Free Unlikely Warrior by Georg Rauch Page B

the hill. The Germans drove them back, but each time it was more difficult, and they were coming closer.
    The next day began with a bombardment of heavy artillery, after which not a single house remained intact. One of our team, out fixing a cable, was killed. A hit blasted the wooden door to the cellar, where we sat huddled around the switchboard.
    Then, incredibly, the waves of Russians began streaming down again. It was a bloodbath, and our ammunition was becoming scarce. The wounded stumbled or were dragged, bleeding, to the rear. At noon the Russians took the front lines and the first row of ruins. This time we in the communications squad were also called on for the counterattack. Once more we succeeded in driving them back, but with very heavy losses. We began hearing reports of self-inflicted wounds. Others were trying to desert, but there was no way out. There was that order from the Führer—“to the last man”—and he meant it. A row of MPs armed with pistols stood at the rear of the village and stopped everyone. It was either back to the front or be shot on the spot.
    The Germans rushed in more men, but our lines were becoming visibly sparse and ragged. The Russians kept coming all day. Morale had sunk to the lowest possible point, and all were close to exhaustion. In our cellar, I couldn’t stop shivering, and it wasn’t from the cold.
    We had to make test calls to the front line every ten minutes so that the officers back at the command posts could keep tabs on how well the lines were holding. The situation became more critical by the hour. Obermaier was wounded and carried away; Haas was ordered right into the first line as a machine gunner. Five of us plus the sergeant remained in the cellar.
    A telephone line running across the main square was interrupted. Kramer scrambled out with pliers and electrical tape. He didn’t return, and the connection was still down.
    An indignant officer called in from the rear, “Why haven’t you lazy pigs repaired the line yet?”
    Glatz went out next. Sergeant Burghart and I crept up the stairs from where we watched him jumping from cover to cover, always following the wire. The break must have been on the far side of the square, for he squatted down there, but before he could even fit the two ends together, he simply fell forward on his face.
    “Who’s next?” the sergeant asked.
    Neumann glanced around at us helplessly and climbed slowly out. He didn’t even make it to the square before he fell. The sergeant’s cool and distant manner was starting to crumble as he realized that only he, seventeen-year-old Baby Schmidt, and I were left. Suddenly it became very clear to me that my own life was about to end very soon if I didn’t think of something fast.
    I sketched a map of the area, including the ruins, the lines, and the point where everyone was being shot down. The sergeant accepted my plan of laying a completely new line, and we went out together with a roll of wire. We used every possible pile of rubble as cover. By laying lots of wire and running in zigzags, we finally reached our goal to find— nothing! There was only an enormous crater surrounded by rubble. No man. No telephone.
    Bent over double, we ran back to our cellar, where Baby Schmidt was reporting apathetically into the mike, “Appleblossom doesn’t answer. Pancake doesn’t answer either.”
    An officer roared down from above, “Every man out on the double for the counterattack!”
    We ran through the gathering dusk toward the front. I jumped in a hole where a corpse already lay and began shooting. The Russians came at us, and automatically I kept shooting. Load, aim, fire. Load, aim, fire. I could see their faces. The bayonet on my rifle was fixed and ready for them.
    All of a sudden, long rows of tracer fire flew from directly behind us and over our heads. Three four-gun turrets from the German antiaircraft forces had been driven into position and were shooting into the haystacks sheltering