When We Entered the American Zone, The Sight Was Truly Astonishing (Ep.7).

We shook his hand, eager to shake the hand of a legend. Our complaints, our bitter jokes about the Luft raffer, were forgotten for a minute as we watched the magnificent plane being dragged into the shade of the elm trees where it was to be stored. The pilot told us until that could somehow be returned to the Service. As we emerged from the thicket, The Ox Lo began a sound that I recognized as Burden's beasts being unhinged from their load a minute after the entire corner of the forest was behind us. It lit up and we turned to see a colossal orange fireball climbing into the air above the trees.

The fireball dripped burning fuel as it rose so high that it burned the fog from the treetops for hundreds of meters around the farmer he had driven. The Oxen came running after us screaming hysterically. The fool lit a cigarette as if he wanted to die slowly. These scenes and many others fell behind us and the sounds of fighting from the perimeter became more distant our Belly creaked and rattled as we passed A screen of smoke, our eyes filled with tears that we had not shed in the battles and we

entered

a area that seemed to be organized with some form of discipline.

One hundred men directed traffic forward and improvised defenses and implements gave way to properly constructed ditches. and the trenches the troops here were a mix of completely fresh and exhausted people and the equipment was also new and old a series of Immaculate P guns, their barely muddy wheels were manned by gunners who looked like scarecrows, thin and ragged, a unit of troops of the Hitler Youth. With clean uniforms and fresh haircuts they were manning a defense point that consisted of an old Panza three without wheels or tracks standing on a mound of barbed wire, the troops were from a wide variety of units and regiments, including armed police and STM popular men surprisingly there.

There were also field kitchens handing out a ladle full of hot soup to any passing soldier or civilian. I ate my ration on the back deck of the Panther leaning on the turret surrounded by wounded men and boys. The engine smoke covered us in grime and the fumes made us nauseous. but we were inside the 12th Army sector heading towards the elbe

when

we passed a group of soldiers grouped around an armored vehicle, one of them turned towards us and shouted something that I didn't understand, but some of the children heard it and started a Pull my sleeve Feld Vel, what's wrong, boy, is the furer dead?

Now we stopped at the next group of troops and listened to their radio for a few minutes, they announced that Adolf Hitler had died in the fight for Berlin just 30 km from the North of us, the war continued anyway in the hope of a final victory, some women cried and some troops spoke openly of suicide. I felt little except the pain in the wound in my back through which I took the last of my The 12th Army sector around Brandenburg, facing the Elbe, was a landscape of destruction and constant movement. The perimeter was controlled by the remnants of the 12th Army and the escaped 9th Army, but the entire area was under heavy pressure from the Reds, except the Elb itself on the western boundary which faced the silent and motionless Americans. on its shore.

Large columns of vehicles and people made their way across the rolling countryside towards the river. The Reds controlled the sky despite our Flack and his weapons frequently machine-gunned the columns. buildings and the open terrain we knew that if the Russians wanted they could bomb the sector into dust, they were holding back waiting for the end of the war and perhaps looking to maximize their capture of humanity. Leaflets cascaded from the sky urging everyone in the sector to remain static and stop resisting the advance of the Red Army Hitler is dead Berlin has surrendered the war has no logic and must end now plus voices spoke to us through amplified speakers at an incredibly loud volume these were the voices of officers and the warm spring breeze carried them for miles across the landscape the words were confusing but we caught them surrender peace life good will and some of us heard this and the drone of the plane overhead as we We were joining a massive rush of people heading towards the river.

It was rare now to see armed troops; most had dropped their weapons and walked with their hands in their pockets or resting their backpacks; most of the epaulettes and other signs of rank had been removed from their uniforms and The Meadows were strewn with badges, caps and Jack Boots men's boots. Civilian clothing was now highly prized and many men wearing farm workers' trousers and shirts had the bearing of recent professional soldiers and other alcoholic beverages were plentiful and many people could be seen lying drunk by the side of the road, numb to what they had experienced. witnessed. and whatever fears possessed them, the fields and roadsides were littered with abandoned vehicles, both mechanized and horse-drawn, there were a few bellies among the trucks, kubal carts and automobiles, but it seemed that most of the armored vehicles had been left behind in the castle and in the other battle

zone

, our Panther was the only one of its kind that we saw and it was about to die beneath us at a crossroads, a huge crater closed the way to the Heavy vehicles and pedestrian traffic crossed over a wooden bridge that we tried to go around with the panther.

This obstacle

entered

The Meadows, but the fields near the river were marshy and the tracks soon sank deeply. There was no benefit in trying to keep the machine moving forward. The river was a short distance away. The fuel was out and the engine was off. In danger of catching fire, we drove the old Panza into the swamps, knowing that this was the end and not wanting the machine to fall into other hands, be it Russian-American or even German, with the wounded and civilians up, we drove the Panther in second place. gear for a few more meters until it reached an expanse of water surrounded by reeds it began to slow the end of the engine going down first we jumped out and watched it sink with fumes Rising into the air the front plate rose upward the long barrel of the gun dripping with Marsh's trough, the Cup from which he had seen so much and given so many orders in the heat of combat, filled with stagnant water and slid beneath the surface with a few final bubbles and vapors.

I stood there silently as the green weeds gathered together. on the Panther and

when

the surface was calm I turned with my crew and we walked at the head of our little column along the congested roads to the elbe of the Rio Grande, the approaches to the River were full of people of all kinds, civilians, unarmed troops and some combat troops still carrying their weapons, among them were Waffen SS men from the Panza core who were pushing their way through the crowd in front of us, forcing the lines of people to move out of their way.

I could see the river below at the foot of the slopes over the heads of the thousands of people trying to get there, the water looked black and the river was about 200 m wide. At this point there was a single bridge spanning the entire width; The other bridges to the north and south had been destroyed in April to prevent the Americans from crossing. This bridge was a narrow wood and steel construction and when we reached the slope I saw that the reason so many people were still waiting to cross the bridge was blown up in its center point and there was only one line of people.

I could cross to the American side one at a time, the American Bank seemed practically deserted, there were no bellies or gun emplacements there and I couldn't see any American infantry. I spoke to a lieutenant from an artillery unit next to me in the crowd and he told me that the Americans had withdrawn their men several kilometers west of the river, they don't want a conflict with the Russians, he said with a shrug, but look at All these people, there must be 50 or 60,000 people here, are they the Amis? Let us all cross over to them. I squinted toward the opposite shore.

The line of people who had already crossed the damaged bridge were simply fanning out on the grass. On that side, trudging west, was a huge pile of discarded Littles. Weapons there, carbines, rifles and machine guns, helmets and Paner fasts indicating that the troops did not need them when on the American side I saw some men trying to swim the river against the swollen and fast current, some emerged on the American bank, but many seemed to disappear under the dark water and not resurface. Someone had tried to make a boat with a pontoon bridge, but it slowly sank as its crew rowed and the men slipped underwater in front of us, the SS men fighting their way through.

Shots were fired from the crowd in their haste to reach the river bank and within a minute we passed over the bodies of two artillery cadets who had evidently tried to argue with the SS; There were other bodies abandoned on the ground, wounded men and civilians who had succumbed and those in their final throws who had no one to help them, lost children wandered among the thousands of adults crying for their relatives. The civilians in my column gathered half a dozen of these children and we stood together as we slowly advanced toward the bridge. At the entrances there were troops guarding the bridge and seeking to extort valuable objects from people waiting to cross in exchange for jumping through the crowd to receive a gold watch, a good camera or a diamond ring.

You could go directly to the bridge without waiting. At first the people cursed these troops, but the sound of a shelling behind us on the slopes above the river and the screams of those wounded by those explosions provoked many offers of payment, the crowd staggered and people fell underfoot and was trampled. From somewhere, a horse made its way through the crowd, kicking and trampling anyone who stood in its way until he was shot down. When a red plane flew low, without firing, but low enough that we could smell the steam from its exhaust pipes, the crowd panicked and tried to storm the bridge entrance many people were crushed or trampled to death and inevitably it was the most fragile and weak who suffered the most.

The banks of the river were steep clay cliffs and many civilians fell into the water and did not resurface. In the midst of this chaos, the remains of my column finally climbed onto the bridge and we began. Walking across the planks in single file with the water 20m below us, passing through the damaged section in the center, setting foot on the opposite bank was a strange experience throughout everything we had seen and done in our escape from the castle, the thought of the American side of the Elbe had been constantly on our minds now that we stepped onto the grass without a single American Panza soldier or American plane in

sight

, the feeling was unreal, as if my feet were numb with my crew and the fragments of infantry and civilians still with us we left our pistol and other weapons in the pile of weapons a bronze pyramid that rose to a height of 4 M the only thing I kept was the photo in my pocket and the iron cross of the Capo in his tape snatched from his body on the sunken road as we turned to leave, a ketten hund came staggering towards us, this man was drunk and pointing a gun at us, our civilians backed away from him as he gestured with the gun.

I will take the medal in my hand he said with a smell of brandy you didn't earn it I said the American boys pay me 10 dollars for an iron cross he laughed he used the American word dollars not dollars as if Now I was one of them. I'll give you two dollars for yours so you can eat, and just as I hit him in the face, he shot me. This is how my war ended in May 1945 in the West Bank. the Elbe under American occupation but without an American in

sight

after my two years of fighting after KK and the retreat to the West after the halba kessle and the fields full of corpses after everything that embarrassed me and everything that made me I was proud of my war.

It ended with a drunk Katen hund punching a hole in my shoulder blade while I lay on the West Bank of the Elbe watching the boots of my Panther crew as they kicked the Ketten hund man to death right there and then I could only close my eyes against the sky and accept that everything we had done had come to an end. My team took me to a Red Cross Center in the American Zone, a makeshift hospital in an abandoned school building on the outskirts of Hanover. My injury was extensive and was added to the existing injury on my back.

Recovery was slow. I spent days on the school grounds listening to American radio programs and playing cards at first.The food they gave us was so delicious and sweet that it made me vomit as my stomach was used to, rations of vermar and water, we Germans would stand at the table at meal time and shake our heads in amazement at the sight of the hot dogs, the scrambled eggs and muffins, the cookies and Hershey bars we could buy at the store, the nurses were from the Red Cross. Volunteers and nuns from various countries who could not be surpassed anywhere for the care they gave us.

My uniform was folded in a locker and I started wearing old civilian pants and shirt that came from the hospital clothing bank. I shaved every day and smoked cigarettes in the sun the patients didn't talk to each other about their experiences in the war once I saw a new patient brought in who had been injured in a knife fight I thought I recognized him as one of the SS men from The Bridge Crossing, but I didn't say anything about this and neither did he. My Panther crew was dispersed to prisoner processing camps in the American and British sectors and I heard that the civilians who had been in our column simply disappeared into the landscape of Germany.

I was interrogated by an American sergeant who only wanted to know if I was a member of the National Socialists. He was less interested in my war record. There were simply so many of us that we needed to be prosecuted. May 1945 moved to June and then to July. Now the wisdom of surrendering to the Americans was absolutely confirmed. in my opinion because everyone knew that the information we had about our prisoners in the East was zero, literally zero, the millions of men who had surrendered to the reds. east of the elbe had melted into the soviet system and nothing was known about them, some people said that they were in the central Soviet republics, places that were beyond the Caucasus mountains and that now they could well be on the moon, other people said that they were in Siberia or Mongolia, where the hes and the Red prisoners had always told us that not even the Russians could return, in the West we felt justified in our determination to escape that fate, while many of us also felt uncomfortable knowing that luck had played a part. on our diet of hot dogs and chocolate at the same time the future of the western part of Germany was becoming clearer the western allies were investing in the reconstruction of the cities they had destroyed everything could be bought for a price coffee cosmetics weapons gasoline morphine color magazines cameras bourbon They offered me a jeep if I could gather 10 iron crosses and luga guns to go with them.

They have to be places. My American contact insisted that Walthers would not do it. The streets were full of German girls walking with American SIGs and somber Germans. boys watching them go by the atmosphere in the streets strangely felt like sometime before the war when the future seemed full of possibilities my future although it was uncertain my only remaining family had been the vermak and I had no home or occupation or resources at night The hospital room was filled with crying and crying as the men dreamed of their battles. Some nights he wouldn't let me sleep knowing that I would see Halba Castle again and, above all, the dead Russian in the basement whose friend gave his steel helmet to the German Boy, why did that Russian visit me at night after all the dozens of people he had killed to the thousands he had seen murdered because I showed him the photo of the girl in my pocket?

That was why I lay down in bed on my personal bed. Kessle of Mind wondering about all this knew that the time was approaching to leave the hospital one by one. The wounded Germans who were in the hospital were able to leave and most were discharged into the civilian population. The nurses saw that I was there. "She's worried about this and they didn't understand why, but you have your sister," a nurse told me after changing the bandage on my shoulder wound for the last time as we watched the wet rain on the ward windows one afternoon, or actually it's her. your girlfriend the photo you keep I didn't answer what's her name Wolf Gang you never told us her name the photo was in a frame in my locker I made the frame myself with pieces of a medical box and put a glass on top It was from a piece I found in the gardens.

I looked at that photo every day remembering the girl's mother and the way she died on the back deck of my Panther in the castle. To be honest, I had started to imagine a new life with it. girl and the remains of any family she had to replace the complete absence of family in my life outside of Panza's troops. If I must be honest, I spent my time in the hospital imagining my future life with that girl and a house we could have in the American sector and I found a paid job perhaps working with machines.

Any lonely man knows the kind of thoughts he had. What's the name of the Wolf Gang? I had no idea his name, but there was an address on the back of the photo. in a town that was not in Elba and the more I thought about that girl the more I thought I should go visit her and so it was at the beginning of August 1945 that I left the hospital with a civilian suit and tie and a backpack. and a small bouquet of flowers that the nurses made for me because they knew where I was going and why I found transportation in a postal truck and then a farm cart, both driven by men my age who surely must have been in the war we fought.

They don't ask each other for details, seeing the street full of people at work clearing the mounds of rubble and rebuilding their houses for the future, people stood in lines passing bricks from hand to hand while American bulldozers cleared entire blocks and American trucks arrived with loads. whole of wood and concrete to build everything again if the Americans had forgiven us, then it seemed to me that it was so and I felt that the halba kessle was now in the distant past and that its secrets would be locked forever in the forests of the east. of the Elbe and in the minds of those who had witnessed those events America was our future now America where anything can be forgiven forgotten and lost when the car stopped in front of the address I felt that this was also my future this new world of build and forget In the past the house was closed and the doors locked my heart beat with apprehension as it used to do before the combat without getting a response from the Silent House I asked a neighbor if they knew about the girl who showed the photo in the Marco the old woman took me to her house next door and sat me at a table in a dark kitchen.

Does she still live there? I asked her where is she. The neighbor put a cloth in her hands. The Americans have been very good to us. She said yes, yes. Look, but this young woman, the Americans have been generous and have restored order. We are very lucky here compared to those in the East under the reds. What women have suffered there is indescribable. If we are lucky. I myself made great efforts to arrive. West to escape from the Reds, I told her, now I see that the trip was worth it, but where is this girl, we don't have any complaints against the Americans, young people, it is to be expected that in any army there will be one or two bad apples each.

There are a small number of problematic soldiers. Sorry young man, but the girl in your photo is no longer with us. She left. She is dead. It is very unfortunate that in any army there are one or two who do not obey the law. We are lucky. The Americans have so few of these compared to the Russians, you should not get angry and you should not seek revenge, please, the fact is that the young girl was murdered by an American soldier a few weeks ago, if you must know the details, he was drunk and He forced himself on her and then strangled her, but the law has been applied.

You see, the man himself is in his military prison and it is said that he will be hanged for the crime. Our mayor is very close to the Americans and says that man. He will surely be hanged, but such events are rare, they are almost unheard of in the American sector, as you can imagine, we should all try to forget this event now because it is not good to remember these things for a long time. I nodded in the dark kitchen listening to the sounds of Reconstruction outside I walked away from the house into the sunset through the summer fields not knowing where I was going next in this Mediterranean those were armored vehicle scrapyards where long rows of our bellies were lined up in the rusty and abandoned grass and Silent the little hetzers the stugs the great Tigers the great Panthers all waiting in the sunset row after row empty dripping oil with birds making nests in their turrets it seems that when a war ends there is plenty left too much metal, too much steel and everything, the bellies really lose their value.

The neighbor was right. It is not good to remember these things for a long time.