The 3rd Company would pin down the enemy from the south-west, the 1st Company would surround the village from the southeast and Lieutenant Bartholomei’s 2nd Company from the northwest. During the mortar preparation by Staff-Sergeant Couvreur’s 4th Company, the 2nd Company was to establish contact with the 2nd Battalion on the left, but none of the patrols sent out were able to make contact with anyone in that direction. The mortar preparation proved of short duration, as the ammunition soon ran out.
The 1st and 3rd Companies attacked, while the 2nd Company swept the ground to the east with automatic weapons, reducing the enemy resistance in the village. But the enemy machine guns proved judiciously well placed and the enemy effectives were now estimated at being a battalion. Flares and a clear night prevented further progress.
The 3rd Company advanced at the cost of very heavy losses, Second-Lieutenant Counil being killed, and rapidly reached the centre of the village, which it occupied and began to clear. When the 1st Company tried to advance, it was quickly checked by violent fire coming from heavy weapons. There was some hesitation, and a tentative flanking movement had no more success than the direct attack. The 2nd Company could not move, as enemy fire had it pinned down and the enemy could not be dislodged from this part of the village.
At this moment, the Soviets launched a violent counterattack to retake the village. The 3rd Company, reinforced by Battalion HQ, and supported by the fire of the other companies, intervened and neatly stopped the Russians, who resumed their attack several times, being rebuffed each time. Eventually Lieutenant Fenet was thinking of surrounding Heinrichswalde left and right with his 1st and 2nd Companies in a concentric attack, when the 1st Company signalled that Russians were advancing northwards unopposed between the Schönwerder and Peterswalde roads. The 2nd Company also reported that strong Russian infantry formations were advancing non-stop on Barkenfelde.
Towards midnight the Russians conducted a reconnaissance in strength with an infantry company reinforced by anti-tank guns and mortars advancing towards the 6th Company. The company commander, Second-Lieutenant Brunet, allowed the enemy to approach to within 20m of his positions before opening a murderous fire to cut down the attackers. The survivors avoided coming to close-quarter fighting and fled, but a little later a terrible bombardment fell on the battalion’s positions for about an hour from Soviet artillery, 80mm and 120mm mortars, 76mm anti-tank guns and Stalin Organ rockets.
However, the two wings of Fenet’s 1st/57th were now in the air, already bypassed, with no chance of liaison to either left or right, and about to be surrounded.
Meanwhile, things had not gone well in the 2nd/57th’s sector. HQ 57 Regiment and Captain René-André Obitz’s 2nd Battalion had arrived at Geglenfelde from Hammerstein at about noon. Learning that the Russians had already occupied the village of Barkenfelde, where he was supposed to have set up his command post, Captain de Bourmont immediately took up fighting positions with his regimental staff. The 32nd Infantry Division holding this sector had been so seriously crushed that there was no one left between them and the enemy.
Captain Obitz’s 2nd/57th continued its advance to contact, while the regimental command post was being established in Bärenwalde. At about 1500 hours Second-Lieutenant Erdozain’s Reconnaissance Section came into contact with an enemy detachment wearing German uniforms (turncoat German prisoners of war, so-called Seydlitz-Troops) several hundred metres from Bärenwalde, but managed to get away. The 2nd/57th immediately attacked from the march, threw back the enemy and reoccupied the village, which it held until the evening when, under pressure from fresh Soviet troops engaging against the French positions with a strength of about 10 to 1, Captain Obitz ordered the disengagement and retirement to a line of craters in front of Bärenwalde to the northeast of the road to Barkenfelde.
At about 1900 hours, things calmed down and reinforcements arrived. These were Lieutenant Serge Krotoff’s heavy anti-tank company from the tank-hunting battalion, a battery of 105mm howitzers, and two 88mm flak guns detached from the 32nd Division.
Major Raybaud set up the 58th Regiment’s command post in Bärenhütte during the afternoon, while Captain Monneuse’s 1st/58th deployed on the other side of the road to Barkenfelde, where he organised his fighting positions on the southern edge of the Bärenwalde woods.
The bulk of the 58th Regiment having meanwhile arrived on foot, a conference was held in the 57th Regiment’s command post attended by Major de Vaugelas (the Brigade chief-of-staff), SS-Captain Jauss (the Inspection’s operations officer) and Captain Monneuse. The practical conclusion was that the 1st/58th should re-establish a continuous front between the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 57th Regiment, which were isolated from each other, and to this end come under the command of the 57th Regiment as reinforcements. Brigadier Puaud at the Brigade HQ in Bärenwalde confirmed this order with Major Raybaud and also detached Lieutenant Michel Saint Magne’s 6th Company of the 58th Regiment to a point halfway between Bärenhütte and Elsenau.
Captain Monneuse’s deployment of the 1st/58th had Lieutenant Fabian’s 1st Company on the left, Second-Lieutenant Yves Rigeade’s 3rd Company on the right and Lieutenant Géromini’s 2nd Company in reserve. The heavy weapons of Lieutenant André Tardan’s 4th Company were shared out between the other three companies.
At about 0500 hours on the morning of 25 February, a fresh Siberian division attacked the 2nd/57th, relieving the red Polish units hitherto engaged, and overran the French position. Captain Obitz withdrew foot by foot, while asking for support, but the inopportune withdrawal of an SS Latvian unit exposed his left flank and the situation became critical. Too thinly dispersed over the ground, the 2nd/57th was torn apart by the enemy attack, although the isolated companies fought well at the cost of heavy casualties. Cut off from the rest of his company, Officer-Cadet Million-Rousseau was last seen for an instant fighting alone in the midst of the Russians.
Captain Obitz was obliged to withdraw his battalion along the railway line, uncovering in his turn the left flank of the 1st/58th and provoking the evacuation of Bärenwalde, for which he was subsequently relieved of his command by SS-General Krukenberg.
Because of the withdrawal of the 2nd/57th on the previous evening with a view to establishing a continuous front with the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 57th Regiment, Captain de Bourmont commanding the 57th Regiment had ordered Lieutenant Fenet to pull out of Heinrichswalde to the level of the lake midway between Barkenfelde and Bärenwalde. For lack of other means of communication, the order had been given to a mounted messenger, none other than Lieutenant de Londaize, the adjutant of the 57th Regiment.
However, the situation was evolving very fast and a new push meanwhile had obliged the 2nd/57th to withdraw to Bärenwalde, and when the 1st/57th reached its prescribed positions in the middle of the night, after having got away from Heinrichswalde without difficulty, it again found it impossible to establish contact with the 2nd/57th on their left or the Latvians on their right.
Towards 0715 hours, a patrol from the 3rd Company, 1st/58th, brought the 2nd Company, 1st/57th, an order to withdraw signed by Captain de Bourmont. The 1st/57th was to withdraw under cover of darkness to the north by a new route to some 500m parallel to Bärenwalde to receive new instructions.