Clark's second law: The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

Chapter 12

Hike West, Young Man

My plan was to hike during the night and hide during the day in the extensive forests of the Baltic states. Hannes Rhode, Herbert Kauerhof and I were in one group. Sepp von Collins, Alfred Sopart, Siegfried Penzel and Karl Niemitz were in the other group.

First one chickens out

Hannes, Herbert and I crossed the now deserted former front line. We came to a river, with the remnants of a blown up stone bridge partially submerged in the swiftly running water. The night was dark except for an occasional flare fired on the other side of the river. We could hear drunken Russian soldiers, firing their guns at random, singing to celebrate their victory.

We started across the river on the broken and crazily pitched bridge spans, moving with extreme cautionso as to not arouse any attention. In the middle of the bridge Hannes and I stopped to let Herbert catch up with us, however we could neither see nor hear him. We assumed he had chickened out, had decided to leave our venture and return to the shore and we should proceeded without him. We figured the smaller the group, the better. It took us a long time to reach the opposite bank.

It must have been around 4:00 am as daylight started to creep up from the east. We trudged right into a row of rickety wooden buildings occupied by Russian soldiers who were soundly asleep, saturated with vodka. Occasionally a body moved and fired a six-shooter. We managed to squeeze through their camp without being detected. I had to admire Hannes for having the nerve to take his Steyer submachine gun with him, which he carried casually over his shoulder, as if he was going to a duck hunt.

We walked towards a forested area, and noticed a string of Russian sentries sitting by campfires, paying no attention to the area around them. Why should they? The war was over, and they had won. Their fires made them highly visible and gave me and Hannes a chance to circumvent them. We were able to maneuver easily through that line, which was probably set up to prevent just what we were trying to do.

It was amazing what one can detect at a distance, even in the middle of the night, just by listening and surprisingly also by smelling. At first I was at a disadvantage since I didn’t have any direct frontline experience with Russian fighting troops. Hannes, however, had that “nose” for their actions. He had been a forward aircraft controller during the early days of “Barbarossa” (the German advance into Russia), and knew their modus operandi.

We spent the first day in a deserted earthen bunker, probably part of an earlier front line. After nightfall we continued on our journey, crossing more former frontline trenches. Hannes almost stepped on a body that nobody had bothered to bury. It was too dark to determine what nationality he was. That gave me the creeps and we increased our pace to get the hell out of that area. Being in a former frontline we were afraid of buried mines, so we decided to hike along a road. It started to rain, so we hung a camouflage tarp over our bodies and rucksack, and went on. The rain was welcome at night, because nobody likes to walk around in the rain unless they have to, that decreased the chance of being detected.

Now that we were through the former front lines we steadily advanced in a southwesterly direction. We saw fewer and fewer Russian military installations and personnel. We settled into a daily routine of hiking at night and sleeping during the day. I navigated by maps made by our own Luftwaffe, derived from aerial photographs. They were very accurate, but the scale was 1:300,000 (similar to the US aeronautical maps) which was difficult to walk by at night.

Occasionally we found an exceptionally good hiding place, and cooked a meal from dehydrated food which I had brought along. I had a small foldable stove, made of three pieces of hinged sheet metal. It opened up into a U-shaped stand to hold a cooking pot with room underneath for the fuel. The fuel was in tablet form and fairly long burning. Since we didn’t have a pot, we used our mess kit. The dehydrated food was a mix of vegetables and potatoes and tasted like a wet piece of cardboard, but it was badly needed calories. If we stretched our food supply we could sustain ourselves for three weeks.

One night we walked into a strange swamp. There were islands or clumps of what looked like pampas grass, widely spaced, with knee-deep water between. We got our German army boots full of water and were cursing while jumping from clump to clump back in the direction we had come from. We couldn’t walk far with boots filled with water, which would cause blisters on our feet. This would be a serious problem, since we still had hundreds of miles to walk and only a minimum of first aid supplies.

When back on dry land again, I checked the map by flashlight, and sure enough the swamp was right on the map. We had lost valuable time towards our planned ten mile hike per night. The walking time was getting shorter every night, because the summer solstice was getting closer. We now had only 4 hours of true darkness. Our location was about 57° north latitude (equivalent to Sitka, Alaska).

Some necessary dry-out

We found an abandoned camp, with several earthen bunkers with wooden bunks and an old iron stove. No personal belongings of any kind were around, but I was scared about this creepy facility. Old Hannes wasn’t bothered by such considerations and to my surprise, he started a fire in the bunker’s stove. He took his wet boots and socks off and told me to do likewise, which I reluctantly did. I checked outside from time to time to see if anybody was attracted by the smoke from the chimney. While our equipment dried, we ate one slice of bread and a piece of beef jerky, our daily ration. Soon our walking gear was reasonably dry and we packed and moved out.

It was daylight and we could see the size of this installation. It must have been at least an army corps headquarter, because there were numerous other bunkers and even some barracks.

Suddenly there was a movement in an opening of the forest. A group of civilian characters were assembled as if for a roll call and they appeared to be unarmed. However they must have noticed Hannes’s submachine gun. They hesitated for a moment, which gave me and Hannes a chance to disappear into the underbrush. We put our guns into firing mode. The Russians, or Latvian guerrillas or whoever else they were, seemed to spread out to a search action. We heard the men walking around us in all directions, communicating with each other by whistling varied tunes. This intrigued me, because in my family we had a tune which we whistled to give our location when in crowds. Their search (or escape) was rapid, and they moved away, Hannes and I got out of the area quickly.

When we were a safe distance away I raked Hannes over the coals for being so damn careless just because we had wet feet. Hannes shrugged it off and said, “Well what do you want, we came out all right.” I was annoyed about Hannes’ nonchalance which I felt we couldn’t afford in our situation.

We came across a functioning railroad line and decided to walk along the tracks to speed up our progress and to eliminate navigational errors. We played with the idea of hitching a ride on one of the freight trains running in a westerly direction. With the little food we had, we couldn’t afford to burn many calories. We thought that the Russians needed to run loaded freight trains west into Germany to supply their occupational troops. We totally misjudged them. All westbound trains were empty and going at top speed, with little chance to jump aboard and catch a ride.

Several nights later we were walking towards one of the railroad trestles when we scared a guard standing in the middle of the bridge. He fired his rifle in the air, giving his presence away. We concluded that the reason for the guard was that the Latvian resistance was harassing the Russians now, just as they had harassed us when we were the occupational force.

On May 23, 1945, we had been on the go for almost two weeks. We were living on less than 500 calories per day. The water that we collected along creeks or ditches as drinking water was not the best for human consumption. Although both of us had a good fat reserve when we started, we felt that our bodies were using up these reserves. But we were in good spirits.

Around midnight, walking along a small road, under a full moon, we came to a house with no light to indicate it was occupied. For a moment we stood at the edge of the forest clearly visible in the moonlight, listening for any activity and checking the map.

Suddenly the door of the house opened and a soldier with a submachine gun appeared and said something in Russian, most likely asking for the password. Hannes answered, but what he said did not please the Russian, and I was horrified that Hannes even tried. One doesn’t argue with an armed guard. When I saw the Russian raise his gun into firing position I dashed left with top speed. The Russian fired a volley of at least 10 shots in the direction where we had stood. I couldn’t see what Hannes did because my back was turned as I was running away. A few moments went by and the Russian went back into the house.

I crept back and looked around and found Hannes breathing hard. He probably must have turned just 180° and ran back under the trees. He told me that he was hit in the chest. He was bleeding back and front, where a bullet had gone clear through his lung. I helped him take his rucksack off and sat him against a tree with his blanket pressed against the entry wound. I found two military type gauze pads in my rucksack, which I put over the front and rear wound to stop the bleeding. That was all I could do for him.

As an experienced soldier who had been wounded five times, Hannes told me that he better stay put, or he would bleed to death. He told me that the wounds would eventually plug up and prevent too much blood loss if he didn’t move. We were sure that the Russians would comb the area in the morning.

Hannes told me to get the hell out of the area. I knew he was right, but I didn’t want to just leave him there. Should I just shoot the house up with Hannes’ submachine gun? That didn’t make any sense, because I didn’t know how many Russians were in the house, or how heavily armed they were. I told Hannes that I would put his Steyer gun into a cocked, single shot mode, and put it next to him. I asked him to give me five minutes to get away, and then he should fire the Steyer at regular intervals to attract attention. He knew there was a chance that he would make it through his ordeal.

Five minutes out I discovered that I had lost my maps and I had to backtrack in the forest to find them. Moonlight breaking through the trees helped me find the maps again, and I considered that a sign of providence, which encouraged me to continue on my way.

I doubled back to the railroad right of way and followed along the tracks for several miles, until I saw a small building ahead in the moonlight. Having just had the horrible experience with Hannes, I was very nervous and super careful. I laid down behind a stack of wooden railroad ties along the embankment, to observe what was going on and had one of my slices of bread with some water. I heard steps along the tracks and soft voices and I huddled closer to the ground. Two men walked by, about six feet away. They continued towards the small building ahead. Suddenly someone near the structure raised a gun and fired a shot into the air. I could now make out that structure was another railroad trestle, which had the customary guard shack right in the middle of the trestle.

I crept forward to check out the terrain, and followed a foot path down into a valley underneath the trestle. I needed a safe hiding place for the day and found it farther down the valley in an area of deciduous trees. I crawled into dense underbrush and covered myself with my camouflage tarp. Rain woke me up early in the afternoon. I set up my tarp as a roof over my head to keep dry.

I analyzed the events of the last night and assessed my solitary situation. I studied my map and tried to lock my compass on a distinct feature of the area which would coincide with a feature on the map, but couldn’t find any. It was going to be navigation by intuition. I walked into open rolling farm land now where hiding for the daytime would be considerably more difficult.

In the late afternoon I continued walking in southwesterly direction. I was hungry and had to find someone who was willing to accept some of my cigarettes for bread or other edibles. I approached the edge of a small forested area with several farmhouses but kept at a distance to see what was going on. There were young women and children walking around one house and their door was open.

After a lengthy observation I finally dared to walk up to and knock at the open door. A woman came to the door, and I showed her some cigarettes and tobacco and indicated that I would like to exchange them for bread. She invited me in. The women in the room were not intimidated or hostile. In the course of our broken language conversation I found that they had mistaken me for a Russian NKVD man, because they had noticed me watching the area. It finally dawned on me now that in rural areas there is no way to walk around undetected, because everybody knows everybody else, and any unfamiliar person obviously sticks out.

When I told them I was German they gave me some soup to eat. They expressed to be “sympatico,” as they phrased it in broken German. They gave me some bread for my cigarettes. We were just finished with our barter when I heard a horse-drawn cart pull up right in front of the entrance door. Damn it, just what I needed, another surprise. The women quickly went out to the man and welcomed him and distracted his attention. I seized the opportunity and casually walked out the front door right by him, hoping he would not level his gun at me. I heard him ask the girls who I was, but I couldn’t hear their answer. They quickly ushered him into the house, and I disappeared. The terrain, with many patches of trees, was well suited for a hasty retreat. When I was out of sight I sat down, badly shaken. Wow! I thought, survived another close one. I really felt like a fugitive on the run now, but I had at least food for another couple of days.

After dark I consulted my map using my fading flashlight. I had crossed the former Latvian/Lithuanian border into Lithuania. It was May 27, 1945 and I had been on the run for almost three weeks. I was getting weaker, because I had so little to eat, and was exposed to wind and weather 24 hours a day. The area where I was hiking was pleasant with well maintained forests. I wished that I could live in a similarly nice area without the constant threat of being shot or arrested. Sometimes I just sat down in the middle of the forest and looked up at the tall trees, listened to the birds, and observed the ground flora. It was very much like back home in Germany, and I fantasized being there and being free. I wished I could make myself invisible and just walk through the country observing its beauty without being threatened.

Free milk in the middle of nowhere

The next morning, walking through a densely forested area, I came upon a small clearing, where to my total surprise a woman was milking a cow. A man next to her holding a pail was waiting for her to finish the milking. They were as surprised as I was, but since I didn’t look threatening, they offered me some fresh cow-warm milk. I was a bit skeptical when I saw the color of the milk. It looked like café au lait, light brown in color. I had never seen milk like that. The wartime milk ration in Germany which was ironically referred to as bluemilk and looked that way, with only 0.5 percent butterfat. This milk must have had at least 25% butterfat. The milk tasted incredibly good. I gave the farmer some of the tobacco I had, and he rolled himself a cigarette right away and smoked it. He probably hadn’t seen any real tobacco for a long time. I asked them in German if they knew of anybody who would swap some bread for tobacco and they said something in Lithuanian that I didn’t understand. By using sign language they told me to come to their house later in the day.

That was a suspicious suggestion and warranted extreme caution. These people were under the guns of the Russians. Some of them had experienced unpleasant contacts with the German occupational forces and might have thoughts of an acts of revenge. I could not blame them, but I always had to anticipate a trap. In this case I was willing to take a chance. I knew that these farmers made every effort to hide their farm animals from an occupational force. This setup sure looked like it. Several cows in the middle of a dense forest, well out of sight.

I disappeared into the woods again, and zigzagged in random fashion through the area, so that the couple could not see me. I found a house that was probably theirs, and selected a hidden vantage point to observe the house. I watched for several hours, I memorized the surrounding area and checked for suspicious activities or Russian soldiers. I paid particular attention to the edge of the forest near the house, from where there could be an ambush. Finally the couple who had given me the milk arrived at the house, and performed the usual farm tasks. Since I couldn’t observe activities behind the house, I decided to check that area too.

I quietly moved through the underbrush, resting every few minutes to scan the area farther ahead. An older man walked up to the house. He could be an NKVD man, but he looked too old for that. Finally I took a chance and approached the house, and offered the old man a cigarette. The man said that he would take me to his neighbor, a woman who could speak German. We walked through the forest on a barely visible trail. After an hour we took a rest, and I offered him another cigarette and had one myself. I very casually opened my jacket just enough so that the man could see my sidearm in the holster. I knew damn well he had observed that. I did that to tell him he better not betray me to the Russians.

When we were near some railroad tracks, he motioned me to stop. He checked to see if the tracks were clear of people, then motioned me to follow him across the tracks and into another patch of forest. From there I could see a small farmhouse and a big barn. My guide motioned me to stop, while he went ahead and knocked at the door. An older woman talked to him and he waved at me to come too. I put my Mauser into my pants pocket, unsafe’d it and then, carefully looking around, walked up to where the two were talking.

A Lithuanian who speaks German

The woman greeted me in perfect German. I was surprised and relieved, and thanked my guide by giving him some more of my tobacco. He disappeared.

The woman invited me in, and introduced herself as Sophie Grizius and her younger sister as Elsa. Sophie had worked in a German field hospital during the end of World War I. As was customary in all the Baltic states, professional people had to be fluent in the German language to have access to technical publications in their respective fields, since the market in their own countries was too small for translations of important textbooks.

I told her where I came from, and what I had in mind to do. She said that I could stay for the summer, which made me suspicious, but I figured I would soon find out why she made the offer. I had no intention to be there for any length of time. She told me that there was some straw out in the barn where I could sleep. I was still suspicious, but happy to be able to talk German with somebody. Sophie gave me something to eat, and then took me to the big barn, where I made myself comfortable.

The next morning I had terrible diarrhea, probably because of the fat milk I drank the day before. My body wasn’t used to anything that resembled normal food. From inside the barn I watched the outside world through gaps between the siding boards. In the distance to the north I could see railroad tracks, which probably lead to Palanga at the Baltic coast. To the east was the edge of a forested area, to the west an additional smaller barn and to the south the farm garden and the house in which the women lived. Unless something unforeseen happened, I could rest up and recover. I was worried that Russian soldiers would raid the place.

When I mentioned that I was afraid that my looks would be conspicuous, Sophie gave me a pair of khaki colored Russian jodhpurs that I could wear with my jackboots, plus a civilian jacket and a black cap, often worn by Russians. These drab looking clothes made me look more like a native. At least I wasn’t immediately identifiable from a distance. I buried my Luftwaffen uniform in the backwoods.

A few days later Elsa brought a newspaper from the next village and Sophie translated it for me. I learned for the first time what was happening back in Germany. A map showed the four occupational zones and I was puzzled that there were four. I couldn’t believe the Allies would give France a piece of the action. There was an article of a planned Nürnberg trial. When I read the names of the defendants I felt that all deserved to be executed. I thought that all the top Allies leaders like Stalin, Churchill and all their Generals should be on the defendant benches too. I felt that all of them committed hideous crimes against humanity too, just like the Nazis. I felt that if the Allies beat the Germans in the same beastly ways that Hitler used, then they were not one iota better than Hitler.

The allied carpet bombings killed millions of women and children indiscriminately in Europe and that was not any different than Nazis killing them in concentration camps. When I discussed this with my Lithuanian hostess she agreed with me totally, because they had also suffered severely from Russian persecutions and thousands had died in Russian concentration camps and gulags.

We talked about the risks for them if I stayed. I was sure they would be severely punished if the Russians detected me. I didn’t want to offend her by turning her down right away, but I had 20/20 tunnel vision and a one track mind to get back to Germany as soon as possible, but they couldn’t understand my hurry.

One morning Elsa brought some breakfast over to the barn. She was in her late twenties or early thirties, attractive, and often came to the barn dressed so that her cleavage discreetly showed when she sat down near me. Under different circumstances I would have succumbed to her lure, but I could not see myself being tied down by being her lover and fathering a child. We couldn’t even communicate with each other, she didn’t speak German or English.

I didn’t realize then that these women were trying hard to secure a man of their own, and have children. Sophie was in her early fifties and probably past menopause, so she was willing to leave me to her younger sister. It probably wouldn’t have bothered them if I had left after I had fathered a child. I knew that Lithuania’s younger male population was practically wiped out in World War II and so their desire was genuine. Later on I thought about my naiveté with regards to the situation there. I had not been brought up to be nonchalant about generating children.

In the distance I could see numerous trains with Russian troops and equipment. I was wondering, were they completing their occupation, or were they demobilizing? What caught my eyes were the trucks that I saw on the flatbed railroad cars. They didn’t look like Russian made trucks to me. I found out much later that they were Studebaker trucks, made in the USA.

One day Sophie came over to the barn, and told me that they had been surprised by a Russian soldier coming up to their door. He wanted to buy food, but they told him that they didn’t have anything to eat themselves, and he left. What she said concerned me, because I had not seen or heard anybody walk or drive by the barn. Did Sophie just tell me that she wanted me to leave? Had the Russians already been tipped off about my stay, or were they snooping to find evidence of my presence?

A couple of days later when I was talking to Sophie out in the garden, somebody drove up in a horse drawn wagon. I quickly flattened myself to the ground behind a hedge, while Sophie talked to the man. He turned out to be her neighbor. Since the conversation was in Lithuanian, I couldn’t understand a word they said which made me feel insecure. After the neighbor left, Sophie told me that he had lived in the USA and in 1939 had decided to come back to Lithuania.

After my diarrhea got better, I told Sophie that I should leave, and thanked her for what she had done for me. I asked her to contact her neighbor, to see if he would be willing to guide me to the nearest railway station. He agreed and was going to pick me up in the early evening, and take me over to his house. I said good bye to Sophie and Elsa and gave them a big kiss. Elsa was in tears, and so was I.

At the neighbor’s house, I was introduced to his three daughters, one of whom had just come back from Germany. She had been forced to work in Berlin, and could talk a pretty good German. When I mentioned that I was born there, she gave me an account of her experiences in Berlin, most of them good. She was an attractive woman in her early twenties. When I asked her if she would go back there, she said yes she would.

Her father and I talked in English, and he was still optimistic that things would turn out OK in Lithuania. I admired his optimism. He invited me to have dinner with them and we had a pleasant evening. In retrospect I realize that the family had welcomed me in a typical American way.

Later that night he told me that he would take me to the rail line that ran through Kelme to Taurage, and which I thought, continued on into former East Prussia. From there I would be on my own. We went off shortly before midnight, and hiked at a very brisk pace along narrow trails for quite a distance. My attire was native and even my air force blue rucksack was now camouflaged by an old flower sack so I felt relatively safe.

It was June 22, the summer solstice, and nights at that latitude (about 56 ° North), were not dark. It was 44 days after I had left my unit in Courland. It was around 4 am when we reached the railroad northeast of Taurage. He pointed out the rail line and the station to me and we said good bye. These people had all been so wonderful to me, and I couldn’t do anything to repay them for their help.