[烛光生存狂]-【战史】Baranow bridgehead

Baranow bridgehead and the retreat through southern Poland

Leutnant Hans Kranich 1919-1980, Golowka, Poland, January 14th 1945. Attended secondary school in Görlitz, RAD, during the war granted leave to study for a time, then an Ersatz unit in Görlitz, finally on the Eastern Front. He latterly served in 78 Sturm Division. The following account is taking from the four volumes of Walter Kempowski’s Echolot: Fuga Furiosa I translated it for my Breslau book, but could find no way of accommodating it in the manuscript in the end…

Golowko, January 14th 1945

On the morning of January 12th, the Russians had achieved a deep breakthrough in 320 Infanterie Division’s* sector in the Baranow bridgehead in a surprisingly short time and also smashed the forces available for a counter-attack. On the thirteenth or fourteenth, they had also penetrated the division’s southern front. We had heard the barrage and seen the bomber squadrons fly over the lines. In the division’s sector, however, everything was otherwise quiet; after several days two enemy penetrations in 215 Infanterie Regiment’s sector] were brilliantly cleared up. The mood in the division was not bad. The news was not unexpected. We’d known for weeks that the Russians’ main thrust would take place in the Baranow bridgehead – where they had concentrated strong forces... The division possessed a strong reserve of three battalions: a partially-motorised pioneer battalion, the division Kampfschule** and the division’s fusilier battalion, or a battalion from a regiment for a counterattack. With these forces and the Corps’ other reserves, the situation in the south had at least been secured in the opinion of the divisional commander [Generalmajor Rolf Scherenberg] and been able to avoid the disastrous retreat of the first few days which was attributed in the division’s written report to the indecision and dejection of the commanding officer of V. SS-AK... In any event, the military situation was hopeless. Each unit nevertheless had to find a way to carry out the tasks set it, especially as they could not know that the war to the last woman truly was the leadership’s final strategy. At mid-day, a telephone call: 250 Christmas parcels have arrived for the battalion, one for each man in the front line.

* Actually 320 Volksgrenadier Division. Committed near Krakow under XI SS Corps, Seventeenth Army.

** Training instructors.

An order is sent to the division’s convalescent home in Gogolow* to collect the packets. Apart from the personal Christmas parcels from Württemberg-Swabia the battalion should have received 180 official parcels for soldiers without parents. The wagon of Remstäler apples, a Christmas present from the Gau to the division, was probably the victim of an air raid, but on the other hand the division still hoped writing paper (thirty sheets per man) with the division’s insignia sent from Krakow on December 29th would arrive. In the evening I was ordered to the regimental command post to collect orders. At the same time the baggage train received orders to send some light vehicles for baggage and other (superfluous) equipment to the front. The companies received orders from messengers to make preparations to move off. Using a motorcycle I’m quickly at the regimental headquarters. They already had everything packed and loaded on trucks, but the regimental commander (Oberstleutnant Vaitl) was still mulling over the contents of the order I was to take. In the adjutants’ bunker, where the others were waiting to receive their orders, we calm our nerves for the moment eating sweets.

When I finally have written orders to retreat in my hands it’s 9.30pm. The position should be evacuated by 11.45pm, apart from the rearguard, and the battalion should be loaded on trucks at the division’s convalescent home at 12.30am and drive to the Wisloka position which we should hold until 5am.

When I return to the battalion, I learn that the regimental commander has already ordered the details of the retreat over the telephone – orders partially contradicted by my written instructions. The battalion now ordered another change in the composition of the rearguard under Oberleutnant Göckler [?]... The evacuation of the position did not take place by the deadline...

Luckily, it was very quiet on the Russian side, despite all the noise on our side. 28cm mortar shells (‘walking Stukas’*) were fired off and 13 Kompanie (Oberleutnant Kümmerle) used up at least some of their large stockpile.

* Thirty miles southwest of Rzeszow.

** Stuka zu Fuss.

The regiment had idiotically set its bunkers on fire even before pulling out, afterwards in the division convalescent home, 120 bottles of wine should have been or were handed out per battalion. The battalion command post was left to the Russians intact (complete with electric lighting from a Russian airplane which made a forced landing) so that they could see how well we had lived.

Baranow, January 15th 1945

Only around 3am was was the battalion (with the exception of the three platoons in the rearguard) ready to move out. I on my bike had the task of finding the way and pointing it out. It was cold, I had no winter clothing, sometimes there light snow was falling. The route was easy to find, but the truck struggled to make progress such that the battalion dismounted in front of the Wisloka* and continued the march on foot. It was beginning to dawn when we saw the the Wisloka position – our first task had been overtaken by events; we carried out the second, securing the position to the south (a mission which would be repeatedly time and again during our retreat). We overtook some of our baggage train on a slope towards mid-day – before our mid-day rest among the farms; it was struggling to make progress on the frozen roads with its heavily-laden vehicles.

In the afternoon the battalion reached the sector it was ordered to reach and prepared itself for defence in several houses.

There were all sorts of things going on within view: long columns moved over the bleak hills to the south, first probably ours, then the enemy’s. A Kampfgruppe from the battalion was in contact with enemy troops and left its machine-guns and winter jackets behind. There was no doubt that the enemy was close.

With the onset of darkness the battalion pulled out as quietly and carefully as possible, rallied in the forest and moved off to the northwest. Two young women came up to us from the last houses in the forest – Germans who wanted to get away from the Russians; one of them had experienced the Russians’ entry [of Jaslo?] with a Wehrmacht field kitchen. They accompanied me and the spearhead roughly 100 or 200 metres in front of the battalion.

After we’d marched a short distance to the north on the road, we turned to the northwest and via dirt tracks luckily reached the next east-west valley where the division’s two lines of withdrawal ran. We ran into waiting columns and the command posts of neighbouring regiments and felt we were safe to some extent.

* River in southern Poland which runs through Jaslo inter alia.

Southern Poland, January 17th 1945

Early the next morning the departure of the regiment began with all the lengthy irritating preparations which are hard to avoid when such large units are involved, and we marched – as if in peacetime on this occasion in regimental order – with some of the vehicles (from other battalions however) the same way back as we’d struggled along during the night. It was another bright day. We saw the divisional staff (it was rather amazing that everything still existed after all we’d had to go through already). As the road ran up to a ridge, I saw new anoraks lying in a ditch (the name was still new to me), mid-calf length grey coats lined with sheepskin and I took one – a fine example – as I still didn’t have any winter clothing. It wasn’t far from the Schloss or sanitarium. The drive

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