Back into the Line

Bundesarchiv

He was an Oberfeldwebel and he looked to have the weight of the world on his shoulders. He sat on a tree stump next to the muddy intersection smoking a cigarette. He watched as the column of infantry from the 983rd Grenadier Regiment trudged into sight from around a bend in the road. These guys looked tired, but their weapons looked clean, their uniforms in good shape. They even had a certain cockiness in their stride.

"You guys the 983rd?" the tired sergeant asked, standing reluctantly he threw a sloppy salute when he realized that the man he had addressed was a captain. What's more, a captain wearing the Knight's Cross at his collar. "Sorry sir, didn't see your rank."

"It's all right Oberfeldwebel, you look like you've been through the wringer. Are you with the 116th?" Hauptmann Jürgen von Lüttwitz, commanding the 5th Company of the 2nd Battalion of the 983rd, had orders to replace the men of the 116th Panzer Division, the Greyhounds, who were holding this section.

"Jawohl Herr Hauptmann, all 27 of us. 3rd Company, 1st Battalion, 156th Panzergrenadier Regiment." The sergeant gave the captain a rueful smile. "The rest of the boys are asleep in the woods."

Hauptmann von Lüttwitz started to question what the man meant by that, then he realized, the rest of his company were dead, somewhere in the Hürtgenwald. "I have orders for you to fall back to..." pulling his map out, von Lüttwitz pointed to a small village about three kilometers to the east. "I gather they are reconstituting your division, I heard of a train loaded with new Panthers from the factory at a siding near Bonn."

"Nice, but we're Panzergrenadiers, it would be nice to have new halftracks. Walking is hard on the feet you know..."

Von Lüttwitz had to laugh at that, "We've been on foot since we were formed, excepting of course when they load us on trains to send us to the East. We've been marching for a day and a half to get here. How are the enemy in this sector?"

The sergeant shuddered at the thought of the East, he only had three toes on his left foot, the other two he'd lost in Russia, to frostbite. "Things are getting hotter, the Amis moved a new outfit into the line across from us, they have a vertical red stripe on a green shield, they..."

"Oh yes, their 1st Infantry Division, that vertical stripe is a '1,' a red '1.' They call themselves the 'Big Red One.' Not very clever, but succinct." The captain had faced those men before, a very tough proposition.

"Yes, well, they are far more aggressive than the men they replaced. Just last night I lost my lieutenant and seven other men. An Ami patrol had stumbled into our lines two days ago. We shot them up, they fell back. They left a dead man behind and..."

"The Amis left one of their dead?" von Lüttwitz was somewhat incredulous, the Americans didn't do that.

"Oh, they came back for him, last night. At any rate, after the earlier firefight, I was there for that, I noticed that the dead man had that vertical red stripe, a '1' as you say, on his jacket. He was a sergeant. Anyway, they hit our outpost line last night, killed eight men, my lieutenant among them, and recovered their dead sergeant."

"Then they fell back?"

"Nein, Herr Hauptmann, they hold that position now." Drawing his own map out, the sergeant marked the village he was supposed to head for, then showed the captain a line he'd marked on his overlay. "Right here, this small ravine, is where our main line is now. We've dug better entrenchments, before they were just fighting holes. But they drove us back from this firebreak, here." Once again the sergeant showed the captain on the map where the old line had been.

"Things should be more settled now, my company has 78 men to replace your 27..."

"Seventy-eight Herr Hauptmann? That's roughly half the strength of a full company!" The sergeant stopped as he realized that his own company was less than half the strength of these newcomers.

"Times are hard all over Oberfeldwebel. The 5th Company has left its dead from the beaches of the Channel, through Falaise, and all through Belgium. This is all that is left, and many of them should still be in school, not carrying rifles for the Fatherland." von Lüttwitz wasn't really angry, just tired, tired of fighting, tired of marching, and tired of watching his men die. He often wondered when it would end. If he would be there at the end was another question never far from his thoughts.

"I understand sir, now, if you'll excuse me, we have a bit of a march to make. Come with me, I'll take you to our, er, I mean your positions."

The men of 5th Company saw the men they were replacing, the worn-out remnants of a once proud Panzer division. Their uniforms were filthy and torn, the men were dirty and unshaven but, as Opa Köhler pointed out to one of the youngsters, "Look how clean their weapons are Junge¹. You can always tell a veteran by the smartness of his weapon. Skip a meal if you must, neglect to shave if you have no water, but always make time to clean your rifle."

The younger men watched with something approaching awe as the weary veterans passed by on their way to the rear. As they settled into their new trenches, some of the men looked out at the tall pines, in the daylight it was almost pretty.

Photo by Ilya Yurukin
(Source)

Night would present a far different image.

¹ Kid or boy.