Good Friday in 1945

Good Friday in 1945 - Dawai Plennij - In the memory of my good companions

In the Good Friday in 1945 about midnight our command says goodbye to the Latvian accommodation people. The children are got from the beds. Everybody cries. The mother hits something like a blessing about us. Everybody knows: The next soldiers who enter the house carry other uniform... The night is quiet. No artillery fire from Prekuln is to be heard. We mount the car which should bring us to the regiment. The grandfather stands before the stable and waves. We leave the western segment of the fortress ring Libau which we during the past weeks have developed for the last health resort land battle. Here in the kettle was terminus of our retreat which we had lined up in February of the last year in the space to the south of Leningrad. Who will defend itself here? Will somebody defend itself here? In the antitank ditch and trenches gurgles the melt water, the bunkers and machine gun states which we could build of the ground water because of barely in the sand, lift like hill and walls from the darkness. About morning we reach the bunker village, in the middle of pine timber forest. We remove a unity which is moved to Germany. "Home in the empire!"

To believe barely. But who knows, where. We belong according to application order to the 10 army corps of the general Tomaschke. The division leads - without number - colonel of Giese. Our protection regiment stick is called - probably for the last time - fight group 130 and exists of the Füsilierbattalion 126 under captain Hutterich, 13. Lithuanian battalions and two land shooter companies. Our front sector begins eastward of the marsh of the Grobiner lake, runs in the curve to the south of the lake from the meadow area without cover in the wood and ends with thirty meters of sting wire barrier in the Baltic Sea. The ditch of a forest brook is the Niemandsland. Clearly the Russian bunkers and protection states are to be seen in the thicket. Nothing stirs. How long still?

At the end of April big excitement! Three men of the stick company have run over! But before the Russian position mines rose, only one came through. On the 30th April, barely that it dawns, a dispatch rider hammers to the door of the bunker in whom I only sleep. " Alarm! The Russian comes "! The Füsilierbattalion is attacked by the penal battalion lying over there. Everything runs in a mess. About us there howls own artillery. With the intervene reserve I go forwards. But captain Hutterich has thrown back the Iwan in the counterattack again about the brook. We had no losses. On the 2nd May, 1945, it becomes just bright, and I want to shave, my more faithfully East Prussian fellow rumbles in the bunker. " Man second lieutenant, Hitler is dead! " For a long time quite ready to take the destiny of the soldier on us we ask ourselves, what now? We consider each other, and give ourselves in silence the hand. Now everything is over.

Later we hear, the oath of allegiance goes over on Admiral of the Fleet Dönitz. Some believe, now, because the allies have reached her purpose to smash Germany, they would go with us against the Soviets. The health resort land army is completely intact, and a rumor already circulates: The Homefleet has run out to get out us! " On the 7th May in the evening there comes a telex of the division colonel of Giese. The stick is called together, because cannot line up one of such type of the meeting call. The adjutant reads out the capitulation order: ... from 8th May, 1945 , 14 o'clock rest the weapons. In the positions white flags are to be shown. The troop remains in her rooms... " Everything is quiet. It is so easy to capitulate after such a war. One simply remains in his rooms. " And what is if the Russian comes? " The men look at the officers. But who understands already this situation? Capitulate it was never practiced. " Russian will already say to you what you must do. " Then I go to my bunker and burn papers and acts.

When the adjutant comes to me, he nods contented. But he knows that I led diary. I must burn side for side. Also the service records are burned. I still have only my pay book. Slowly I take the oval identity disc of the neck with the family roles number of the 1-st company I. R. 134. I need that now no more. But what do if the Russians come? This can fancy nobody. Some do not stand the tension. We have experienced too much in retreat and counterattack. They hit all warnings in the wind and clear out on own initiative. Without plan, unpreparedly, without consideration. Nothing fruchtet. No suspension that health resort land is for months a kettle that few streets lead between the marshes by Russian army camps that the Russians with single soldiers do certainly no feather reading in the wood. There are also ships none more; what lay at anchor in Libau, has attacked for a long time from troops and sticks...

Werner Hortung's phone phone call from the day before yesterday does not go for me out of mind. Werner was still quite 42 years old in April of this unblessed year, had been commanded on an officer's course to Libau. Two days ago he had called me. " Probably live! You were to me a good friend. A lot of luck for that what comes. Maybe we see never again ourselves. Probably live! " He answered my question no more, he had hung up.

On radio we hear that a neighboring armoured unity drives the last application, up to the last garnets. The stick of the colonel v. Giese barricades itself - and expects Russian Who wanted to dismiss, became... All around us lie penal unities, recruited from Soviet concentration camps... Nobody sleeps at this night. Whom the grade made up to now lonesome, now the narrow community looks. I sit with the news train. From the radio device Svendsens romance sounds for violin and orchestra like an abgesang. The people puzzle over the future...

Anyhow the night passes, a solar morning begins. By the Russians nothing is to be noticed. I go by the pine timber forest, about the dunes, and rise on the raised hide, from where I have looked so often at the sundown in the sea. To the bank I lay the wallet with the pictures mine and - the gun. There is no more mania-witty contrast than this spring splendour, this call to the life which crowds to all senses in the rushing of the waves and the wood in which the birds carol, in the smell of salt and resin, and the shine of the light - and the desperate decision which has led me here.

These pictures of the last vacation in September, 1943, in dirndl-dress and leather trousers, and that for which my woman carries our boy, around and chubby. And other everything, reports of happy hours which find now irreparably an end... It is difficult to direct the internal look at the big darkness in the midst of this solar day, while the fingers about the coarse bank feel for the weapon - " is somebody there on top? " Have I said? Slowly the things return in the look. " This has fallen down to you ". A head rises about the ground of the raised hide, a hand which hands up a photograph. It is with the chubby face of our son Dieter. Then he sees the gun. " You also ...? " He looks at my photos, shows me his pictures. The spring is no more contrast. The native country arises and hope.

We climb down, the guns fly in the sea, and we do the first steps in another period of life which earns this name already after few hours no more: In the captivity .

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