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Praetorium Honoris

Saturday, January 23, 2021

Preparing for the End

(Source)

"They can't be serious, Herr Major. Boys, they're just boys!" Leutnant Manfred Sauer couldn't believe his eyes. What was left of Kampfgruppe (mot) von Lüttwitz was now being reformed as the 5th Company, II Battalion, 294th Grenadier Regiment of the 18th Volksgrenadier Division.

Although that division was still mostly at the front, it was short of troops. So Jürgen von Lüttwitz found himself as a company commander once more, though a high ranking one as a Major. He and his old comrade Sauer were watching as their replacements detrained. Mostly 16 and 17 year olds, there were a few men in their 20s, the NCOs mostly. Some of the older men moved slowly, as if still recovering from wounds.

"Look on the bright side Manfred, we're being re-equipped as a grenadier company, lots of automatic weapons. And, as they're shipping the replacements here, we're not bound for the East. At least I don't think so."

Sauer shook his head, "Well, that's something I guess. I've had my fill of Russia."

Sauer thought to himself that if by some miracle he survived this war, he would go and live someplace warm, Italy maybe, or Spain. Truth be told, he'd had his fill of ice and snow. As he watched the sergeants form their men up, he felt another chill as the wind whipped more of the freshly fallen snow across the rail platform. None of the buildings were more than shells, but at least you could stand close to a wall and be somewhat shielded from the wind.

He nodded to Gefreiter Beppo Sommerfeld, the man acting as his company clerk, who had accompanied him and the Major to the station.

Sommerfeld bellowed out, mostly to impress the new kids, "Horst, show the new boys to our bivouac! I'm sure the Major will be briefing the new officers and the new lads look hungry. At least we have a field kitchen again, the rations may be crap, but there's enough to fill your bellies!" Gefreiter Horst Klugmann, company messenger, grinned as he jogged over to the men lined up by the platform.

"All right ladies! Listen up! We're marching down to our bivouac by the river. It's uncomfortable, it's ugly, and there aren't any amenities, but on the other hand, it's so uninteresting as to not attract Jabos! Let's march!" With a long blast of his whistle, Klugmann led the new men as they stepped off in formation.

"The new lads look rather keen, Herr Leutnant." Sommerfeld observed.

"Of course they are, Beppo. They're too young to know any better. At least they know how to march. We'll have to wait to see if they can fight." Sauer shook his head as he said that.

"I doubt the Amis will make us wait long, Herr Leutnant."

(Source)

The company First Sergeant, 1st Sgt. Morton Saeger, had come up to the line in the Captain's jeep when he had heard that 2nd Platoon had once again taken losses.

"Jeez Sir, it seems like the 2nd always manages to sniff out the Krauts."

"Yeah Mort, it kinda sucks. We're losing men at a steady dribble. Thanks for coming up to take Jennings and Dixon back, we need to move on as soon as that tank driver gets patched up enough to get going. Doc says he's lucky to be alive." 2nd Lt. Stephen Hernandez still felt funny being called 'Sir' by a senior man like Saeger, he'd only been an officer for maybe a week now and Saeger had outranked him before his field commission.

"So L.T., you've got what, thirty-six guys now? That enough?" Saeger would try to get replacements up, Hernandez knew that, but the other platoons had taken losses as well. Replacements were hard to come by at the moment.

"We'll be okay as long as we don't lose any more. Having the tanks helps, I'd hate to be pushing forward on foot at the moment."

Both men looked at the sky, the snow was coming down steadily, the roads would soon be impassable to anything with wheels. All indications pointed to the Germans being finished here in the Ardennes. By tomorrow Charlie Company would be pushing into Germany again.

That is, if the snow ever let up.




Link to all of The Chant's fiction.

32 comments:

  1. GIs look more worn than the landsers, uniforms and footwear appear to not equal the season. But hey, who needs winter gear when the war will be over by Christmas eh? Thanks for all the work Sarge, you've been doing a bang-up job on this.

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    1. And that will come back to bite the US in the arse in Korea. Badly bite the arse.

      All that cold weather gear developed during WWII, not issued, not shipped, not issued in Korea. Heck, I'm surprised that the artic gear didn't show up in Vietnam...

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  2. Looks like the Ami's are wearing Micky Mouse boots, and wool overcoats. I read they would relieve the Germans of the wool coats when they found them. That guy on the left is sporting an M1C or D. Scoped, but no flash hider. Those look like glove liners, too. Man, it looks cold.

    I can feel for Sauer... I feel it too. Still performing your role, even when it seems pointless... Just marking time until the hammer drops, hoping to survive it... Planning the future, in spite of the present... man o man....

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    1. One of those guys who does his job to the bitter end.

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    2. I’d imagine a good degree of care was taken when selecting an article of enemy gear to wear.

      Ernst Jünger writes of wearing a British coat during some fun-time WWI raiding/skirmishing shenanigans, and how he caught a friendly bullet for his trouble.

      (I have one of those US wool overcoats, dated 1943, and it’s quite effective. I’m not, say, sleeping on the ground in a snowdrift in it, though)

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    3. Sorry, GI on the left just has standard M1 rifle. It looked like scope at first glance to me too, but looking close it is just the M1907 leather sling hanging down. It would be too far back for the M1C scope which ended roughly the same distance as the rear sight.

      Sarge- Hope your covid test came back negative. One of those times it's good to fail a test.
      John Blackshoe

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    4. a bear - A number of Germans were shot out of hand when captured as they had stripped American dead (and not so dead) of various articles of clothing. Taking anything from an enemy combatant and carrying it around was a good way to invite a bullet if captured.

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    5. Just had a thought ref Leutnant Sauer's "epilogue" as I was looking at a SIG-Sauer pistol. The man sure knows how to use them appropriately (c.f. the fat Hauptman).
      Yeah, I know it was J.P. Sauer and Sohn, but maybe a distant cousin?
      Boat Guy

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    6. You never know!

      (Truth be told, Manfred prefers the Walther P 38, as do I.)

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    7. Sorry Sarge, all the P-38's and P-1's I've shot had crappy triggers. Never liked the DA/SA system ( even on the 226, much less the M9).
      Manfred certainly was likely to have used the P-38 and would help in the development of "improvements" therefrom.
      The new SIG P-365 is amazing! Love that little pistol.
      Boat Guy

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    8. JB, you have some really sharp eyes. I zoomed in and it still looked right. I think I can see the ring in there now, tho. Good catch. They sure do have sunk in eyes...

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  3. Hey Old AFSarge;

    The Germans are "Using the Seed Corn" as it were, you can tell the end is near. The HJ did a good job teaching the youngsters basic military tactics when they were kids so the Army didn't have as far to go to get them hastily trained and the "Ami's" look tired also. Another Excellent Post.

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    1. Of course the HJ did an even better job at indoctrinating those kids; though a friend's wife said she joined the BDM "Because then you got more to eat"
      Boat Guy

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    2. Being a loner wasn't really tolerated in the Reich.

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    3. I read an excellent book on the closing months of WW2 ETO by the British historian Max Hastings. And he said that during that time the most dangerous soldiers were the Hitler Jugend with a Panzerfaust - all their lives they had been indoctrinated in the Nazi ideology. The GIs had to shoot many of them. Imagine that on your conscience - shooting 12 year olds.

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    4. Yup, Hitler was all they knew.

      Hastings is a superb historian.

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    5. William, I had a friend in Houston from South Africa. His dad was HJ. Still had his dagger, still worshiped Herr Shicklgruber. That was in the mid 90's... 50 plus years after the end....

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    6. STxAR - they are out there - and continue to be there...

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    7. Being a loner wasn't really tolerated in the Reich.

      Sarge - I got an idea how life was under the Nazis by watching of all things, an Amazon program by Kames "Top Gear" May on "People's Cars".

      The first part he goes into the Volkswagen. I didn't realize that it really had a Nazi past, developed by Porsche at the request of the Nazis. It was called the "KdF Wagen". Kraft durch Freude 0 "Strength though Joy" was a huge govt ministry dedicated to keepinkg the population happy with massive vacation hotels, cruise liners....

      Of course for the darker side of the Nazis taking control of society read Erik Larson's book In the Garden of Beasts

      https://www.amazon.com/Garden-Beasts-Terror-American-Hitlers/dp/030740885X

      But life under Hitler was all-encompassing.

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    8. The Nazis had their own take on bread and circuses.

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  4. What MrG said. But that is the way of War. WWII is unusual because it was a modern War, with little of the raping (on the Western side, that is) that normally serves to help repopulate a depopulated area. Which, come to think of it, is just really sad unto itself, that there is a potentially 'good' side to rape.

    And following the raping is the wholesale selling of themselves for food and shelter that usually goes with War. Again, sad, but unfortunately necessary. There was a lot of that on the Western side. And some marriages, though not enough, sadly.

    Bleh. Dark thoughts. Goes with the dark times of mid-winter in 45. Where the end is nigh but the deaths keep coming. Must have been horrible for the men on both sides, knowing the outcome was already determined but Death still stalked each side. Death in all its varied forms, from actual combat kills to freezing to death to malnutrition and disease.

    Good writing. I think I'll go crank up the thermostat to 85 degrees and wrap myself in an electric blanket while drinking hot tea.

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    1. Wholesale selling - talked with a vet who was in Japan for a while afterwards. Kids pimping for their moms in order to get money for food and shelter, using the magic word they picked up - 'Hey Joe, you want to f* my mother? She a virgin.'
      Frank

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    2. Beans - Yup, gave myself a chill writing all that, remembering times of being outdoors in the cold and wet. One of the reasons I didn't miss the flightline all that much when I cross-trained to a programming job.

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    3. Frank - I'd have more sympathy for Japan except for one thing - Nanking.

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    4. Yeah, kinda hard to drum up sympathy for people who thought the universe revolved around them, and could treat the dirt people in any way they felt like.
      Glad we don't have any politicians like that nowadays /s
      Frank

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  5. Sarge, some of the pictures you find are haunting. These especially qualify.

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    1. Whenever I see these photos, I wonder at the fates of the people in the photo.

      Haunting indeed.

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