8th May 1945 – capitulation

This afternoon 8th May, 1945! One goes from bunker to bunker, searches the companions, does not know surely what talk, and waits. And knows that the anxious uncertainty will become fierce reality during the next minutes. The quite at an angle occurring sunlight gilds the pines. Suddenly the Russians are there! Quiet, friendly - also they know how to start nothing the new position. The submachine guns carry them over the shoulder, nobody is threatened or robbed. Like they disappear come they in the shrubbery of the entrance way.

The afterglow dies away, the dusk becomes thicker. From the bunker windows there gleams candle light. The openings are not darkened. What was yesterday one more regimental battle state, today is a peaceful forest village...

I pack my 7-things. I mend everything from what I think that I can need it at home gate into the backpack. I put the photo apparatus whose lid a shrapnel has dented at that time, with Tiraspol in the Black Sea, again in the left breast pocket of the uniform blouse. I leave behind the hotly desired, only few weeks ago of the army clothes cash to got climbing boots. I draw the riding boots full of holes by shrapnels - a memory. In addition, I think, the Russians will not depart to me. After midnight orders the commander, why, nobody knows, the decampment. Maybe he stands the ordered " waiting in the rooms " no more. We take weapons, and the baggage loaded on battle car. I carry everything what I have on myself.

Thus we immigrate in the hemline of the paled gleaming sea along Libau. In the pipes of a desolate anti-aircraft battery the branches in which white scraps flutter are. About the wide marsh of Grobin the morning of this first post-war day dreads. Suddenly there falters the column. Russian guards. Small talk. Nobody understands the other. " Urr jest? " The first ones get rid of her black armed forces clocks. " Dawai! " The gun piston shows the direction. We trip cross country, to the east, on the rolling road to. It is getting light, and now we recognize, that we not only are. From all sides groups and columns move near.

Also to us former Füsilierbattalion subordinates under captain Hutterich is there all at once. He makes the instruction, from any Soviet command post catch food with a nearby, formerly German Encampment and then march to the south, always along the rolling road. And already there circulates there a rumor which first from many, which to us will overthrow during the next years in hope and desperation: In 15 days, one says, all prisoners of war from the Baltic States must be away!

The soldiers call "Dawai, domoi !" in the street edges, " lot, forward! Home ". And they call us laughing to " Woina broken ", " Hitler haywire! " And we form up again in march columns and work out ourselves how much miles of daily performance we must put back to reach the imperial border!

What drives the front wheel more than both legs tuts because already if a Russian major pushes one of us before a truck maybe accidentally, and the poor devil? Who knows what remains saved to him?

All at once soldiers crowd from all sides between us and start to frisk. Weirs nothing helps. Immediately they put on the Wintowka and threaten to do short process. Probably live, camera! However, barely I put a few stings in the skin, them again in the pocket, it is already also snatched from me.

To us against galloped see a barouche fully bawling Russian Me and tear the reins that the horses sit down on the backhand, me pack and on the car tug is one. In in the pinewood. In a marsh pool they push me down. In no time is in every blouse pocket a hand. A small boy holds to me the submachine gun before the nose and tears the little signal whistle from the buttonhole from me. Then they pull to me the field blouse of the shoulders, so that my arms are tied up. " Ruki werch! " - " hands high! " When they notice that this does not go, they take off to me the blouse. The hands in the nape, I stand on the edge of the pool. In his black water marsh marigolds and the blue sky are reflected. Behind me whisper and the drunkenlies giggle, and I hear how they stretch the guns. In the eye the sky blue and Yellow of the flowers, one single thought circles by the brain, ridiculously: " Knees push through, knees push through! "

Over and over again the sentence unwinds like from a tape recorder. I do not pray, I do not think of home, my knee joints hurt. The only worry not to show my fear of death to the Russians. I see only the marsh marigolds, and wait for the blow everything will extinguish. Nothing throws me forward. The field blouse flies to me around the ears, one walk " dawai! ", and I run as if it is worth still my life, from the wood. Maybe they bang me, nevertheless, still from? But they bawl only behind me. Sweat-flooded I reach the solar-afloat rolling road. Odd proofs are to be seen far and wide no privates. I am quite alone when the next Russians stop me. To the first lieutenant my full of holes riding boots are not even too bad. I must take off them, he throws down to me his in which the soles have freed themselves. Plastic boots with short shafts, but they are so small that I can only barefoot hineinfahren. Soon I have bubbles. There I throw them in the roadside ditch. Only with umgewickelten Fußlappen, later bloßfüßig I march in the captivity. I have nothing more except the bread bag, and in it a green armed forces towel.

Against in the evening I find again my troop. But it is as if I am a stranger. Although I do not appeal to our paymaster on top on the IVa - battle car, the fear stands to him in the face, I could ask him for footwear. We creep away in the Jung's wood. A night which covers the lacquer with ice follows the warm May day. The Russians celebrate the victory. All ammunition, above all luminous track, is used up. Terribly the shriek of the women which they get hold. We see, how they behind them run. Nobody looks after us. In the morning somebody gives me a few shoes and a scrap, largely enough for some foot cloths, just when I pull the feet from the bread bag and massage them. They have not suffered yet. Thankfully I stand up, in a hurry I wrap the ice-cold toes and go in the shoes. They fit! I look up, but the donator is there no more, and so much I ask and look - nobody knows who was it!

Us accompanies, it seems, no awake command. We obey the herd instinct. Maybe it would be better, the Russians guarded us. The more deeply we penetrate into the stage, the worse it goes out to us. Because they find nothing more, they hit and spit at us.

One day enters what we feared for a long time. Shoemakers and tailors of the stick company are two Russians, auxiliary-willing who have announced themselves sometime to such service to escape the sting wire. They are discovered, knocked together, behind us falls a shot. We hurry with drawn heads further...

The catering, as far as it can be enjoyed coldly, is consumed. I have no cooking dishes and no spoon, but we also have no field kitchen. A rumor comes through from the front: The Town Deutsch-Krottingen is no more wide! Really a garden similar to park with birch gate and fence appears before us, darinnen several working service barracks. A dream Russians lets us on the meadow line up before it. The battle vehicles are put down, the horses are stretched. The still available baggage is filed.

It means, we are deloused and fed, before we march further. The still valuable have, try to approach her baggage. Others hide it in the body. Some bury something in the earth. But the Russians are attentive. They stalk to themselves to them, itself by remarkable movements betray near, they bark, threaten with the weapon in the face, and with unerring clutch they catch the wedding ring, they dig out the clock - under the feet of an officer a gun! Big excitement! The poor devil is led away, surrounded by a crowd of soldiers.

We are not deloused. We are counted and distributed to the barracks. To eat also there is nothing. The barracks are closed and changes. I contort up on a double fool's wand. Beside me a second lieutenant of the artillery, Siegfried Jahnke, lies down elementary teacher from Alzey, Rheinhessen. We dwell on our thoughts, others try to judge the position, again others get excited about the loss of the baggage. Suddenly soldiers deploy again before the windows, with a lot of roar and piston pushes we are done from the barrack and are submitted to a severe Filzung. This has method: Who has hidden something again, now it is wrong!

Nevertheless, there is still food. Jahnke borrows to me cooking dishes and spoon. In the evening on the fool's wand he quietly starts to sing: " Sea star, I greets you ... " I occur in the second voice, two, three around us also join in the singing. There I remember - it is a Marien's month...

Two, three days pass in this former wheel camp, one week, without something occurs. Early there is herbal soup and a piece of bread, at noon again herbal soup and a piece of bread, and a cooking dishes lid fully Kascha, on in German mash, from millet or barley in water cooked, and in the evening again herbal soup, bread and - a coffee spoon crystal sugar! The bread serving should be 200 grams .

The meals control the daily routine, and very soon also our thinking. Accustoms to armed forces food, and bread, so much one wanted, the stomach feels very soon only fooled, then made a fool by the water soup and the humid Klitschbrot. Still we are well fed, once there comes even a doctor - we learn "Wratsch", and distributes censorships for our nutritional condition, perwaja and wtoraja grupa, the first and second study group, but the idleness between the meals allows to feel the hunger rather more fiercely. In the beginning still only a few crowd to the working service, with Hintergedanken. But when the command whose workplace lies beyond the camp with turnips, cucumbers, and such prey return, and helping hands are recompensed with the kitchen with nachschlag, announce themselves more and more work willingnesss. We learn a life form and behaviour pattern, from the life behind sting wire dictated.

Orders and honorings, untill for a long time snatched, are hidden. The grade badges still carry many, also Jahnke and me. The Russian has neither forbade them nor has pulled down. On slack duty the officers - do not exist here yet. How by itself have some one function, an office, have to say something. But these are not mostly that which have still ordered before short time. After breakfast and dinner it is counted. We line up, not too third, but too fifth. To count more simply. How many are we? 500? 600?

Teacher Jahnke and I hold together us. He tells about his occupation, and to me becomes conscious that I am purely nothing at all. While we along the sting wire trot which has not come true - with our admission at all so surely perceived - for a long time most embarrassingly notable ones, he tells about home, his education - and an einklassige elementary school in the country becomes to me the perfect example of professional longing. Jahnke suffers from a tendon illness which presses the forefinger and ring finger against the palm to him.

No one knows what will happen with us. The dull, almost inactive position in which one leaves us irritates one or other to stitch: If that is the dreaded Russian captivity, it is to be stood! Thus the pamphlets thrown down once meant, indeed, what they promised? Till present none of us has been shot. Nazi propaganda! How many have been all at once always "against it"! One day the deserter of our stick company is in the camp! With a big can, greater than one armed forces cook dishes, and a deserter's identity card he goes of getting along the queue to the field kitchen around his double soups blow. There they are all at once everything again soldiers! The next day he stands just in the queue like all the others also.

At the beginning of June, 1945 we still are here. Almost every day another rumor circulates. The frame changes, the contents stay the same: It soon goes home. Jahnke supposes, the spring is the soot itself; he wants to hold us with mood and avoid aggression act. Fact is that all this "reliable" news is spread by just those "Plennis", those prisoners who have to act with the Russian. Did one not say at the beginning of our march in the captivity, the "Kapitulanten" would have to have left health resort land in 15 days? One of these rumors means, we would be soon registered. And we would have to brag - because Austria arose again - not only as a nationality but also as a nationality "Austrian". At midnight captain Gangl from Vienna reminds the violently debating to the deliberation to recognize the lost war and "divide et impera" of the winners. " Versailles and Saint Germain will recur, and more badly. Vae victis! "

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