This experience report was located in the National Archives by Tom Jentz and translated by Bob Thompson.
After an eleven-day rest, the word came down to “Mount up… March!” On the evening of 3 August 1942, at 2100 hours, we once again started on an operation about which nobody knew any details. We only knew we were headed for combat, and that was sufficient. After a year’s fighting in Russia we knew what would happen, for we had already experienced it countless times and found nothing unusual or interesting.
We drove through the entire night and in the morning came into a village and camouflaged our vehicles against aircraft. The night march had been only exhausting for the drivers, but in spite of this we stretched ourselves out in the grass and slept on through the day, for sleep had not been possible on the shaking, heaving vehicles, where on every bump you hit your head. But now we slept as every Landser wished. On the evening of 4 August, about 2200, we again sat neatly on our vehicles and steered off into a raven-black night.
The day before, to our annoyance, we had learned that we knew this area very well; we had spent a quarter of a year last winter in this region on the main front lines. However, we had no time for further ruminations, for just as we were heading through Karminova the Russians bombarded the place with all friendliness. After taking cover from the planes for a while, we advanced until we finally halted in some small villages. During this time we had enjoyed a lunch of white beans, and began to hear talk that the Russians had succeeded in penetrating the main front lines in this area and that they were bumming around with tanks, death, and the devil. We were the group that was to seal them off.
Hardly had we eaten lunch when the order came “Prepare for action!” Short minutes of intense preparation, then we mounted, and away we went. Four vehicles, each mounting a light infantry gun… that’s the way we went forward on the dusty road. A few vehicles came at us at break-neck speed. We suspected more than knew that up ahead was more than one enemy tank. It wasn’t especially encouraging to know this, as an infantry cannoneer, for among our infantry guns there was, unfortunately, no armor-piercing weapon. Against such monsters there was little prospect of success.
But as we still saw no tanks, we kept on going.
Suddenly from ahead came a dust cloud. We thought at the moment that it was one of our own vehicles, but at a hundred meters we realized it was a T-34. Then its machine gun rattled away. Never in my life have I dismounted a vehicle so swiftly, and my comrades followed. I sneaked off away from the street-ditch as far as I could, for the Russians had the habit of frequently driving up the ditches and I had no wish to let myself be flattened. My goal was a puddle about twenty meters from the road, into which I plopped. The still exposed areas of my body I hid behind an overturned tree trunk. Just in time to see the way the T-34 drive by, wildly firing in all directions. Behind the turret of the tank sat Russian soldiers. They didn’t have the pleasure of riding for long, for we shot them off with our carbines.
The tank drove crazily on for a few hundred meters, turned and then came back. In driving by it smashed against our “Klara,” reducing her to various and sundry parts. “Klara” was our oldest and most trusted gun, which had already been rammed last winter by a tank, but after extensive repairs had again been made serviceable. Now our “Klara” was finally “kaput.” As I watched this, rage bubbled in my belly and I could only regret that I had no mine or shaped charge at hand. Like a spook, the monster disappeared again. We couldn’t hang around long, for we had to get to the nearest village, where our comrades of the Schützenkompanien were in action.
We went ahead in a line and had hardly gone three hundred meters when suddenly low-flying aircraft were over us. We had barely made it to the side of the road and they were gone. Nothing had happened. This was a very eventful day.
A half-hour later we reached the edge of the village. There, all hell was breaking loose. Machine gun fire was hissing through the air and the tanks were shooting one house after another into flames. Munitions were blowing up in the houses, and the heat given off robbed one’s breath. In spite of it all, we came through to the other end of the village in good shape. From here we could see four T-34s, about four hundred meters away. Seconds later the first shots screeched out of our barrels. We could see hits, but what good is a hit from such light infantry guns on such a monster? Once we had been spotted, the devil really went to work. After ten minutes of the hottest fire fight, two of our guns were knocked out by direct hits. We all had our hands full trying to bind up our wounded. During this, the third gun kept firing until it had no more ammunition.
Without ammunition we couldn’t do anything, so we took the remaining gun and dragged it back to the entrance of the village, under heavy fire. When we once looked around, we saw that the tanks were moving up behind us accompanied by two or three companies of enemy infantry. In the village behind us our infantry had set up a defense line. We, the infantry gun section, were now employed as infantry since we had only one gun left and it was hardly combat-effective. This is just what had happened the previous winter.
Hardly had we arrived at our posts when there came the four monsters, slowly driving towards us. As I had received an order to immediately bring up a 50 mm anti-tank gun, I left my group. Even on the way to the anti-tank gun, several tank shells burst uncomfortably near. After delivering the order to send over the gun, I went behind a barn and made myself small. So I lay there for a bit, when suddenly there was a crash that threw dirt around my ears… there the tank had knocked a corner off the barn I was lying behind! I carefully got back to the road.
Having reached the road, I caught sight of a comrade from our platoon who had received an eye injury and was now sitting there helpless. We bedded him on a sidecar of a motorcycle that was going by, when we suddenly saw the four tanks coming at us through the gardens. What could we do but make sure that we weren’t run over by the tanks.
Everything went well. We breathed more easily, for finally our anti-tank guns were in position, and several tanks were knocked out in the next hour.
The 6th through the 22nd were hard days for us. The Russians attacked almost without interruption. Days of violent fighting in the forests, during which we often lay twenty meters from each other. In these battles we suffered greatly from mortar fire which was especially dangerous due to tree-bursts. There were rainy days in which we stood in our foxholes, soaked to the skin. The water was up to our knees. In spite of all this, the Russians could not do anything.
Our Luftwaffe and artillery helped to inflict great losses on the enemy. For tactical reasons, we withdrew from the enemy in the forest and went back to the open flat ground. Here we built a bunker line, from which there is an open area and a swamp in front of the forest in which the Russians remained. The Bolshevists haven’t attacked here yet. Sometimes we have seen tanks driving around over there, but our artillery knocked them out right sway.
Otherwise, there’s not much going on here, and we’re just waiting until they come. That’ll be a big pleasure for us, to give them a nice juicy one on the head!
