evacuated!’ All the walking wounded were sent back to their units.
The Fusilier Battalion was supposed to be in Kuhbrücken. I set off together with Hans Schmidt, the sergeant from 3rd Company. Half an hour later the Oder and Dammvorstadt were behind us, we had already crossed the railway bridge to Kietz when a mighty explosion sounded behind us. Our engineers had blown the last bridge over the Oder.
First we tried to find accommodation in the lunette, but unsuccessfully. The wounded were lying on the floor there practically on top of each other.
We separated in Kuhbrücken, each seeking his own company. I was directed to a cellar in which Sergeant Manninger lay with the remaining platoon of the 2nd Company and a number of wounded. I was greeted enthusiastically. There was much to relate. The worst news was the destruction of the Thomagk section. In order to keep the attackers away from the dyke road, the section leader had had to dig in with his section on the enemy-facing side of the dyke at night, and without connection to the rear. When the Russians discovered them next day they engaged every foxhole with an anti-tank gun at close range until it was eliminated. Only the section leader was left alive that evening, albeit with a broken jaw bone.[3]
SS-Grenadier Oscar Jessen was also in the thick of the fighting:
The last day in the Altstadt gradually became confused. The wounded in the Schloss cellars were given hand grenades with which to commit suicide should the Russians break through and start a bloodbath. With three other comrades I was attached to a squad and equipped with Panzerfausts and Panzerschrecks. We were deployed in a still-smouldering ruin on the right side of the Marktplatz, where we were supposed to stop a Russian attack from the Kietz Gate. All around us we could see only ruins. The Schloss was on fire.
Soviet storm troops attacked through the Kietz Gate and from the north-west and took the Marktplatz as far as the Court House that afternoon. There was a desperate German counterattack shortly after dusk that was supported by a Hetzer.
Following the heavy bombardment during the day there came a sudden pause. Some time later we left our position and went through the communication trenches to the Schloss. The fortress commandant and his staff had disappeared. No one was there except the wounded in the field hospital. An uncomfortable feeling crept over us. All we could hear were occasional machine-gun bursts, the cries of the wounded and the crackling of flames. We followed some soldiers who had also realised that we had been left in the lurch. Later I heard that Gruppenführer Reinefarth had left the Altstadt in a Königstiger with many soldiers and had the bridge over the Oder blown once he had crossed it, even though there were still German soldiers on it, who all lost their lives.
Our group, which had meanwhile grown to 28 men, tried to get across the blown bridge to reach the steep west bank of the Oder. We got through soaking wet but only as far as the last pier, where we stayed and waited to see what would happen next.[4]
Hans Kirchhof was lying semi-comatose in the Schloss hospital when:
Suddenly it was announced that all who could walk and wished to do so, should go over to the west side of the Oder. A breakout would be attempted. With the help of some comrades I went along too, having nothing wrong with my feet.
Later I met up with men of my company, including Wolfgang Paul. He had been the gun layer in the Panther turret at the road junction in front of the Kietz Gate. When the Russians attacked, in the exchange of fire he received a sudden blow, opened the hatch and saw a metre-long tear in the gun barrel. An enemy shell must have hit it, putting it out of action.
In fact I first met Wolfgang Paul when we gathered together for the breakthrough west of the Vorflut Canal on the dyke road. We lay down together until the order: ‘All non-wounded to the north!’ and were finally just a few men.
Suddenly there was a mighty barrage from mortars and light infantry weapons, so we went back towards the railway bridge. More Germans joined, both wounded and unwounded, including a sergeant. Under the circumstances, we wanted to wait. By chance we found some dugouts with plank beds. I found a tin of dripping and a can of sardines in oil in my satchel. We lay down on the beds and I fell asleep. My comrades fastened a white cloth to a stick and stuck it in the earth on the roof of our dugout.
In the morning we went into captivity between Soviet soldiers with their sub-machine guns slung. At first I held my arms up, but after passing the first Russians I let them drop again.[5]
Lieutenant Alfred Bölke:
When enemy fire put an end to my observation post on the Marien Church, I left the Schloss Barracks. Captain Langenhahn wanted me to stay with him, but I went to my men, about 20 to 30 of them, who were sleeping in the casemates. On the evening of 28 March, a Wednesday, when the Altstadt was abandoned, the last Oder bridge, the railway one, was blown, so my men and I crossed the blown road bridge over the Oder and reached the Island wet, exhausted and only partly clothed. I sent my men to the abattoir and then went to the Artillery Barracks, bathed my feet and had just had my jacket replaced by my men when a colonel unknown to me appeared and wanted to know why I had not reported immediately; he accused me of shirking, and did not want to know when and how I had got there or that I was shaking from the wet, cold and exhaustion. Just as the situation threatened to become dangerous for me, my superior Captain Langenhahn fortunately appeared and immediately engaged the colonel and described me as one of his most reliable and bravest officers. Nevertheless, the colonel took me with him to the blown road bridge over the Oder and left me there to guard it. But one or two hours later Captain Langenhahn had secured my release and brought me back to my men at the abattoir. Thank God, for with the crowd at the bridge it was every man for himself. My men had already constructed a float for us to leave Küstrin by the Oder.
But the situation changed that evening when I discovered from Second-Lieutenant Haug that he had destroyed the radio in the Artillery Barracks immediately after sending the last message from the Küstrin Fortress. We were about to break out.
It had been quiet since dusk. A German voice called from a Soviet loudspeaker: ‘Soldiers, come over! Nothing will happen to you! Let the SS keep on fighting! Everything will end tomorrow anyway!’[6]