Voices of the Waffen SS - The Assault Generation: Volume 2 by Gerry Villani

Author:Gerry Villani [Villani, Gerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-03-08T23:00:00+00:00

The Last Months of the War

In March 1945, I was awarded the Panzervernichtungsabzeichen or the tank destruction badge. One day we were marching along a way when all of a sudden T-34 tanks loomed up on the horizon. The tanks were coming our way, so we had to take cover as soon as possible. The tanks came closer and we were genuinely scared; we had no ammunition or weapons to fight them. The tanks stopped right next to where we were hiding and funny enough, I asked one of my comrades if one of them still had a Haftmine or a limpet mine (magnetic mine). And guess what? One of them still had one! I took it from him and ran to the first T-34. I got on the tank, and I attached the Haftmine onto the turret. Thank God that thing stayed in placed and didn’t come off. I jumped off the tank and took cover. Then a big explosion happened, you’d feel the shockwave, and the turret was blown off the hull of the tank. You could also hear the dreadful crying of the soldiers who were still inside the hull of the tank. Poor guys. Even today I can still hear them crying. It was horrible but I had no choice. Unfortunately this is how it goes in battle…this is war, and war is brutal and pointless. Because I blew up this Russian tank, and because of fear for revenge from the Russians, we made sure to clear the area and run away as fast as we could.

At Zachan, Stargard, Stettin, and Brüsow we fought our way back to Prenzlau, just east of Berlin. There we had no more contact with the enemy, and we were given civilian clothes. From there we were free to go: or go home or try to get to the British in the Lüneburger Heide. We didn’t want to get captured by the Russians because we heard that they would just shoot their POWs. I always kept one bullet in my pistol which I was planning to use on myself if I were captured by the Russians. However I was able to travel to Liege in Belgium. From there I wanted to take the train to Brussels and travel to Spain because it was still under the rule of Franco. I also knew a lot of members of the Blue Division, so I could easily stay with one of them. But on my way to Spain, I was arrested in the train station in Brussels. This was the end of my flight. I was beaten with sticks because I was a former member of the SS. I was beaten unconscious, and I was dropped off at the prison in Brussels. Most of the members of the SS had their blood type tattoo on their arm. It was a typical mark which was known by enemy troops, so many of us tried to remove it before being capture by burning it, or cutting it out of the skin.

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