Krukenberg resumed:
On the morning of the 28th April, the patrols sent towards Belle-Alliance-Platz (especially that led by SS-Lieutenant von Wallenrodt, the battalion adjutant and German liaison officer) failed to return, for the whole battalion was soon engaged on Belle-Alliance-Platz as an anti-tank commando to prevent the Russians access to Wilhelmstrasse and Friedrichstrasse. The Soviets were again checked there with heavy losses.
The main action was near Kochstrasse U-Bahn Station, where five or six tanks were destroyed by the French during the day, who had neither armour, artillery, anti-tank guns, nor mortars, but only several MG-42s, assault rifles and Panzerfausts to oppose the Soviet T-34 tanks, anti-tank guns and 120mm mortars.
A building occupied by the enemy was set on fire by the French, while others covered the windows with assault rifles to prevent the Russians fleeing the flames. Some fifty bodies were counted at this place. The fighting was ferocious, from door to door, window to window.
Krukenberg continued:
At daybreak a fresh attack by Russian tanks was stalled, but the enemy began a terrible bombardment of all the buildings held by the French. The battle had reached a pitch that was to be maintained to the end. It was hell.
The competitive spirit was such that men took the remaining Panzerfausts to claim ‘their’ tank. Sergeant Roger Albert already had three to his credit.
The enemy fire directed at the French increased, forcing them to withdraw about 50 metres. A new surprise attack was repulsed. Two more tanks were destroyed and one damaged, with the support of our 120mm mortars and nests of resistance.
The battalion sector was almost surrounded once more. A little counterattack by the Main Security Office Germans at the cost of heavy losses permitted the re-alignment of our positions before the next massive tank attack. This failed in its turn, because the first two tanks, having been knocked out, blocked the way for the others. The pounding continued.
Sergeant-Major Rostaing, commanding the 3rd Company (ex 6th Company of Regiment 58), which was uniquely composed of former members of the LVF, received the Iron Cross First Class for his brave conduct and Second-Lieutenant Albert the same for his fourth tank.
The battalion was occupying an advance post of the local defence several hundred metres from the Chancellery. The attacks by Russian tanks soon gave up and Russian infantry infiltrated a little everywhere using flamethrowers or grenades.
The battalion fought on, the lightly wounded returning to their posts as soon as they had been bandaged. Staff-Sergeant Ollivier, commanding the 4th Company, was three times wounded and three times evacuated, but returned three times to his post. Many of the young officer-cadets from Neweklau fell in action: Le Maignan, Billot, and Protopopoff were killed.
The bombardment raged and the city was in flames all night of the 29th–30th April, but all the French SS were resolved to hold out until their ammunition ran out.
Once more we were sustained by high hopes for the arrival of Wenck’s army, but we started becoming sceptical about this subject. We learned nothing about it either from the commander of the city’s defence or from the Chancellery.
During a relatively quiet interlude, SS-Lieutenant Weber visited Captain Fenet with Sergeant Vaulot, who had destroyed four tanks in Wilhelmstrasse the previous day, and Sergeant Roger Albert, who had destroyed three. But before the dust had even settled, there was another tank attack with the tanks well spaced out and the leading two were stopped with Panzerfausts. The tanks behind withdrew after firing at the buildings. According to Fenet, there was a dramatic situation at his command post:
The floors collapsed and the rooms of our semi-basement were filled with a dust so thick that we had great difficulty in breathing and were unable to see more than 50 centimetres. The ceiling fell in pieces and several of the men were injured by falling masonry. In an angle of the wall where we had made a loophole, there was now a gaping hole in the angle of fire from the tanks.
Moreover, the Soviet infantry were in the process of surrounding the building containing the command post. A little more to the east, in Friedrichstrasse, which was impractical for the tanks, the Chnstensen Combat Team had been in action since dawn. The fighting line was now 150–200m beyond Kochstrasse U-Bahn station and Puttkammerstrasse. Also Soviet infantry were installed in the upper storeys of the neighbouring buildings and firing on anything that moved. But they were not occupying the lower storeys and the French set these buildings on fire with large stocks of paper that they had found in the cellars and could thus use the cover of the fire to effect a withdrawal, despite the protestations of SS-Lieutenant Weber, who wanted to hold on at all costs.
Fenet continued:
The new front line was based on the Puttkamerstrasse crossroads, 140 to 150 metres further back from the previous one. The internal courtyards here provided relatively safe passage. The new forward command post was installed in a building that was still standing, where it was necessary to block the large entrances, apart from the large gaps made by the bombardment in its façade. The cellars and ground floor, where the men installed themselves, were full of works of art. Two women were still living there and at first refused to leave.
While the new positions were being arranged, the Soviet 120-mm mortars, which had not been heard since the day before, proceeded to reduce to dust those of their infantry that had not broken contact!
No doubt it was at this instant that Officer-Cadet Protopopoff of the 4th Company was killed. He was talking to Sergeant-Major Rostaing in one of the courtyards situated behind the command post building and had been directed towards a porch when a shell exploded in the yard, riddling him with shrapnel.
A catastrophic counterattack was launched by the old officers and NCOs from the Main Security Office, who suffered frightful losses in trying to establish forward look-outs. Then the infantry pressure combined with a fresh tank attack, the third that day. The machines advanced in tight groups of seven or eight, a tactic with the aim of swamping the Panzerfaust firers, but the latter were not overawed by this. The two leading tanks were stopped and blocked the route. The five or six others withdrew, then came forward again to tow away the dead ones. Numerous shots with Panzerfausts forced them back a second time. The volunteers of the French battalion knew that they had to immediately take cover. However, not all!
When the Soviet tank guns and anti-tank guns concentrated their fire on the basement windows, Sergeant-Major Rostaing remained in his observation post on the second floor of a building offering a good view of Wilhelmstrasse. He had rejoined the battalion that day with the 20 to 25 remaining men of the 3rd Company. Rostaing was in a stairwell with a French grenadier. The two men were flat against the wall on one side and an opening whose glass and frame had long since disappeared. They remembered seeing a vast tank firing, no doubt a Josef Stalin. The shell hit the ceiling above two lookouts, covering them with debris and tearing away a main beam that fell on them. Other men witnessed the event. They went up to the storey, called out, but did not see anyone and went down again. The NCO did not recover consciousness for a considerable time later, and got out without difficulty. He staggered to the command post, covered with dust.
It was from Captain Fenet that Sergeant-Major Rostaing learnt that he and Sergeant Albert, who had just destroyed his fourth tank, had been awarded the Iron Cross First Class. The awards were made in the one of the building’s interior courtyards. No doubt it was then that SS-Lieutenant von Wallenrodt received his Iron Cross Second Class. Captain Fenet had hardly shaken the hands of the recipients when fresh shells hit the building, raising enormous clouds of dust. ‘We stayed there blind, suffocated, without being able to move a step, and it was a while before we regained the use of our senses,’ wrote Captain Fenet later.