Krukenberg continued:
During the morning I returned to the Chancellery once more to introduce myself to the new sector commander, SS-General Mohnke, but met General Krebs, who told me that the advance guard of General Wenck’s army had just reached Werder, west of Potsdam. He knew nothing new about the state of negotiations with the West, but the Americans were certainly in a position to cover the 90 kilometres between the Elbe and Berlin in very little time and restore the situation in the city.
During my visit, SS-General Mohnke promised to give me all the support possible in my difficult task and told me that he would place at my disposal a company of sailors that had flown in during the night and were in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs garden. Moreover, the Nordland’s SS 503rd Heavy Tank Battalion, which still had eight tanks and self-propelled guns, would remain under my command. These two trumps reinforced our defensive capability.
On the 27th April the situation was calm within the formation and only a few individual Russian soldiers tried to advance cautiously along Blücherstrasse towards the canal at the Hallesche Tor.
Captain Henri Fenet continued his account:
All morning the shells continued to crash down on the Opera House, Schloss Berlin and the surrounding area with such violence that the headquarters moved to a less unpleasant place as soon as there was a gap in the shelling. This was at the Schauspielhaus (now Konzerthaus) and then in Stadtmitte U-Bahn Station. On the way, the medical officer said that we were on Französische Strasse (French Street). Two and a half centuries ago our Hugenot ancestors had installed themselves in the area we were about to defend.
Shortly afterwards von Wallenrodt collected the battalion and the general proceeded to award Iron Crosses won the previous day in his underground command post. We were very happy to be together again and this break of several hours had been most welcome for us all. The men gathered around me bustled around, filling my pockets with sweets, chocolates and cigarettes that they had just been given. They sang happily in the underground carriages, but the party was incomplete, for No. 1 Company was still missing. What the hell had happened to Labourdette?
It was only towards the end of the afternoon that de Lacaze, an Officer-Cadet in the 1st Company, arrived with the bulk of the effectives. Labourdette was not among them. He had left with several of his men for an outer position in the U-Bahn tunnels while giving de Lacaze orders not to worry about him but to gather up the rest of the company at the stipulated time should he not have returned, in which case he should go straight to the command post. He had not been seen since. At the last contact, he had not been at the location where he had set himself up in a primitive fashion, and it had not been possible to trace him. We were not particularly worried for the moment, for in these battle conditions several hours of delay were nothing extraordinary, but it was not much later that we learned of Labourdette’s death. He had fallen in the tunnels, riddled with bullets while returning from a reconnaissance and protecting the withdrawal of his men with an assault rifle. He was 22 years old and immensely proud of having been enlisted as No. 3 in the French SS.
Krukenberg continued:
Meanwhile, the 1st Company under Second-Lieutenant Labourdette was engaged in a sector better prepared with dug-in tanks and solid barricades. de Lacaze’s platoon was engaged in defending one of these, whilst Croisile’s platoon, reduced to 20 men, deployed in the U-Bahn to counter eventual underground probes. When they came up again, de Lacaze’s platoon had disappeared. During a bombardment that followed, the platoon gathered in a small group under Officer-Cadet Robelin. There were a few casualties.
Towards midday, the company was taken over by a Wehrmacht major near Yorckstrasse S-Bahn Station. T-34 tanks were swarming about to the east. The S-Bahn bridges (over Yorckstrasse) were blown and dropped into the street. There they encountered a young French civilian whose only concern was to know how he could get back to the little factory in the area where he worked!
The company took shelter under a porch while awaiting a counterattack. Robelin left with his platoon to rejoin the Fenet Battalion, but they were never seen again. Croisile’s platoon was down to 14 men, plus a Wehrmacht soldier, one airman and one Volkssturm man. Only one machine gun in firing condition remained, but they had assault rifles.
At about 1400 hours a small counterattack to enable the major to evacuate his wounded succeeded. Seven tanks arrived via Yorckstrasse and the Russians came from every–where, but hesitated tackling a group so strong. Five or six disguised as civilians and pulling a cart were fired on and fled. An old gentlemen politely asked Labourdette to remove boxes of ammunition stacked in his apartment on the 5th floor. When they were opened, they were found to contain Panzerfausts. What a windfall! The first T-34 to approach was missed by Croisile, but hit by the Wehrmacht soldier. However, news was scarce and uncertain, and couriers often failed to return.
Meanwhile the Sub-Sector Stadtmitte was occupied without incident and lookouts were posted along the Landwehr Canal. On the wings, the Regiments Danmark and Norge had a third of their effectives in lines in the rubble south of Hollmannstrasse. In the event of an attack in force, they were to withdraw slowly to the principal line of resistance on the level of Besselstrasse and Ritterstrasse, where prepared nests of anti-tank and machine guns would offer them the necessary support.
At their command post level, the battalions and regiments held a third of their grenadiers formed into shock troops ready to move forward quickly by passages pierced through the buildings to reject any enemy that penetrated our lines.
A last third, held in relative rest in Leipziger Strasse, was to stay there. This street, just about suitable for traffic, served as a deployment route for our tanks, which were supported by groups of tank-hunting detachments of French volunteers. The remainder of the latter and the Engineer Company of the Nordland remained in the cellars of the Opera or the Allianz building, from where they could easily join them.
The integral occupation of Sub-Sector Stadtmitte failed primarily because at the beginning Lieutenant Colonel Seifert only released those elements that had been placed at his disposal slowly.
Apart from this, various groups of reinforcements continued to join us, particularly SS volunteers so that soon the whole of Europe was represented. (Among these reinforcements was a company of naval radar trainees that had been flown in and were armed with Italian rifles but had received no infantry training.) These elements remained behind the Sector wings to prevent any surprise attacks from neighbouring sectors.
As for artillery, this was assembled out of sight of aerial view in the Tiergarten under the orders of Colonel Wöhlermann, artillery chief of the LVIth Panzer Corps, because no plans had been made for its deployment in the defence. I had the guns deployed behind our Sector at the entrance of streets leading on to the Unter den Linden, so that they could at least check any tanks surging in from the north, from the Reichstag or Schlossplatz because, despite repeated enquiries, the situation remained obscure for us.
That afternoon I went to the command post assigned to me by General Weidling, an abandoned U-Bahn wagon with broken windows, no electricity or telephone, in Stadtmitte U-Bahn station. Such was the command post of the Stadtmitte Sector in the Berlin fortress!
The vault of the station was soon pierced by a medium shell that caused us 15 wounded evacuated to the first aid post organised by the Nordland’s senior medical officer, Colonel Dr Zimmermann, in the air raid shelter of the Hotel Adlon on Pariser Platz.