Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
Winston Churchill

Chapter 7

RUSSIAN ARMY TURNS THE TIDE

Late in December and through the first week of January 1943 we received alarming aerial surveillance photographs from high flying Junkers 88 aircraft. Every day we scrutinized the new photos and watched an enormous buildup of artillery positions on the Russian side. When our officer presented this information to the general staff of the XXVI A.K., he was ridiculed. We couldn’t believe the general staff's attitude. Koiky finally gave up trying to convince them and we said we will see what is going to happen.

A similar buildup of artillery positions had been seen on aerial photographs at other sections of the front and precautions had been taken by the German side to prevent any Russian advance. However, it turned out that the Russians had built fake artillery positions with painted telephone poles looking like heavy artillery pieces. That had not been detectable in the photos taken at 26,000 feet by the Junkers 88 aircraft. The Russians had always been very good at what they called “maskirovka” or deception of their opponents. Koiky couldn’t convince Generalleutnant Grasser, the commanding general, that what we saw was real.

This was a critical time in Germany’s ill-conceived attack on the Soviet Union. The Russians, after enormous losses during the opening of operation Barbarossa, were now getting organized. They quickly threw well equipped reserves into the battlefields. They always had more manpower and equipment than the German side.

The Russian Army was fighting their way back into Stalingrad with fresh troops. These troops were winter-hardened units, from Mongolia, well equipped to oust the German Army from their positions. I formed my opinion from illegal listening on our excellent radio receivers that was strictly forbidden by law. I could be court-martialed and if found guilty, I could face the firing squad. I did listen only during the night shift, when I was alone, and I had to keep my mouth shut tightly, which was damn hard at times.

To give the reader an account of the activities of the communication liaison group, I will outline a typical message flow. The liaison officer was present during the daily situation meetings held by the commanding general of the Armee Corps. At these situation meetings, there might be a request for aerial reconnaissance over a sector of the front that had unusual activities, or a request for targeting of certain Russian strong points. The liaison officer would give the request in writing to us, his communications group.

The request then was encoded on the “Enigma” machine. This machine was like a typewriter, but above the keyboard were the 26 letters of the alphabet, each with an electric light bulb underneath. At the very top of the machine were three vertical wheels, each with 26 short, removable, connector cables. The cables in each wheel were used to program each cylinder according to a master code calendar. Each program was valid for a 24 hour day, however every 8 hours the positions of the three vertical wheels were changed. For instance, the center roll was moved to the right position, and the left roll to the center position, and so on. The text was typed slowly into the keyboard by one man, while a second man would read the resulting letters which appeared on top of the machine and write them down, or call them out to a third man if they were in a hurry.
The resulting letters were written in groups of five and together with a complex top line which identified the encoding key, formed the outgoing radio message. After contact with the central radio station was established, the text was transmitted in Morse code. Each liaison group had their own call letters which were changed regularly.

When a message was received, we would set the machine according to the code key in the top line of the transmission, and would then key in each of the received text letters. The resulting letters appearing on the upper part of the machine showed the uncoded text.

The end of the siege

Around January 9, 1943, our predictions of a pending Russian offensive came true. A Russian artillery barrage of unprecedented intensity started at the Volkhov front, and continued uninterrupted for three days. When the Russian troops started to advance, they didn’t find much resistance, because few German soldiers had survived. The Russians claimed they had fired over 500,000 shells at the German lines during these three days. They broke through the German lines and advanced in the direction of Schlisselburg, towards Leningrad, along the southern shore of Lake Ladoga. Heavy fighting took place all along a ten mile wide corridor south of Lake Ladoga. German forces tried, as before, to pinch off the advancing Russian troops.

This time, however, the Russians hung on to the narrow corridor against the fierce attacks and artillery barrages from the German forces. Around January 18, 1943, the Russians used the narrow corridor to get through to the beleaguered city, on a land route for the first time, and ended the 503 day siege of Leningrad. This is in contrast to the false report of 600 or even 900 days of siege. The Russians very quickly built a rail line through that corridor to Schlisselburg and a pontoon bridge was built across the Neva to connect to the rail lines around Leningrad.

The ten mile wide supply corridor was under fire from German artillery for almost another year, and was called the death corridor by the Russians, but supplies did get through.

January 27, 1943, after 503 days, the Russians are successful in breaking the German siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg).

An A-20 short of fuel

On April 6, 1943 I was called back to the Company in Siverskaja, and stayed there for two months. During that time, a Russian twin engine aircraft made an emergency landing on a field southwest of Mga and the pilot was captured. I drove to the location with an interpreter. The pilot had made a forced landing with landing gear up and the aircraft was damaged but in reasonably good shape. According to the pilot, he was shot down, but when I examined the fuselage of the airplane, I couldn’t find any damage. The type of aircraft surprised me, it was an American made twin engine A-20 bomber, and had the complete operations and maintenance manuals on board. There was also a container with an emergency food supply, including some chocolate syrup and canned goods.

I wrote down the aircraft’s serial numbers and labels, and also tried to pry out some of the radios. They were bolted and I finally gave up. To get to the things we were interested in, I had to use my rifle butt to pound away some of the twisted sheet metal. We checked the fuel tanks and it was obvious why the pilot had landed, he was out of fuel. Apparently he was a transfer pilot who had tried to deliver this aircraft to Leningrad. We confronted him and he was ashamed to say that he had run out of fuel 15 miles short of the Leningrad airport.

Back again at my unit I took my carbine out of the personnel carrier and went inside the building to unload it. I laid the carbine on a table, with the muzzle facing the window. When I unsafed it to open the breach to extract the ammunition, the gun went off without me touching the trigger. Of course the shot inflicted the maximum damage by blowing out about 16 window panes of the large double-paned windows. Fortunately nobody was hit. Then came the difficult task of explaining to the staff sergeant what happened. He ordered me to show my rifle to the weapons master immediately. The weapons master said, “What the hell did you do with this gun?”, showing me that the gun stock was cracked. To my embarrassment, I had not even noticed that. The stocks of the war issue 98k carbines were made from multilayered plywood, and practically indestructible. I got a new gun, but I had to promise not to break the gun stock over someone’s head again. The weapons sergeant couldn’t refrain from cracking that joke.

I used the chocolate syrup to upgrade the Russian Vodka. It helped, but still didn’t get rid of the potato-cellar taste.

A few days later the staff sergeant questioned me about the type of radio equipment I had been trained on in the airborne radio operator school.

An unexpected transfer

Later in the week I was transferred to an aerial reconnaissance group at the Siverskaja airport, because they were short of radio operators for the FW 189 aircraft. I was surprised, and not very happy about it.

Within a few hours I was briefed in their radio procedures, received a flight suit and went on the first mission. This group flew short range daytime reconnaissance at between 10,000 and 20,000 feet, and so they were very vulnerable to flak and fighter harassment. The area under surveillance was the rear of the Russian frontline to a depth of up to 100 miles. The observations were primarily visual, rarely backed by photography. When observations were of particular significance, a brief written report was often dropped to the ground directly at the requesting army unit. This meant a very low level fly-by, and the drop of a smoke cartridge with the information inside.

Usually a man from the liaison crew would lay out a white canvas cross on the ground for the drop. Radio traffic was avoided, since the Russians listened in and usually had a “reception committee” waiting. The aircraft, although exceptionally well suited for aerial observations due to an extensively glazed crew nacelle, was a sluggish performer. Its maximum speed was about 220 M.P.H. in level flight, a sitting duck for any fighter plane. I flew only five half way “normal” missions with the aircraft. On the sixth mission we were intercepted by a Yak-2 fighter plane. He attacked from a 4 o’clock position, and I opened fire with the top turret. The Yak fired into our starboard engine, which started to burn.

Our pilot put the aircraft into a steep dive, apparently hoping to get the fire out and go down on the deck and back over the German lines. The Russian fighter flew a wide circle to the left and attacked again, this time from nearly a 12 o’clock position. Our Focke Wulf 189 copilot opened fire with the 20 mm guns that were in the leading edge of the wing. But since our aircraft had a nose down attitude, its guns were also pointing down, and didn’t reach the Russian. The Russian had miscalculated too and overshot us at high speed without being able to hit us again. By that time we were only about 1000 feet above the ground, and the next Russian attack had to come from above since we were going down rapidly on one engine. In all that excitement I couldn’t tell where our own front-lines were. Our pilot was aiming for a small forest clearing, and I protected myself as well as I could for the impact.

Thank God the plane hit the ground at a shallow angle with landing gear up, and plowed right into a big tree stump, kicking up the tail end of the aircraft. I was thrown up into the top of the cockpit, and sustained a deep cut on my forehead. I freed myself and looked to see if the two pilots had survived. The aircraft had the whole front of the cockpit smashed in, and pilot and copilot had been slammed into the debris of the cockpit. The aircraft was practically standing on its nose. As I tried to get out of the aircraft I heard the engine of the Yak, and saw it firing with all guns at our downed aircraft. Sonofabitch, I thought, that guy is really angry. None of his bullets hit me, and I ran for cover under some trees.

The Russian fighter came down again and fired. The Focke Wulf exploded from the fuel that had leaked out around it. I was afraid of exploding ammunition in the aircraft and ran away from the aircraft. My face was full of blood and I couldn’t see out of my right eye. I had no survival gear, it had burned with the aircraft. I took off my undershirt rolled it and wound it tightly around my forehead and knotting it at the back. I thought that the Russian fighter wouldn’t have tried so fiercely to destroy us if we had landed behind the Russian lines. POWs come in handy for information, and ground troops would certainly take care of any survivors. I concluded I was somewhere behind the German lines.

I dozed off because of the shock and blood loss. Motor noise woke me up, but it was hard to judge how close it was. At least I could sense the general direction. After what I thought was at least an hour of walking, I saw a typical rollbahn (corrugated road) and some German vehicles. Another half hour and I was close enough to waved the next vehicle down and got help to patch up my bleeding forehead. They took me to headquarters of an infantry unit. I reported to the officer there, who connected me to my squadron by telephone. Three hours later a vehicle finally showed up. I was weak and dizzy, and just hoped that we wouldn’t fall into the hands of partisans on the way back to the airport. When we reached my squadron I tried to get out of the vehicle but I collapsed. When I came to, I was in a hospital bed. The nurse told me that I had a bad concussion and heavy blood loss, and that the doctor had to stitch up the cut in my forehead.

A week later I returned to the squadron and was interrogated about the crash. Then I requested and was granted a return to my original unit in Siverskaja.