In the hell that was World War II, the Eastern Front was its heart of fire and ice. Gottlob Herbert Bidermann served in that lethal theater from 1941 to 1945, and his memoir of those years recaptures the sights, sounds, and smells of the war as it vividly portrays an army marching on the road to ruin.

A riveting and reflective account by one of the millions of anonymous soldiers who fought and died in that cruel terrain, In Deadly Combat conveys the brutality and horrors of the Eastern Front in detail never before available in English. It offers a ground soldier's perspective on life and death on the front lines, providing revealing new information concerning day-to-day operations and German army life.

Wounded five times and awarded numerous decorations for valor, Bidermann saw action in the Crimea and siege of Sebastopol, participated in the vicious battles in the forests south of Leningrad, and ended the war in the Courland Pocket. He shares his impressions of countless Russian POWs seen at the outset of his service, of peasants struggling to survive the hostilities while caught between two ruthless antagonists, and of corpses littering the landscape. He recalls a Christmas gift of gingerbread from home that overcame the stench of battle, an Easter celebrated with a basket of Russian hand grenades for eggs, and his miraculous survival of machine gun fire at close range. In closing he relives the humiliation of surrender to an enemy whom the Germans had once derided and offers a sobering glimpse into life in the Soviet gulags.

Bidermann's account debunks the myth of a highly mechanized German army that rolled over weaker opponents with impunity. Despite the vast expanses of territory captured by the Germans during the early months of Operation Barbarossa, the war with Russia remained tenuous and unforgiving. His story commits that living hell to the annals of World War II and broadens our understanding of its most deadly combat zone.

Translator Derek Zumbro has rendered Bidermann's memoir into a compelling narrative that retains the author's powerful style. This English-language edition of Bidermann's dynamic story is based upon a privately published memoir entitled Krim-Kurland Mit Der 132 Infanterie Division. The translator has added important events derived from numerous interviews with Bidermann to provide additional context for American readers.

In Deadly Combat

A German Soldier's Memoir of the Eastern FrontBy Gottlob Herbert Bidermann

University Press of Kansas

Copyright © 2001 Gottlob Herbert Bidermann
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780700611225

Chapter One

The March Toward the East

If there exists anything
mightier than destiny,
then it is the courage
to face destiny unflinchingly.
?Geibel

Thirty June 1941. A summer sultriness blanketed the endless plains ofeastern Poland, and only the movement of the train swaying slightly beneathus brought us relief from the heat. The heavily laden transportrolled slowly through ragged pine forests and stretches of sandy, uncultivatedland, and we passed tiny farms and villages and crossed meanderingrivers on our way toward the east.

    Except for children who occasionally waved to us from the dustystreets and roadsides, we were ignored by the local inhabitants. The menand women in drab clothing whom we observed from a distance becamelost in the shimmering heat as the wheels of the Reichsbahn put them fartherbehind us. We passed the hours sitting or lying under a cloudless skyas we rested on the open flatbed cars between tightly secured weapons andvehicles.

    In contrast to following the peacetime regulations that had previouslydominated our lives, we were permitted to loosen the first button of ourgray-green uniforms and roll back the sleeves for what little comfort wecould enjoy in the sweltering heat. The initial news of the war with Russiawas several days old, and we spoke little about the prospects of becominginvolved in the fighting. Everyone was confident that this war against theSoviet Union, like the conflict with France and Poland, would pass quickly.

    At dawn the walls and towers of Krakow, the holy city of Polandwhere the heart of Pilsudski lies within the cathedral, appeared. Thetransport slowly screeched to a halt beside a dusty rail-switching station,and within seconds we were ringed by a band of disheveled children whowere ignored by the stone-faced military police sentries standing nearby."Bidde um bror, Herr," they cried plaintively, with dirty hands graspingeagerly for the morsels we passed to them from our bread bags. We werepermitted to detrain, and the children descended on us.

    "Poor Poland," I thought to myself. I passed a slice of bread to an enterprisingyoung girl in return for a tattered newspaper. It had beenprinted the previous day in German and Polish, and it was possible toread the first news about the operation in the east: advance on Lemberg.Gridnov, Brest-Litovsk, Wilnau, Kovno, and Dunaburg had quickly falleninto German hands. Ecstatic headlines announced that more than2,582 Soviet aircraft and 1,297 Soviet tanks had been destroyed. Soviet-occupiedPoland was being freed from the Bolshevik yoke.

    The military police soon sprang to action with whistles and shouts,gesturing for us to reboard our transport, and we piled back onto thetrain. The rail cars groaned in protest and strained against the weight, andwe began to move slowly forward as I read the contents of the newspaperaloud to our gun crew, all of whom lay listlessly and disinterested on theflat rail car. I glanced up from my reading and gazed back on the rail platform,now occupied only by the ragged band of children, and our journeyto an unknown destiny continued.

    On 1 July we came to a stop ten kilometers west of Pelkinie nearYaroslav, where we dismounted and proceeded eastward, the infantryforming a long column on foot, the unenviable fate of every infantryman.Our antitank gun moved ahead of us in the distance, pulled by a Chenilettetracked vehicle captured during the French campaign.

    Our senses were immediately struck by the lingering smell of smokeand ashes, and soon we could observe the large craters and scorched vehiclesthat depicted the handiwork of the German Stuka dive-bombers. Weeventually filed to a halt at a temporary roadside canteen where, underthe watchful eyes of the ever-present military police, Swabian Red Crossnurses drew cold coffee from a horse-drawn field kitchen and ladled itinto our outstretched canteen cups. In vain they asked questions aboutrecent news from home.

    We proceeded in a long gray column, leaving the Red Cross nursesbehind, and marched farther toward the east. As dusk settled on us welocated the vehicles and guns beneath the shelter of a small file of treesthat sparsely lined the narrow road. Camouflage protection from aircraftwas ordered, and we attempted to cover our position with thin branches.

    At dawn we were overtaken by supply columns rolling along an arterialroad running toward the distant sunrise. We spent another day followingin the tracks of the supply unit, and late in the afternoon we encounteredthe enemy for the first time.

    The dusty road was lined with endless columns of Russian prisonersin ragged khaki-brown uniforms heading in the opposite direction.Many of those without caps wore wisps of straw or rags tied to theirclose-cropped heads as protection against the burning sun, and somewere barefooted and half-dressed, giving us an indication of how quicklyour attacking forces had overrun their positions.

    By their strange mixture of clothing they appeared to us to be barelysoldiers, representing a mixture of White Russians, dark-skinned Caucasians,Kirgises, Usbeks, nomads with Mongolian features, an influx ofpeople from the two continents covered by Soviet Russia. They filedpast us silently and with downcast eyes; occasionally several of themcould be seen supporting another who appeared to be suffering fromwounds, sickness, or exhaustion. In school we had been taught that theUrals separated Europe from Asia; however, here we saw Asia in whatwe believed to be the heart of Europe. The long column of misery disappearedbehind us, and as darkness descended we came to a halt. Beneatha star-covered sky we wrapped ourselves in camouflage-printedshelter-quarters, not to awaken until dawn.

    The Fourteenth Panzerjaeger Company was assigned as the forwardadvance unit, and at precisely 0500 we marched. The crumbling ruins ofburned-out houses stood as mute witnesses to the fighting that the cityof Yaroslav experienced during the Poland campaign, which althoughonly two years hence seemed a lifetime ago. With the crossing of the SanRiver at Radymo we had Russian soil beneath our feet.

    We passed a large German cemetery from World War I with a fadedwooden sign above the entrance: "To the memory of those comradeswho fell at Dubroviza." Our column was not permitted to stop longenough to examine the graves, and little did we realize how many cemeteriesof our own would line the roadsides deep into Russia. We soon encounteredfresh mounds of earth marked by rough birch crosses, toppedwith the unmistakable steel helmets of the German Wehrmacht. Thesefirst silent, bloody witnesses on the highway to the east were arranged inregulation rows and columns, and we attempted to divert our gaze butwere always drawn back to the graves. We marched on without speaking,and the silent red-brown mounds of earth seemed to beckon to us as if tosay, "Do not leave us here, ... do not abandon us in this strange place."

    Faint artillery fire could be heard from the direction of...