It was torture lying in that hollow. Only a few times during the day did we dare change the positions of our arms or move our heads from one side to the other. We dared not do more from fear of discovery. If we stayed still, then even if we were seen we would have been taken for dead.
Although we lay in water the whole day, we did not freeze. Our fear of falling into Russian hands, our determination to break through to the German lines and our conviction that within 24 hours at the most we would be lying in a German field hospital and able to rest gave us the strength to remain alert and not freeze. We even hardly felt hungry.
Red Army soldiers fired often at the trees on the peninsula. If we lay directly in the line of fire, the shots went closely over us or crossed over us as ricochets from the water, making us break out into a cold sweat, as everything hung on chance whether we were fired on as targets or were hit unintentionally. We had not counted on this when we selected our hiding place.
We went through an even bigger period of anxiety that afternoon. Shots and explosions went off around our sandbank, sometimes closer and sometimes further away. At first we thought that we had been discovered and were being fired at with light mortars. After some time we recognised the cause: the Russians were firing captured Panzerfausts at the trees behind us. Unfortunately we were lying directly in the line of fire and not far from the trees. Because of the mine belt the Russians did not dare come on to the peninsula. In the late afternoon, however, two of them landed from a rowing boat. They first wandered around on foot, then went around the peninsula and came close to our sandbank. We were lucky. They both rowed past within 5 metres of our hiding place and either did not see us or took us for dead.
At last the darkness came and we could sit up and move around, take some sodden biscuits from our pockets and eat them. But still we could not move off. As it became dark the Red Army soldiers set fire to a house on the railway embankment, illuminating the Vorflut Canal so that we dare not cross it. It took hours before the fire died out and the soldiers went to rest.
My wound was hurting throughout the long lying down and my left knee and right arm would not move properly. Consequently I had great difficulty swimming the canal. The strong current carried me several hundred metres and tore off my boots. Completely soaked through, barefoot and limited in my movement, but still armed with two pistols, two spare magazines and a hand grenade, we set off towards the main front line. We had neither map nor compass and orientated ourselves simply by the noise and lights from the distant front line. Oddly, this night appeared nevertheless quite quiet.
Again and again we had to cross water ditches and twice swam the Alte Oder. We gradually began to feel the effects of exhaustion. As the first signs of dawn were appearing on the horizon we reached the Soviet front line. Unnoticed, we stumbled into a mortar position in a bushy area where Russian soldiers were lying around in unexpected numbers. Further forward the land was flat and uncultivated. Even further on was a little wood from which shots and bursts of fire came from time to time. That was the German front line.
In view of the time and my condition, we decided to leave the breakthrough until the following night and looked for a new hiding place. We wanted to go back to the meadow thicket that we had passed on the way. Suddenly I was overcome with such exhaustion that nothing mattered any more. Instead of going around two cottages that stood about 100 metres apart, we simply walked through between the Soviet sentries. In the firing that followed I became separated from my comrade.
Once more I managed to escape. On the other side of the Alte Oder I reached some shot-up German positions with lots of dead lying around that had not yet started to decay. On one of them I found an open tin of meat that satisfied my great hunger. Then I found a Soviet leaflet calling upon us to surrender, which contained a pass written in several languages, crept into a foxhole, camouflaged myself a little and immediately fell asleep.
When I awoke I found myself looking at the muzzles of Russian rifles. Several men in earth-brown uniforms were standing in front of my hiding place and signalling for me to come out. Once I was out, the rifles were still aimed at me and someone said, ‘Stoj, Gemane!’ I slowly raised my hands over my head. It was Easter Saturday and the sun stood high in the sky. I did not look like a hero. I was barefoot and wore only my underwear, uniform trousers and shirt, all torn. I was wearing blurred Wehrmacht spectacles, and my hair was completely dishevelled. I was also very dirty.[20]
SS-Grenadier Oscar Jessen was also taken prisoner:
The Russians appeared next morning, climbed on the blown bridge and examined its condition. They did not see us at first as we were below their line of sight, and they did not suspect our presence. I had previously removed my SS uniform jacket and thrown it into the water. Those comrades who did not do so were later to pay for it with their lives. Once we were discovered, we had to clamber back to the east bank of the Oder, where some female Soviet soldiers immediately searched us. About eleven men were either beaten to death or shot. I only had my teeth knocked out.
We survivors were next kept in a ruin near the church. Next day we had to throw all the dead into an anti-tank ditch on the right of the Schloss together with all their military equipment. This also included the dead from the field hospital in the Schloss, who had all committed suicide. The doctor had shot himself and the nurse had taken poison. Both were sitting at a table, where they had opened a photograph album. I will never forget the sight.
We then marched via Zielenzig and Landsberg on the long journey to Posen. The villages we passed through gave the impression of awful wretchedness. There were many dead along the road that had been crushed by tanks. At night came the cries of women being raped and calling for help. From Posen we went by train to Siberia for fully five years.[21]
Chapter Eleven
Consequences
The fall of Küstrin was acknowledged in the Wehrmacht Report a day later. The breakout battle had cost the lives of 637 soldiers, with a further 2,459 wounded and 6,994 reported missing. One of those killed near the Tannenhof in the breakout was Major Otto Wegner, the 55-year-old Altstadt Defence Sector commander. His remains were removed to the military cemetery at Gorgast on 3 December 1953, having been identified by his identity disc.[1]
After the Volkssturm surrender in the Altstadt, the few troops still holding out in the ruins and glacis outside that had not been party to the surrender were captured and shot. The 200 or so wounded in the Main Dressing Station were supposed to have been honourably treated by the Soviets in accordance with the terms of surrender negotiated by the Volkssturm commander, Captain Gustav Tamm, but it appears that some of those who could not walk were also shot.[2]
However, a few Volkssturm men already on the Kietz side of the Oder got through to the German lines in the breakout. They were given ten days’ leave to help them recover from their wounds and had orders to report to Nedlitz in Potsdam on 21 April. They were then deployed in defence of Wannsee Island between the Jungfernsee and Weissensee, from where they took part in another breakout that got them as far as Stahnsdorf cemetery before they were captured.[3]
The 32 officers and 965 NCOs of the Wehrmacht who had survived the breakout from Küstrin were sent on by the narrow-gauge railway connecting the Oderbruch via Seelow with Fürstenwalde and accommodated in the Mars-la-Tour Barracks there on Good Friday, 30 March.[4]