Flakhelfer to Grenadier: Memoir of a Boy Soldier, 1943-1945 by Karl Heinz Schlesier

Author:Karl Heinz Schlesier [Schlesier, Karl Heinz]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War II
ISBN: 9781910294871
Publisher: Helion and Company
Published: 2014-06-18T22:00:00+00:00

Gunner’s tower, 4. Zug, Hüls, spring 1944.

At the foot of 4. Zug gun tower. Author in middle, Ferdi to his right, Wenner to his left. Hüls, March 1944.

Playing with a French machine-gun on 4. Zug gun platform. Wenner is in foreground, Thei in middle, Hannes in background. Hüls, summer 1944.

Author on the gunner’s seat. 4. Zug, Hüls, spring 1944.

At the first lunch after our arrival, we were fitted at headquarters with wooden clogs. We were expected to wear them in the sections and around the guns. We never figured out why. Was it to save shoe leather or had someone higher up made a special deal with a Dutch manufacturer? The clogs were cumbersome. We got used to them but never liked them. They made us slow and ponderous. Only on our midday trips to the mess hall could we wear shoes.

The English attacked Berlin four times and Magdeburg once during our first three weeks, but passed the Ruhr by. American bombers were more active than the English at that time. They attacked Magdeburg and Halberstadt on January 27, Eschweiler on the 24th, Frankfurt on the 29th, Braunschweig and Hannover on the 30th, Frankfurt again on February 4, 8, and 11, and Braunschweig once more on the 10th. All these attacks were far away from us. Three times we saw vapor trails of American bomber boxes and twice we watched dog fights between Focke Wulf fighters and, we thought, Mustangs. They drew wild swirls and pirouettes across the sky, playing a deadly game before our eyes. Although we saw no victims and no victors, somewhere someone scored and someone died.

My mother wrote me regularly; usually my father added a note. They tried to be positive but between the lines I understood their worry, and not for me alone. I knew what they thought, how despairing they had become. I wrote to them, too, telling them that I was safe. Compared to Reisholz, I told them, Hüls was like a vacation. We hardly had any duties and got much time for ourselves. Our gun chief was a fine man who, remarkably, imposed little on us.

This was all true so long as one ignored the constant fear of a massive air attack on the factory. I didn’t mention that. We lived in pleasant isolation. We only saw the battery chief and the sergeant-major occasionally in the mess hall at lunch; none of them ever came for an inspection or even a visit. The only persons we were in constant contact with were the corporal and Sasha, our kitchen man. He waited while we had breakfast and supper, and when he left, we let him take the rest of the supplies home, including what we didn’t want. This, especially, was the sweet milk-noodle soup we had already encountered in Reisholz. It was exclusively served to Flakhelfer. Someone higher up must have thought we needed it since we were still growing up and all. But we despised the soup; Sasha and his fellow Russians seemed to love it.

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