So Memel was chosen: a short front which had been practically surrounded since the autumn. We would have to fight our way through, to make a passage for ourselves and for the flood of refugees moving with us, constantly slowing us down and often nearly paralyzing us — a pitiful, imploring procession, dragging on foot through the bitter cold and the slush of the first snows. In spite of orders, we had to help, reassure, and support this chaotic wash of human beings. Everyone with an engine which would still run — even for an hour — carried a swarm of terrified children, trembling with cold and fear and God knows what else, while their families ran alongside, mixed in with the soldiers who were their last hope of protection.
We passed through towns and villages where the inhabitants had still been living a more or less normal life until four or five days earlier, although they had realized that their danger might become imminent at any time. Now, for the last two days, old men, women, and children had been desperately digging out the trenches, gun pits, and anti-tank ditches which were to stop the waves of enemy tanks. This pathetic and heroic effort before the infernal debacle which would sweep them into the flux of terrorized civilians was a preliminary shock for these virtuous civilians, who saw the front coming toward them in the form of exhausted, half-starved troops, tired of fighting and of living, who brushed aside human pawns without a qualm, as if they were pieces in a losing game of chess.
Every time a defense seemed possible, it was undertaken. The enemy at our heels were slaughtering the civilian population, who watched their approaching end in mute horror; the enemy had to be slowed down. The groups impressed into this effort accepted their fate in the ludicrous hope of putting out fires which were already raging. Their situation and sentiments were understood and their misery measured and valued by those who came to bid them farewell. These men had reached the point beyond which death seemed desirable, and still the war went on, like a blazing fire which no sentiment, however realized, could stop. Those who broke through and reached Memel would probably die at Memel. Death at Memel would seem a relief and release, and a more orderly end than death in a place which would never be distinguished by any military operation.
At this time and place, the absolute would be resolved by the absurd — unless, perhaps, they were already the same thing.
Finally, our division — which is to say, a third of it — broke through, and the command at Memel was able to include it in their strength. The division had broken through, and the fifteen hundred men it cost us simply represented another figure to swell the note of heroism. For those who had been in the fighting, besides the men who were killed, the losses included some twenty names which had to be scrubbed from the company lists, including Siemenleis and Wienke.
We might perhaps have fought our way into a trap. We even thought that perhaps the Russians had, deliberately loosened their grip to let us through. We had brought along with us as many civilians as we could, but many others had stayed behind, and for them the game was nearly over. They had to dodge the tanks pursuing them, and multiple barrages of howitzers and quadruple machine guns, and Ivan’s bayonets — all of which is very difficult for a mother with an infant at her breast and a small child hanging on to her skirts. But after all everyone is born to die.
We arrived in Memel with trucks pulled by men, and tanks serving as locomotives to trains of incredible length. We had reached the absolute limit of our capacities. Everything which still possessed a shred of human or mechanical life was moving, suppressing misery to a sense of gratitude that so much, at least, was still allowed them. Bombings stopped only those who were definitively dead. The rest — the merely wounded or dying — kept on, with burning eyes, pushing past the collapsing and the collapsed, whose bodies lay strewn along the road.
The town of Memel was still alive, in ruins beneath the flames, the smoke-darkened sky, the throb of Russian fighter-bombers, the heavy artillery, the terror, and the whirling snow.
Once again, I cannot find the words to describe what I saw.
My impression is that all words and syllables were perfected to describe unimportant things. Words cannot describe the end of the war in Prussia.
I was part of the exodus in France, fleeing the German troops which I later joined, and I saw mothers asking for milk at quiet farms. I also saw overturned cars, and was once even machine-gunned near Montargis. But my memories of all that are touched with only a small degree of anxiety, which is even somewhat intoxicating, like the memory of a trip on which one was not alone. Also, in France, the weather was beautiful. In Prussia, it was snowing and everything had been destroyed all around us. Refugees were dying by the thousands, and no one was able to help them. The Russians, when they were not fighting our troops, pushed the tide of civilians along in front of them, firing at them and driving tanks through the terrified mob. Anyone with a little imagination can try to conceive what I am talking about. Cruelty has never been more fully realized, nor can the word “horror” ever adequately express what happened.
We had reached the Memel cul-de-sac, a half circle about fifteen miles across, backing onto the Baltic, whose cold, gray swells rolled in under a thick blanket of fog. We held this constantly shrinking space by some inexplicable miracle for most of the winter, harassed by continuous bombardment and permanent attack from the Russians, whose strength grew steadily as ours dwindled, overrun by thousands upon thousands of refugees. The extreme of misery to which these people were reduced can never be adequately described. They waited at Memel to be evacuated by sea, before the troops were taken off in mid-December.
The ruins of Memel could neither hold nor shelter the large segment of the Prussian population which had sought refuge there. This population, to which we could give only the most rudimentary help, paralyzed our movements and our already precarious system of defense. Within the half circle we were defending, ringing with the thunder of explosions which covered every sort of shriek and scream, former elite troops, units of the Volkssturm, amputees re-engaged by the services organizing the defense of the town, women, children, infants, and invalids were crucified on the frozen earth beneath a ceiling of fog lit by the gleam of fires, or beneath the blizzards which emptied their snows over this semi-final act of the war. The food ration was so meager that the occasional distributions which were supposed to feed five people for a day would not now be considered enough for a school child’s lunch. Appeals for order and observation of the restrictions rang incessantly through the fog, which in part veiled the scene. Ships of every kind were leaving by day and by night, loaded with as many people as they could carry. Long files of refugees, whom the authorities tried vainly to register, moved toward the piers, creating targets for Russian pilots which were impossible to miss. The bombs opened hideous gaps in the screaming crowd, which died in fragments beneath these blows, but remained in line in hopes of getting on the next ship. These people were exhorted to patience, reminded of the rationing, and told to fast while they waited for deliverance. Old people killed themselves, and mothers of families, who would hand their children over to another woman, begging her to feed them with the ration card she herself was giving up. A gun taken from a dead soldier would accomplish these jobs. Heroism and despair were closely intertwined. The authorities tried to keep up the spirits of the crowd by speaking of the future, but at that time and place everything had lost its importance. These martyrs often watched suicides without really trying to stop them. Some, in a surge of madness, shot themselves on the pile of bodies which civilian aides collected in each district. Capitulation would at least have put an end to this hideous nightmare. But Russia inspired such terror and had demonstrated such cruelty that no one even considered the idea. We had to hold, no matter what it cost us, until we were eventually evacuated by sea. We had to hold, or die. Or perhaps the High Command had another idea; perhaps they were planning to transform the stronghold at Memel into a bridgehead from which they would launch a a counter-attack to split the Soviet thrust. This last speculation struck those of us holding the town as sheer fantasy. However, soldiers were still landing at Memel, as the civilians left. We could only suppose they had come to strengthen our position. The idea of a counter-attack seemed entirely unrealistic.