Morning counting in the camp

On the 6th June we must line up to the morning counting bag and baggage. The Filzung leaves me cold. The spoon which I have exchanged to me by sugar, and they will not take away the tin as a dinner set from me. By midday we march in the birch gate by which we have gone four weeks ago - not yet without hope. Surrounded by " convoys - again a new word - threatens permanently with the MPi's and powered with " Dawai! Dawai! ", we trip on the street - and bend exactly in the direction from we have come, to the north! Well that the Russians do not allow to come to us to the meditation with her barking and yelling. In the run we open to the point of the column, the last feel the gun pistons. Finally and definitely also for the rosiest optimist and shit house slogans circulator we get to know, what it means to be a prisoner of war.

What march! From Libau here we ourselves determined march tempo and march purpose. Now others determine, and thus there will remain, maybe for years. Let us " in the direction of native country " in spite of all hardship step out like in old times, are lead now, disappointed and low-spirited, the feet. Soon, however, the unconscious fury changes into shining fear. Only do not stay behind! Also do not turn round! At the end of the column shout the pounded on, and now and again, and more and more often during the next days there snap shots...

At night we narrowly lie each other packed on any meadow, do not dare to lift the head, not to whisper, do the call of nature recumbent. The fact that one can be deeper pushed, nevertheless, still a step.

To eat there is on this march nothing. Here would be owed the Latvian's women who slip us something if we bring vorüberstolpern and secretly something if they are commanded by the convoys to the "drink".

Not on the rolling road we drag ourselves on back; we trudge on sandy driving ways near the coast direction Libau. Thus there are hardly witnesses for what happens.

Nobody dares to whisper. Only do not stay behind! But more and more often we have to do ourselves in the column hinhocken, although the empty bowel has nothing more to give it. The worst need forgets the beets. The soul helps itself, while it falls silent.

Also with the Russian happen miracles! During the fourth day the escort crew is removed. The new commander organises vehicles for the ill, gets catering, twice during the next four days even warmly! The command carries along with a field kitchen which also provides for us, and in the morning and in the evening a hot liquid is economical: " Tschai. It should be tea.

No shots more. Also hitting stops. Our dreary train accepts a little the form of a route column. It is spent the night in barns, in the straw. At night also the possibility is created for stamping out, also. We learn to shout: " Well ubornuju! " - on the latrine.

And then I recognise the area again, a village through which an antitank ditch stretches. We march past a trench which is advanced - without interrupting the street - to her both sides: My segment of the fortress ring Libau which our regimental stick has developed from October, 1944 to Easter of this year - as if of all years dated back!

How may it probably go out to my last accommodation people, Alexander and Anna Christmann and her daughter Hertha, and Rita, the bride of the son who was a Latvian soldier? And the old neighbour with the grandchild, the girl who always drew up to me the alarm clock which played then early in the morning: " Cure acts teci, take a cure one acts teci, gailiti? " - " Where you fly, my chicken..."

And all civilians who performed with hand and team Schanzdienste? Oblt. More and more people and teams had Hans of the stick company and I because we to them not only one separate two days in the week gave a holiday, apart from Sunday. In other both segments grab commands walked around, and raised the Latvians against us. The temptation to drop me in the next ditch is there - admittedly, immediately from chiller considerations edged out.