The Boy Who Went to War (15 page)

On Holy Friday, at the end of April, the men were given a day off. Miggel managed to tune their wireless to a certain radio frequency and suddenly there was a wonderful burst of music. It was Bach's
St Matthew Passion
, broadcast live from Leipzig. They could not hear it very well for the line was crackly, but they sat glued to their headphones. The music transported them back to civilian life and reminded them of happier times.

The next day was Wolfram's twentieth birthday; it was also his last at Chateau Audrieu. The threat of an Allied invasion from England was increasing with every day; now, the men were to be transferred to Brittany to protect a stretch of coastline that was dangerously exposed.

They headed to Dinan by train, a journey of extreme discomfort. There were no compartments or even carriages, just a platform on wheels, open to the elements.

However, the apple and pear trees were still in bloom, and the landscape was at its bucolic best. ‘Sometimes from the train we get the wonderful scent of the blossom,' Wolfram wrote to his mother. ‘It reminds me of Franconia, except that instead of timber houses they're built of Normandy stone.' He was delighted to catch a glimpse of Mont St Michel, its black silhouette outlined dramatically against a luminous, copper-red sky. ‘Just as we passed, the round disc of the setting sun was hovering above the church spire. I couldn't take my eyes off it.'

The train came to a sudden halt in the middle of the countryside and everyone was told to get out. They were ordered to unload everything, but no one explained why. Guns, crates of ammunition, and straw and oats for the horses – all had to be taken off the train. Just as they lifted off the last few boxes, the order was countermanded and they were ordered to reload them.

Everything had to be done in a great hurry for the train needed to continue to its destination, giving no time to reload all the fodder for the horses. The officer in charge took the decision to leave three men to guard these supplies. Wolfram and two others were chosen to remain behind, lodged in an empty house.

They had no idea how long they would be there, were given hardly any food and had no papers justifying their presence. Having assumed someone would return for them on the following morning, they were surprised when no one showed up.

A second day passed and still no one came. By now, they had eaten the last of their rations and were getting hungry. It was while they were considering what to do that a young lad from the nearby farm paid them a visit.

Looking longingly at the supply of oats, he told Wolfram that his horse had not eaten properly for more than two years. The Germans, he said, had confiscated all the best fodder. Now, he had a proposition to make: if they gave him some oats, he would supply them with food in return.

Such an exchange was strictly forbidden, but Wolfram thought it sounded like a sensible idea. He checked with the others and they agreed, but they warned the lad to burn the sacks as soon as they were empty, because they knew he would be shot if such incriminating evidence was discovered on his farm.

The boy took a sack and promptly returned with eggs. He also asked the Germans whether they would like to dine with his parents in the farmhouse that evening.

Wolfram and his two comrades were delighted to accept, if a little embarrassed. As they sat at the table next to a roaring fire, the farmer's wife made them dozens of pancakes, all washed down with cider. At the end of the meal, conducted in the soldiers' broken French, they were invited for lunch on the following day.

The farmer was quite open about his views on the German occupation, telling them that whilst it had brought many changes to their daily lives, it was the small things that irritated him the most. The ban on firearms was a source of particular annoyance. The farmer had long been accustomed to hunt and shoot for the pot, but his rifle had been confiscated by the Germans on the day they had occupied the area.

When Wolfram and his comrades heard this, they offered to help him out. One of the three, a keen shot, promised to shoot wood pigeons. During the following morning he managed to bag dozens. From then on, Wolfram and his comrades were invited to share the roasted wood pigeons with the family each evening.

Word of their excursions soon spread through the local villages. The owner of a little bistro near by asked them to shoot pigeons for him as well, so they started to provide him with a regular supply.

The three Germans were by now on such good terms with the farmer that they were invited to attend the first communion of one of the youngsters in the family. ‘We can't possibly come,' Wolfram told the farmer. ‘We're the Bosch.' However, the farmer pressed them, telling them it would be fine.

They went to the celebration in their uniforms but left all their weapons behind – an offence that was punishable by death by firing squad, although they did not think of the danger.

The locals stared at the three soldiers dressed in their khaki fatigues, until the farmer assured the congregation that they were good Germans. Afterwards he invited them back to eat sausages and cake made with real butter and real eggs.

One evening, when they had got to know the farmer well, they asked him why he was being so kind to them. He told them that he had served as a conscripted soldier in the First World War and had hated it. ‘It's not your fault,' he said. ‘You didn't choose to fight.'

As they all drank more and more cider, and grew ever more merry, they drew caricatures of Hitler, Stalin and Churchill, pinned them to the wall and threw rubbish at them. There was general agreement that the people at the top were all the same: criminals, every last one of them.

For more than a fortnight, no one came to look for Wolfram and his friends until eventually one morning, a German military car pulled up. A professional officer by the name of Glasser stepped out and announced that he had come to fetch them.

When he noticed the nearby farm and poked his head into the pantry, he was sorely tempted by the sight of their eggs, butter and cream. With some hesitation, he drew Wolfram to one side and asked him whether he thought the farmer would be willing to sell him a little food. Wolfram feigned ignorance and said he had no idea.

Glasser went and asked the farmer, who reacted with great discretion, making no mention of his close relationship with Wolfram and his friends. Instead, he expressed surprise at the suggestion but readily agreed. ‘That's amazing!' said Glasser to Wolfram when he returned with a sack filled with eggs and cheese. ‘Look what they've given me.'

Once Glasser had loaded the food into his car, he drove Wolfram and the others to their new billet at St Brieux, on the north coast of Brittany. Wolfram was happy to be reunited with Miggel, Lang and Ritzy although less pleased that the relaxed routine of life, which he had become used to, now came to an abrupt end. He was billeted in an underground bunker with a metal ladder as the only exit. As it was airless and claustrophobic, the men spent much of their time outside.

They passed the last two weeks of May doing yet more Morse code exercises, transmitting messages about the forthcoming weather conditions. Finally, on the morning of 6 June, they were brought news that was to change their lives for ever. In the early hours of dawn, a massive armada of ships had been sighted approaching the northern French coastline.
Invasionstag
, or D-Day, had begun.

Wolfram knew nothing about the Normandy landings when he was jolted from his sleep by the army reveille on Tuesday, 6 June 1944. He swung his legs wearily out of bed and glanced outside. The leaden sky was smudged with clouds and a fine drizzle was washing in from the sea. Another miserable summer's day in northern France.

It is a mark of the German army's lassitude that even as Allied forces were storming on to the beaches of Normandy, the majority of Wehrmacht soldiers were unaware that the largest seaborne landing in the history of warfare was occurring on their doorstep.

Wolfram was still in the dark when he ate breakfast that morning; indeed, he first learned news of the landings at around midday. Even then, there was no sense of urgency or panic. None of the men was instructed to pack his equipment and there was no talk of their being sent to the beachhead. It was business as normal.

The sluggish German response to the landings is all the more surprising, given that Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, responsible for defending the Normandy coastline, had long argued that Allied soldiers must be attacked while they were still on the beaches. ‘The enemy is at his weakest just after landing,' he said. ‘The troops are unsure and possibly even seasick. They are unfamiliar with the terrain. Heavy weapons are not yet available in sufficient quantity. That is the moment to strike at them and defeat them.'

The dismal weather, so depressing to Wolfram that summer's morning, was one of the principal reasons for the German army's lack of preparedness. An Allied invasion was certainly expected at some time in the near future, but the previous evening's weather report had been so bad that the German high command in Normandy scoffed at any notion of an imminent landing. ‘Rough sea, poor visibility, Force 5–6 wind, rain likely to get heavier. Most probably we shan't even get our usual raids.'

It was not just the weather reports that led to inaction on the ground. Most of the senior German commanders in Normandy were not at their posts at the time of the landings, leading to confusion and paralysis. Rommel had left on the previous morning in order to pay a surprise birthday visit on his wife in Germany. Many other commanders were attending a war games exercise in Rennes, among them General Friedrich Dollmann and General von Schlieben. The latter was charged with defending the stretch of coastline that included the landing area of Utah Beach.

Another key person missing was General Wilhelm Falley of the 9th Infantry Division. ‘Nothing's going to happen in this lousy weather,' he said as he set off to Rennes.

The German high command took comfort from the fact that if the landings did not take place on 6 June, then they were most unlikely to happen for several weeks. ‘The various conditions of tide, moon and general weather situation necessary for a landing here in northern France won't coincide again until the second half of June.' Such was the opinion of Admiral Hennecke, the Normandy naval commander.

While the German commanders enjoyed themselves, and Wolfram slept through the night at his Brittany barracks,
invasionstag
became a dramatic reality for a small number of German troops. On a bleak stretch of beach close to the village of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, Lieutenant Jahnke and his men were seated inside Strongpoint W8, a concrete bunker, listening to the drone of enemy bombers. For many weeks, Allied aircraft had been bombing depots, military installations and gun emplacements. On this particular evening they were bombing with greater force than usual.

Jahnke saw no undue reason for alarm, informing his men that the Allies would never attempt a landing without an aerial bombardment of the coastal landing areas.

It was as he uttered these words – he would later recall – that a wave of 360 Marauder medium bombers screamed in from the sea. Their bomb-bays opened as they passed above Strongpoint W8. There was a blinding flash as a series of rapid explosions thumped into the beach, causing Strongpoint W8 to shudder and groan before cracking open like a nut. Jahnke was flung against the wall of the bunker before being buried in deep sand. He dragged himself outside just in time to see the ammunition bunkers receive a direct hit.

Strongpoint W8 had been the principal fortification on Utah Beach. Now, it lay in smouldering ruins. The 75-millimetre anti-tank gun was twisted beyond repair and all the machine-guns were entombed in sand.

However, the attack was not yet over. A new wave of aircraft roared in from the sea, firing 50-millimetre rockets at the two bunkers that still remained intact.

‘Everything's wrecked! Everything's wrecked!' screamed one of the German mess orderlies.

Jahnke remained cool under pressure. He rallied his shaken men, offered some encouraging words and then peered through his telescope towards the gunmetal sea. At this point, he got his second unwelcome surprise of the morning. A floating argosy could be seen steering directly towards the beach – a truly massive fleet of destroyers, gunboats, battleships, minesweepers: ships both big and small. Each one was flying an ungainly barrage balloon from its stern, as protection against attack from the air.

Most alarming was the fact that they were coming at low tide. Rommel's entire coastal defences had been planned with the expectation that the invading army would land at high tide. It meant that all the underwater obstacles – wired ramming blocks, stakes and mines – were exposed and clearly visible.

Jahnke's men vowed to put up a spirited defence. Lance Corporal Friedrich was crouched behind a machine-gun in the turret of a buried Renault tank. Others were tinkering with the last remaining 88-millimetre gun, desperately trying to coax it into life.

‘Fire!' The gun suddenly sprang into action, volleying a shell at the first American tank to roll on to the beach, instantly crippling it. That, however, was the first and the last shell to be fired: the gun was too badly damaged for further use.

‘It looks as if God and the world has forsaken us,' muttered Jahnke to one of the German army runners. He was not wrong. Vast quantities of men and
matériel
were being disgorged on to the beach and German resistance was almost at an end. An explosion flung Jahnke into the sand for a second time that morning. When he awoke from his fleeting unconsciousness, an American infantryman was standing over him, rifle in hand.

More than six hours before Wolfram knew anything about D-Day, Lieutenant Jahnke was already a prisoner of war.

 

Wolfram's regiment, the 1021st Grenadier Regiment, was ill-equipped for battle. So was the 77th Infantry Division to which it belonged. Many of its men were conscripts like Wolfram and few had seen any battlefield action. The division lacked officers, equipment, vehicles and supplies. Furthermore, a very high proportion of the men were
volksdeutsche
– ethnic Germans from the occupied territories. There were also large numbers of Poles, Tartars from the Volga region, Georgians, Azerbaijanis and Turkmen. The loyalty of these men to the Third Reich was, at best, questionable. Most were fighting on the German side out of loathing for Stalin, not loyalty to Hitler. Thousands of miles from home and uncertain of the cause for which they had taken up arms, they were an unreliable force to throw against the Allied forces now pouring on to their beachheads.

Notwithstanding their lack of experience, it was imperative for as many German divisions as possible to move northwards to counter the invading Allies. As news from the coast deteriorated from bad to worse, the 77th Infantry Division's commander, Major-General Rudolf Stegmann, prepared to send his troops into battle.

It was around midday on 7 June, a day after the landings, when Wolfram and his friends were told to pack their belongings. They were on the move.

There was by now a real sense of urgency among German commanders on the ground. The Allied landings may not have gone according to plan but they had succeeded in their principal goal of establishing a strong beachhead. On Utah Beach more than 23,000 men had been brought ashore on the first day, along with 1,700 vehicles. The cost had been fewer than 200 American lives.

On Omaha Beach, the other American landing place, a stiff German defence had led to extremely high casualties: American V Corps alone lost 3,000 men – killed, wounded or missing – and large numbers of tanks and artillery lay crippled on the beach. Yet the Americans fought valiantly and managed to secure a small beachhead by the evening of that day.

The other three landing points – the British army's Gold and Sword Beach and the Canadian Juno Beach – had also been captured after initially heavy fighting. By midnight on D-Day, 155,000 Allied troops were ashore.

Rommel was quick to recognise the strategic danger posed by the landings on Utah Beach, the most westerly of the five landings. If the Americans succeeded in pushing inland, they could cut the Cotentin peninsula in two and isolate all of the German forces stationed in ‘Fortress Cherbourg' on the northern tip of the peninsula. To prevent such a disaster, the 77th Infantry Division was ordered northwards with the aim of blocking any American advance into the Cotentin.

Wolfram and his comrades set out on foot, with their horses carrying the heaviest of the communication equipment. It was a long and exhausting march to their goal, the River Meredet, more than 150 miles to the north, and they needed to get there at high speed. The men covered up to fifty miles a day with almost no break. After forty-eight hours on the march they were exhausted. At one point, Wolfram was so tired that he rested his head on the belly of the horse and fell asleep as he walked mechanically along the road. On the rare occasions when they stopped, everyone slumped to the ground and was asleep within seconds.

For the first two days the men marched in daylight, but as they neared the Utah beachhead, the skies overhead became increasingly dangerous. There were fighter bombers constantly above them that would fly in extraordinarily low and shoot at anything on the ground that moved. The men's nerves were tested to the limit. They would be forced to scatter and hide, diving into copses, hedgerows or abandoned farmhouses.

‘Even the movements of smaller formations…are immediately bombarded from the air with annihilating effect,' read one of the weekly situation reports submitted to the German high command. ‘Neither our flak nor the Luftwaffe seems to be in a position to check this crippling and destructive operation.'

The difficulty of marching under fire quickly became apparent to Wolfram and his comrades. The regiment found itself advancing northwards not as a single body but as dozens of little bands, many of them leaderless. They had very little idea of where they were heading, nor did they know what they were supposed to do when they reached their destination. These groups of men were increasingly vulnerable to attack from the sky and were forever flinging themselves into ditches to escape being strafed by machine-gun fire from the Allied fighter-bombers. The hail of bullets so intense that each new raid brought fatalities.

Wolfram and his men were walking along a narrow country lane when they stumbled across the bodies of two dead soldiers lying by the roadside. The putrid stench and their blackened faces betrayed the fact that they had been killed some days earlier, probably in one of the raids that preceded the landings. Yet no one had bothered to give them a decent burial. The men decided to cover the corpses with earth. Wolfram went to pick one of them up but as he grasped the body, his hand went straight through the flesh. Already in an advanced state of decomposition, it could no longer be moved without falling apart completely.

The difficulties of advancing en masse, and with tanks and artillery in tow, was compounded by the terrain. The Normandy bocage – a landscape of meadows and copses criss-crossed by hedgerows – brought severe logistical problems for the movement of defensive forces, slowing the men to a snail's pace. Tanks and vehicles got bogged down in the lanes while the heavy artillery, constantly strafed by fighter-bombers, was forced to scatter far and wide.

The Panzer divisions could only just squeeze along the narrow country roads and were forever getting stuck between the hedgerows. Whenever this happened, long columns of vehicles would have to turn around and seek a different route. At such moments of disorder, they were extremely vulnerable to attack.

As the men got nearer to the front, they saw huge numbers of abandoned tanks and vehicles that had been hit from the air. On one occasion, curiosity got the better of Wolfram and he opened the hatch of one of these stricken vehicles to peer inside. It was a picture of horror: charred and carbonised bodies lay on the floor of the tank. They had been shrunken by the intense heat and reduced to the size of babies.

After five days on the move, Wolfram and his comrades were completely lost. They knew only that they were nearing the coast because of the sound of cannon coming from the warships at anchor in the English Channel: a regular dull noise – thump, thump, thump – as they bombarded the land.

On their sixth day, the men started to encounter wounded soldiers fleeing from the battlefront: a sure sign that they were nearing their goal. They had just bivouacked for the night when a little group of German soldiers came staggering towards them, covered in blood. A few were able to walk but others were so badly injured that they were being carried. It was a chilling omen.

 

Wolfram's parents knew nothing of the clash of arms in Normandy. Marie Charlotte turned on the radio that Tuesday morning to listen to the news, but there was no mention of any Allied landings. Nor were there any reports in the local Pforzheim newspaper: the late edition had gone to press many hours before Allied troops had begun pouring on to the beaches.

It was not until the following day that the local newspaper carried a short report about the invasion, although there was very little detail about what was actually happening and no sense that the German army had made a catastrophic blunder in not reacting more quickly to the invasion. Under the headline, ‘Historic Plan Stopped by German Defence', the report stated that the Allies had suffered appalling casualties as a result of a masterful German counter-attack. ‘Horrible losses under German fire.'