An overviews of strategies for translating literary dialect

Historical Commentary

In early March 1944, the Soviets continued their winter offensive, attacking in the far north in Karelia, from around Leningrad against the Germans' Army Group North toward the Baltic nations, as well as further into the Ukraine in the south. Having been forced to defend and withdraw, then defend and withdraw again throughout the winter of 1943-44, the Germans were nearing exhaustion. With the siege of Leningrad lifted after over nine hundred days of encirclement, Soviet morale was conversely raised to new heights.

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The Soviet attacks were successful almost everywhere, although they were again stymied in the Arctic north. Their attacks in the south, in which the First, Second, and Third Ukrainian Fronts and Eighth Guards Army battered the First and Fourth Panzer Armies, very nearly succeeded in destroying the latter and ultimately drove Army Group South completely out of the Ukraine.

After its near-annihilation in the Cherkassy pocket, the 198th Infantry Division was again cut off near Uman. Many elements only finally got out with what their men could carry. Until it was pulled out of the line and sent to France to be reconstituted, the 198th was only a shadow of its former self. . . like many German units in the East at this time.

Georg Grossjohann Remembers ...

Even though the Russians had failed to destroy all the German forces in the pocket at Cherkassy, they attacked our division on 5 March in large scale, similar to the attack on Votylevka. This time our division was pushed back into the position from which it had started in 1941. My battalion was deployed in Chemeriskoye and repulsed all attacks for several days, even those involving tanks, until that early morning of 5 March. The Russians now declined to bypass towns or villages. When the artillery bombardment ceased, they moved south along both sides of my command post. For the time being, we remained crouched in our cottage, and when my adjutant asked me, "Herr Hauptmann, what are we going to do now?" I answered, "The commander in chief [Hitler]

is trembling [with anticipation]!" At least we had kept a bit of grim humor.

In the dense fog and smoke, we were able to withdraw continuously in consonance with the Russians' attacks. The division parried strong Russian thrusts with its weak forces during the daytime, and at night it withdrew to the next defensible positions, ultimately reaching the vicinity of Uman on 9 March. This was where we then experienced the grand finale.

By this time, the Russians had already physically cut off the regiments of the 198th Infantry Division from the division command post. Consequently, the division commander radioed an order placing all fighting units of the division under the control of Oberst Keiser, Commander of Grenadier Regiment 326.

Just when I turned up to meet the Oberst to establish contact, the following radio message arrived from the division: "There are forty Russian tanks on the highway from Novo Archangelsk to Uman. Attention! " Oberst Keiser sarcastically replied, "What do you mean, 'attention!'? Do we have to stand at attention when those things get here?"

The Oberst was well known for his dry sense of humor and for his unflinching bravery. It was determined that we should break out during the night towards the south, which could be possible because, until now, the enemy had only tanks with relatively few infantry units in place. We could exfiltrate between tanks much more easily than through the lines of dug-in infantry.

During the late morning, I had, as a precaution, ordered reconnaissance to find possible points for crossing a small river behind us, the Umanka. The leader of the recon patrol reported everything to be in order. The little river could be crossed by moving over an embankment with a small bridge. But late that afternoon, the Russians attacked directly with many tanks, and, regrettably, we had nothing with which to counterattack. So I ordered my battalion to withdraw across the river in small units and to reassemble in the woods to the southwest.

When we gathered at the bank for the crossing, we were hit by a wicked surprise. What we found was not a little river anymore. The water of the Umanka had risen by at least two meters and also flooded the embankment by almost a meter in height. The current was so powerful that a man by himself could hardly get a foothold on the embankment. But we had no choice. If the reinforced battalion of Russian tanks reached the hills near the Umanka's banks, they would finish us off in a few minutes. I was first to enter the water, up to my hips, and ordered every other man to grab the hand of the one ahead of him, without closing up too much, to prevent the upstream water from building up pressure against this wall of men. This technique occurred to me from my peacetime pioneer training. To put it mildly, I had to summon every gram of authority I had to convince my men to do this. There was quite some panic among many of the infantrymen, because of the torrential waters and the danger of being pulled off the embankment and swept away to drown. One had to keep a meter's distance, and nobody in the chain could let the hand go of the man in front of him, at whatever the cost. Even Susi, my beautiful riding horse, was actively involved in this crossing. When, in spite of all the warnings, one of my soldiers was pulled from the levee and got carried away by the river, I chased Susi into the water and fished out the unfortunate man by yelling for him to hold onto the horse's tail. Some horsedrawn carriages were out of luck.

One was pulled from the embankment and sank immediately in the water's vortex. Regrettably, it was loaded with wounded soldiers, for whom there was no salvation. Another one tipped over towards the oncoming river and was also pulled by the torrents, only to be caught under a bridge a long way downstream.

The draught horses could, in their agony, only keep their heads above water and I had to shoot them, which was very hard for me. Yet, it spared the dear animals a far more torturous death. This was one of the darkest days of my life. As my battalion, or more precisely, what was left of it, reached the south bank, I gave orders to the senior company commander to gather the men in the woods behind us and wait. In the manner described, I personally, along with my Susi, picked up several non-swimmers from the north bank, among them also a couple of our Hiwis.²³

Afterwards, when I reached the woods, the battalion had already marched on in daylight, contrary to my explicit order, and suffered heavy losses from fire from Soviet tanks. The battalion had become dispersed and was decimated; the remnants were later absorbed by other units. Later, I took no measures regarding this stupid disobedience. What would have been accomplished? What was done was done, and it would not have helped anyone. Later the same year, the company commander responsible for this, a Hauptmann, was badly wounded during an attack in the Vosges Mountains. He died a few weeks later in a hospital in his Swabian homeland.

Down to this day, I am unable to explain what could have caused the sudden surge of the Umanka's waters. Someone must have blown up a dam or opened a sluice of some sort. Whether it was done by the Russians, to hamper our withdrawal, or by a German commander, in hopes of impeding the Russian pursuit, could not be determined.

A few infantrymen reached the woods together with me and we waited for dusk, because between our little forest and the nearest woodland was an open field of at least five hundred meters' width, which slightly ascended from the riverbed of the Umanka. On the upper rim of this open space, a few Russian tanks were already in position. Any attempt to cross the field in daylight would have been suicide. We avoided any unnecessary movement that could have drawn the attention of the Russians upon us.

I will never forget one sad and painful experience while we were waiting. Over and over again, at short intervals, we heard agonizing calls for help from badly hurt infantrymen, whom we unfortunately could not help. If we had tried, the Russians would have shot us to pieces across a veritable shooting gallery.

After some time, we watched Russian tanks with infantry mounted on them moving in the direction of the calls for help. For us, condemned to observe this without the ability to help, this was also a terrible ordeal!

At the onset of darkness, we walked out of the woods. I impressed on my men the importance of ignoring any challenges by the Russians, and the criticality 41

of simply pressing on. I led my Susi by her rein. First, nothing happened, but shortly before the edge of the opposite forest came the first Russian call—none of us made a sound. After the second, more energetic challenge, our small group opened wild, random fire into the woods just in front of us, directly into the midst of the Russians, who dispersed and fled into the forest.

As it developed, my little group broke through the encirclement without the loss of one man. Even my faithful Susi, who once before saved my life and freedom, was safe. A few weeks earlier, I had ridden toward what I thought was a German unit, to make contact with its commander. I was mistaken. The mass of soldiers in white snow-camouflage marching towards me made me suspicious. The moment I stopped, the first bullet buzzed by my ear. The distance to the leading Russian was only about 150 meters. With lightning speed, I turned around, without having to direct Susi, for she seemed to know what it was all about! In a few seconds, we were safe behind the nearest cover.

After the lucky breakout by the remnants of my battalion, and after almost an hour of laborious trudging through dense brush, we reached the southern end of the forest. There was complete silence, and one could only hear the yelping of dogs in the distance. That meant that there must be a village out there somewhere nearby! We moved toward the barking until we could make out the silhouette of a village in the dark. We moved on, very carefully, up to the first cottages. Not a soul stirred, and there was no sign at all of the presence of Russian or German soldiers. We moved into the village until we saw an older man standing in front of one of the little wooden houses. We asked the elderly gent about "Russki Soldat," and he shook his head in the negative. Then I asked him about "Germanski Soldat, " and he nodded, and said "Da, Da, " and pointed to a small hut.

Who can describe our joy when, after knocking, an older Hauptmann from our regimental staff appeared in the doorway? Completely exhausted, he had seemingly accepted his fate and was now relieved and happy to confront not the expected Russians but comrades from his own regiment!

We knew that we could not trust the civilians anymore because they were threatened with draconian punishment for assisting the Germans in any way. They would undoubtedly report our presence to the nearest Russian command at the first opportunity—and they could not be far away. We moved on and came to a halt only near the last cottages at the southwest end of the village. We placed sentries there. The others crept into two little huts and got rid of their water-soaked winter clothes to dry them out on the giant stoves in the peasant huts. An old Russian couple, without any sign of interest in what was suddenly happening around them, sat at the table and occasionally exchanged a few softly spoken words.

Incidentally, we made the surprising discovery that our winter battle dress, quilted with man-made fibers, was almost waterproof. I found that my uniform and undergarments remained quite dry. Suddenly, one of the sentries came in and reported engine noise from the nearby village street. A patrol was sent out immediately and returned shortly, accompanied by a liaison officer from our division! There was great joy and surprise on both sides. The Leutnant informed us that the commanding general had been sending out motorized and dismounted patrols continuously since afternoon to try and locate the scattered and isolated fragments of his division.

On 12 March, the 34th "Moselland," the 4th Mountain, and the 198th Württemberg-Baden Infantry Divisions were mentioned in the daily Wehrmacht report.

It was a swan song, really, because not much was left of these three divisions. The next morning I reported to the division staff. Since I literally did not have a unit to command, I became, as of now, a duty soldier at the disposal of our division commander who, for the time being, took over the provisional corps headquarters, called "Korpsgruppe von Horn." Divisions, corps, or armies were now fairly meaningless titles. In reality, they were totally burned-out shells without any significant fighting power.

During the ensuing days, if we had a chance for a rest, it was only when the enemy regrouped his units, or waited to move up his heavy weapons, or halted to conduct mechanical maintenance for his tanks.

Since I was without a command, Generalleutnant von Horn used me as a sort of utility player, performing various tasks requiring an officer with a fair amount of combat experience.

First, I had to supervise an advanced command post with a couple of messengers. The main command post had already displaced further south. Since during daytime one could quite clearly survey the terrain ahead, we were practically safe from surprises. But in the late afternoon, the Russians appeared in large numbers on the horizon, including a horse cavalry unit. They were moving directly toward us with alarming speed! By field telephone, I informed the command posts of each of the "divisions" of our provisional corps that I was compelled to pull the plug on my connection and withdraw to the new command post of the corps. General Hermann Bernhard Ramcke personally came on the line when I spoke with the headquarters of the 2d Parachute Division. He ordered me to stay and to pick up the fight against the attacking enemy. I could not change his mind by telling him that I was alone with only a few messengers and telephones and probably could not offer any real resistance. He said, "You will stay and you will fight! Understand? I am going to stay and fight here, too!" Since the Russians had come dangerously close in the meantime and had even bypassed us to the west, I ignored Ramcke's directive and ordered the phone disconnected, after which we rapidly withdrew.

After this, by the way, I heard no more from General Ramcke. However, he must have changed his mind about conducting a fanatical defense. Otherwise, he could not have appeared as the commander of the coastal fortress of Brest, France, in the summer of 1944.²⁴

I proceeded to the corps group's main command post to report the displacement of my forward CP to the la. I explained that the Russians had simply come too close for comfort. I advised him that, based on my observations of the speed of the Russian advance, I believed that the enemy could not be far from the main command post either. In fact, I said, one should be able to observe his advanced elements already, from the end of town. ...

We beat a rather speedy departure!

Ultimately, my suggestion to emplace a machine gun at the command post was not discussed any further.

My next job was that of a crossing-site commander at a pontoon bridge crossing the Ukrainian river Bug, between Savran and Pervomaisk. (See Map 10-1.) A bridge commander's mission is to regulate the progress of traffic over the bridge and, if necessary, to destroy it when the time is right. In this mission, I was supported by a unit of field gendarmes, who actually controlled the traffic across the span, checked passes and orders, and so on. This meant sometimes assigning priority to a unit if it is justified and necessary; an example would be a fighting unit which was moving towards the enemy and therefore needed right of way. I was never confronted with such a case. During the campaign in France in 1940, this was almost the rule, because everybody feared to be too late.

When it comes to withdrawals, much less to retreats, it would be best to appoint a field marshal as bridge commander instead of a Hauptmann¹. Nothing is more difficult than to make a superior officer understand that here at the bridge, the bridge commander has to make decisions in the name of his respective superior. In my entire career, I had never drawn so many chewings-out from colonels, majors, staff officers, and so on—in one case even from a major general—as during these two days on my bridge! The field gendarmes, the so-called "chain dogs,"²⁵ were absolutely deaf when it came to chastisement or upbraiding by superior officers not in their chain of command, including massive threats with courts-martial and so forth. I decided I could learn quite a bit from them.

The most critical task of a bridge commander is to destroy the bridge at the precise moment. To ensure safe passage of every possible friendly unit, bridges must not be destroyed one second too soon; to ensure that the enemy cannot pursue withdrawing friendly forces across the bridge, for God's sake don't blow the damn thing one second too late! The ideal moment to push the plunger on the firing mechanism is when the last friendly soldier who needs to cross steps off the bridge and the first "bad guy" starts to get on it. Unfortunately, it rarely works out this way.

Some of us may remember that Hitler ordered Major Scheller, the site commander at the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen in March 1945, to be shot because the fuse for the explosive charge failed as a result of enemy fire, thus the bridge fell into the hands of the Americans rather undamaged.²⁶ It is unfortunate that no superior officer dared to prevent that brutal, senseless execution!

In those two days, I did not once close an eye. During daytime, I continuously watched the bridge and kept contact by sight with the pioneer sergeant who

In those two days, I did not once close an eye. During daytime, I continuously watched the bridge and kept contact by sight with the pioneer sergeant who