History: an account mostly false, of events unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.
Ambrose Bierce

Chapter 4

To Hermann Goering-Meier

On April 15, 1942 I boarded the train to Berlin. The unit I had to report to was in Berlin-Kladow, an area at the southwestern periphery of the city. The last leg of my trip was on the upper deck of a double-decker bus, on a first row seat with an unobstructed view. The bus went through small villages and towns which had been independent at one time and had been annexed by Berlin, the sprawling capital of Germany. Many of the small places still had a core of very old buildings, around which more modern, and often high rise buildings were erected. Finally the bus stopped right in front of the entrance gate to a large military compound.

The “Hermann Göring Kaserne” was a huge complex of two-story stone buildings, with beautifully landscaped streets and grounds. It didn’t look like a military facility. Even the new military compounds in Landsberg couldn’t match this one. Hermann Göring sure took care of his Luftwaffe personnel. If it weren’t for the military, one would like to live here. After showing my induction papers to the guard at the impressive cut stone entrance with a huge wrought iron gate, I was directed to a building off the main boulevard. When I arrived at the building where the 15th Radio Communications Company was located, the usual routine of signing in, filling out papers, and getting room assignments took place. After the dreadful wooden barracks in the RAD, I was to share a room on the first floor with only three other recruits. No bunk beds, and very large lockers. Through the window, I could see birch trees and lawn with shrubs. It was almost civilized.

As always in the military, civility didn’t last long, and the sergeants saw to it that the new recruits were trained to toe the line. We recruits were issued full military gear, all new, from jack boots to steel helmet, gas mask, the standard carbine 98k with ammunition, and numerous other pieces, which all had to fit into the military rucksack. The worst hassle was to get gear to fit and to keep track of it during the training time.

In the first three weeks there was nothing but drills. Many recruits came directly from civilian lives, and there were quite a few university students and even a thirty year old aspirant for a Ph.D. degree. To the men who had gone through the rigors of the RAD camps, the routines here were old hat, except that there was more emphasis on military drills, long marches, physical fitness and weapons instruction.

After most of the “sharp corners had been ground off,” radio communication instruction was phased in. Morse code and “Q” groups, encoding and decoding, radio operations protocols, radio gear setup, trouble shooting and maintenance, were interlaced with ten mile marches with full gear. One mile of the march was with gas masks on, and even singing under gas masks (very important under combat conditions) was a frequent routine. I didn’t have too many problems with these physically demanding exercises, except that I perspired heavily in the heavy uniforms we had been issued. When I came home from these marches my underwear was always dripping wet.

Masquerades

There were other “humorous” exercises such as “masquerades”, where we had to change from fatigues into full combat gear, then into sports gear, then change into standard uniforms, then into other gear, all within minutes of each other, at the whims of the sergeants. The first three men to reappear in the required gear three times were exempt from the rest of the circus. I was in that fast group every time. I was then excused from the rest of the hustle, and could go up to my room. Sometimes I helped my buddies to get dressed faster, and I brought my locker up to snuff. Sure enough, at the end of the masquerade, (Maskenball as it was called in German) the sergeant said “Locker inspection in ten minutes.”

The men had tossed everything into their lockers during these fast clothing changes, regardless of military locker protocols. During the inspection it was hard to fake it, because the drill sergeant would ask for specific items, and they better were in the right place, or else. The “or else” was an assignment to clean toilets, or sidewalk scrubbing with a toothbrush, at the whim of the sergeant.

Learning to shoot

At the shooting range we recruits had to zero in our newly issued carbines. That took patience and hollering from the instructors at the range, because most of us had never handled a rifle before. They also instructed us on the use of the MP 38, a small sub-machine gun, that is mistakenly called a Schmeisser in the USA, the standard pistol 08/15 (parabellum), as well as the M.G. 15, which was an aircraft machine gun, although it was at times pressed into ground service.

To change the pace, there were gas mask tests inside a chamber filled with tear gas. We had to change our mask filter inside the chamber to show that we could do it without getting gas into our lungs. We had to learn to march in large formations, present arms, and even learn the goose step, in my opinion all “important skills” to win a war.

Quarantained

Two recruits on the floor where I lived came down with scarlet fever so they closed that whole floor off, and quarantined everyone. The door handles were wrapped with gauze soaked with disinfectant. We could not work with the other soldiers, but had separate classes. A doctor visited every room daily and checked each man. I had gone through scarlet fever as a kid, but during the daily medical inspections I was found to have a higher than normal temperature so they send me into the hospital’s isolation station to find out what was wrong. That’s where I was at the time the goose stepping exercises were going on. From my window I could see the whole exercise area, glad that I didn’t have to beat my feet onto the granite surface of the parade avenue. The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with me, but I had to stay in isolation in the hospital for two weeks. Boot camp was over when I came out.

After the basic training was finished, we were allowed an occasional furlough into Berlin. Since I didn’t have any money, it wasn’t much fun, but together with some buddies I sometimes ventured into the very active night life of Berlin. I remember going to the “Resi” a large cabaret type establishment, where they had table telephones, with the number displayed above the table. We could talk to other guests sitting at these tables, and some of the guys were of course after girls at the other tables. A large well known band accompanied the stage shows.

Other times we stayed out at Kladow, walked down to the beautiful Havel River and sat in one of the many restaurants to drink the weak beer which was common during the war. Nearby was the Air Force War Academy, where fighter pilots were trained. The initial training was done in Arado 96 aircraft. When I looked out over the Havel River where a few sailboats were tacking their course, I noticed two Arados coming over the area in a very low level flight. They couldn’t have been more than 50 feet above the water. One of them pulled up right over a sailboat that was rounding a buoy and gunned his engine. The prop blast hit the sail just right and flipped the whole boat on it’s side. The pilot flew a few acrobatic maneuvers as he climbed up and disappeared. The crew in the boat was in the ditch, and other boats tried to help them. Maybe the pilots were ticked off because they had to go to war, while others were still having fun on the water.

The technical end of wireless communication now received top priority. Back at Morse code keying I had one hell of a time bringing my speed up in both cipher and clear text. The minimum requirement was ninety words per minute, and one hundred-twenty words per minute, if I wanted to go on to airborne radio operator school. I just squeezed by the top number.

To fly or not to fly

I was sent to the school for airborne radio operators. The pilots were having fun flying crazy maneuvers to shake the hell out of the new recruits. The radio operators were supposed to maintain proper radio communications, and practice radio navigation through these maneuvers. We had to go and fly in various types of aircraft because there were differences in their radio gear. In the Ju 87 (Stuka dive bomber) the radio operator/tail gunner sat facing the aircraft’s tail when going down towards a target. Normally the pilot warned of the pending dive, and the radio operator turned halfway around in the seat, to go down sideways, which was more comfortable.

The pilots however had orders not to give warnings to the recruits, because the tail gunner/radio operator was supposed to guard against an attack from a fighter. During the dive I puked all over the radio gear and my flight suit, and the pilot was stinking mad at me and I had an argument with him after we landed. Since the pilot was an NCO, my argument was considered to be an insubordination. The training officer decided that I was not going to face a court-martial, but declared that I was physically unfit to fly, and transferred me back to my unit in Kladow. That didn’t bother me at all.