Jochen Löser (born in Weimar, 3 April 1918) joined the Infanterie-Regiment 68 at Brandenburg as an ensign in 1936. As a Leutnant in the Infanterie-Regiment 230 / 76.Infanterie-Division, he served as battalion then later regimental adjutant in France, the Balkans and Russia. Subsequently at Stalingrad he fought on the Northern Boundary.
For his bravery and personal involvement, Hauptmann Löser received the Deutsches Kreuz in Gold on 3 October 1942 and the Ritterkreuz on 26 January 1943. He spent the next year alternating between military hospitals and studying atWeimar. After General Staff training and promotion to Major, Löser spent the remainder of the war at the Hirschberg War Academy. In 1956 he joined the Bundeswehr and reached pensionable age in the rank of Generalmajor commanding 1. Panzer-Division at Hanover.
This is his story about the battle in Stalingrad:
It had become important to defend between Kotluban-Gorge and the northern edge of Stalingrad in order to protect the movements of our panzers, cost what it might. In fierce fighting the Russians were trying to break through this cover. On the evening of 5 September 1942 we built our defence, in the middle of the empty and wild steppe, without any reference point, without a tree or a bush. Luckily it was a fine, bright autumn. At night, however, it fell so dark that it was difficult to find one’s way and we had to orientate ourselves by the telephone wires. We had the job of identifying the small elevations in the steppe which could be used for our artillery spotters and to maintain contact with our neighbouring divisions.
As regimental adjutant, in the evenings I had to go looking for the battalions. It was so difficult to get one’s bearings that we rarely found them and so followed the telephone wires. That turned out to be a stroke of fortune for the commander of III. Bataillon, who was lying very seriously wounded at the end of this wire. The battle for Stalingrad was not hate-filled, but a battle bitterly contested. I never encountered hate. Thus Russian prisoners carried back Leutnant Buhl so that he could receive treatment: the telephone line had saved him! The regimental commanding officer, Oberst Erich Abraham, who had won the hearts of his men and knew the name of every man in his regiment, set his bandsmen to bunker-building. He sent his pioneer platoon back to the banks of the Don to fell trees and prepare cover. His foresight proved itself well-founded next morning when the Russians sent over a very large swarm of fighter-bombers to Kotluban-Gorge, which was easy to make out and carpet-bomb. Happily we had dug some trenches below our tents and took cover in them.
From this day onwards the Russians attacked mostly in the early hours, and after very heavy artillery preparation, with strong forces and individual assault troops, also until late in the night. In our sector we had to bear the attack of at least two divisions daily; but our division repulsed them all. From 7 until 25 September 1942 these incessant attacks were very trying on everyone’s nerves. Fortunately the Russians always attacked at the same spot using the same plan and mostly at the same hour, apparently on Stalin’s personal orders!
Many of us caught the troublesome ‘eastern fever’: we all had yellow, cheesy faces and were very tired and sluggish. One had to make a special effort to overcome the effects, even at HQ, and hurry forth from the bunker with one’s messenger at four or five in the morning, picking up a rifle to help beat off the Russians, who had breached the neighbouring regiment’s line in a few places. The company strengths of the 178th Regiment were sometimes down to two men!
The regiment had its command post in the foremost frontline. We had built up a small assault troop from our bandsmen and clerks, whose job it was to sortie out immediately after an attack and take prisoners if the Russian T- 34s had abandoned their infantry. That led once to our fifteen officers and men having about seventy prisoners in the command post.When they realized how few we were we had to get them away as quickly as possible.This fighting was a great burden on the division and the regiment: we really did fight to the last round – worse still, until our nerves gave, and there was no question of sleeping. With the exhausted remnants of the Infanterie-Regiment 230 attached to our regiment, we succeeded in holding the northern perimeter, thus enabling Stalingrad to be supplied and reinforced. The fighting strength of the companies was often only twenty-five men: many of the best had fallen.
My batman, Obergefreiter Max Gens, a gilder from Berlin, who had served me loyally for a year and a half, had his hands full, for he had to alternate between fetching sandwiches for the commanding officer and bringing up SP-guns for me. These three SP-guns under Hauptmann Koch fought stoutly and when all is said and done it was due to them that we held the northern perimeter. The estimated fighting strength of the division was still only 5,000 men, of which 1,000 were ‘Hiwis’.
On 29 September 1942 the remnants of our division were withdrawn from the northern perimeter: we could scarcely believe it. We were to be ‘topped up’. What did that mean? The young soldiers, who had received a pretty basic training in the Reich, fell in: the CSMs of the exhausted units, together with their commanding officers, stood facing them. Lists were brought out and the soldiers assigned. It must have been a strange experience for these young men on the Stalingrad steppe to be included in lists composed by brave warriors of frightening appearance, asked one’s trade or profession and then directed to join this group or that. They were all very young and pale-looking and we, without saying anything, were all very doubtful that they would be a proper replacement for the many dead and wounded. Oberst Abraham recognized the difficult situation for these young men. He went along the ranks, spoke to them, personally and man-to-man. I believe that this meeting between the young soldiers and the old commander really did result in their feeling not only at home in the regiment, but also welcome.
The time for rest was short: there was some brief training and on 9 October 1942 we were sent to re-occupy the northern perimeter. This time the left flank of our division was on the Don. The weather was still very fine and clear. I was made commanding officer of III. Bataillon and was pleased to be given a battalion at last. We were given a very favourable position in rugged gorges where we put our command posts and heavy weapons and also some captured mortars with suitable ammunition. We installed the heavy weapons as a battery and had a very good liaison with the III.Abteilung / Artillerie-Regiment 176 whose spotters’ positions we shared. The attacks at this time were moderate. Thanks to our ‘weapons organization’ we were able to quickly ward off the Russians with our heavy guns and thus my battalion had few casualties. The Russians increasingly concentrated their attacks against the left flank of Heeresgruppe Don.
On 22 and 24 November 1942 orders came from Regiment and Division: we are encircled, the Führer has ordered that Fortress Stalingrad is to be held. As the Germans like to do in the face of such setbacks, we heaped all the blame on our allies. Young officers saw the reason as being the failure of the Romanians to hold firm north of the Don unlike ourselves, who had held firm at the northern perimeter. At the time we did not take such a dramatic view of it: our divisional commanding officer visited me at my command post, briefed me soberly on the situation and said, ‘We have often experienced such problems. You have set yourselves up nicely here. You have a quite excellent position. You Brandenburgers will pull through, of that I have no doubt!’ We believed him, for we had had similar experiences on a smaller scale but perhaps more hard-pressed than here. Therefore we were fairly relaxed about it all, although we watched less passively as our rations shrank. At this point the fighting was not so hard: in my strip. There were only a few breaches of the line. One night the Russians captured a strongpoint: we counter-attacked by night and under my leadership with SP-gun support won it back. The battalion commander’s course scheduled for me in Antwerp and my transfer to the General Staff course were ruled out by reason of the encirclement.
My friend Hauptmann Kulli Müller flew into the Pocket voluntarily to be with his men. On a reconnaissance we got lost in fog, crossed our own narrow frontline to the enemy’s side and in the course of this had a serious talk about the sense and stupidity of our mission and the suffering of our men. A day later, once we had found our way back, he went missing – a very brave and exemplary officer and commander. Of the four ensigns from our Brandenburg days he was the last I lost.
Rations were diminishing: every day just two slices of bread and thin horsemeat soup. For the Russians it was the same: they came to our field kitchen at night to raid it.We would chase them off, but never fired at them. There was no firewood in the steppe. The men did have their own small bunkers and trenches, but no wood. They used to crawl forward and raid the Russian stocks of wood which were protected by explosives. That proves how desperate the situation was. We derived special pleasure from the way the pilots of the six fighters stationed in the Pocket looked after us. They flew operational sorties from their base. They had adopted my battalion, and came up every evening to us with something from their rations. Airmen were always better fed than infantry!
Christmas 1942 was behind us and still no information was passed down from the powers that be, leaving us in the dark as to what would become of us.We had ammunition, but not that much.We were unable to receive radio messages because the valves had been removed from our portable receivers: we were urged: ‘Soldiers, hold out! The Führer will get you out of this!’ This slogan was in a way symbolic of what was happening to us there. We had fought bravely, loyally and trustingly: now we had all kinds of doubts, not so much because we were exhausted, but because we were deprived of information. An army can only be properly led if one says honestly and soberly and clearly what the situation is. Frequently in Russia it came down the infantry grapevine. But now even the ‘grapevine’ had run its course and had nothing more to say. For us fighting officers great doubt in the leadership developed not so much because we were encircled and in a crisis situation, but because we had no information.
On 10 January 1943 the Russians attacked with fresh forces and broke through our frontline at our neighbouring 44. Hoch-und-Deutschmeister-Division. The difficult retreat into Stalingrad for the troops who were located outside the city now began. We drew back several kilometres. We built ourselves makeshift sledges, put the remains of our food into haversacks and had practically only the ammunition loaded in our weapons and not many boxes of it.
During our withdrawal I met two men who belonged amongst the most important personalities and comrades of the division: the commanding officer, Generalleutnant Carl Rodenburg, attempting to lead his division from the front, and the Catholic divisional chaplain Joseph Kayser who spent his time with the 200 wounded at the main dressing station at Rossoshkatal. It was a very cold and frosty day with a glorious snowscape and bright sunshine. My battalion was about 140 strong, still with three company commanders. We proceeded in file, one company providing security. On the way we went through a small village in the centre of a collective farm. I saw the flag of a dressing station and determined that it was our former main dressing station. This was set up in a large collective farm with stables set out in a cross. My divisional commander was standing at a crossroads holding up a rifle and called me to him. He gave me the job of defending the village, and enlisted my help to round up the many troops all heading for Stalingrad, some fleeing, and incorporate them into the defence.We were not successful: those not from our unit ignored us. They did form up into groups, however, but as soon as our backs were turned they set off for Stalingrad again. I placed only the men of my own battalion around the main dressing station where we took up positions.
That same afternoon, while forming a hedgehog defence with my Füsilier-Bataillon 239 in the Bol Rossoshka collective farm with the priest Joseph Kayser, I had a unique, unforgettable experience: over a hill, glittering in
snow and sunshine, hundreds of German soldiers came down the slope and, accompanied by loud shouts of ‘Hurra!’, stormed the trenches where the Russians had assembled intending to surround the collective farm. They were the surviving artillerymen of the Artillerie-Regiment 176 led from the front by Oberst Wilhelm Boeck. After having been forced to destroy their guns for lack of ammunition, they made their last attack on foot! Many fell, possibly only one or two returned later to Germany. Oberst Boeck and Hauptmann Fritz-Joachim Freiherr von Rotsmann were awarded the Ritterkreuz in the last days of the encirclement.
During the night we formed a small defensive hedgehog around the village. Suddenly I heard engine noise and saw faintly against the snow in the darkness the outline of a lorry, which shortly stopped in front of me. I thought the driver, who stepped down, was one of ours from the rear. Because my adjutant, Leutnant Johannes Nichtweiss had been wounded through the upper thigh, I wanted to arrange transport out for him and spoke to this driver. We were standing three metres apart when he answered me in Russian, drew his machine-pistol; and squeezed the trigger. A click – misfire! I drew my own pistol, in my excitement forgetting to release the safety catch, and it also failed to fire. We faced each other in silence. Then he turned away, returned to his lorry and drove off! Without getting us involved in a fight, I went back to my bunker. That was proof again that this battle was fought violently but without hate.
Back in my bunker I witnessed a strange scene: my haversack lay on the table and was being emptied by a Romanian soldier (therefore one of our allies), by a Russian soldier whom we had captured, and my batman.When I saw these three sitting there eating so peacefully, the Russian still with his rifle(!), I burst out laughing. We shared out amongst the four of us what remained in the haversack. A small cameo illustrating that hunger and cold were often worse than the enemy.
Now I faced a dilemma: to carry out the orders of my divisional commanding officer and defend the village, or also to head into Stalingrad. I held a short counsel of war with my company commanders who advised me to leave. A member of the artillery radio squad now appeared and told me he had orders to support me in my fight to hold the village. That, and my duty to protect the wounded in the main dressing station, were decisive. In the duel with a Russian rifleman while going from cellar to cellar I received a round stopped by the metal cockade of my soft field cap: like me he was probably no sniper.
Meanwhile the Russians had surrounded us: their infantry lay with light weapons at 300 to 400 metres distance around the village. A number of men with leg wounds had set up a light MG at the exit of the collective farm, took part in the battle and fought bravely. We held out the next day as well, but then took the decision to abandon the struggle. We took the wounded still able to move and broke out – or rather slipped out. The priest Kayser and a doctor remained with the wounded who could not be moved and these were taken prisoner by the Russians.
Thus we came out with thirty to forty lightly wounded, which brought my battalion strength up to 120 men. We crept into earth bunkers but found ourselves in action next morning in the snow and without cover. Each man had about five rounds. My old friend Jupp Holl, until then my telephones officer, was faithfully at my side: my batman, Max Gens, had frostbite in the feet and was to be flown out but did not want to go, preferring to remain with his commanding officer. On 19 January 1943 we fought in a thin line, only four to five rounds per man. Under fairly heavy mortar fire I was wounded in the right hand but could not leave the position and so stayed until evening, by when my battalion, the remainder of a whole regiment, was down to two officers and forty men. I was taken by lorry that night to Gumrak airfield and unloaded at the side of the runway. I lay there with Max Gens, who had meanwhile taken the shawl from his legs and wrapped it around my hand. The sun no longer shone: it was misty. Snow, almost darkness. I watched the first machine, an He 111, a bomber, landing in the slush. It overturned because Russian artillery started up at the same time. An anti-aircraft officer was in charge of the flights out. We waited a day to be flown out, found ourselves a crater and waited to see what happened next. Other He 111s landed. Parcels, loaves, provisions and ammunition were thrown out. Fifty to eighty men then stormed these machines which could take maybe ten to twelve wounded. Field-gendarmes attempted in vain to keep them back. After the first eleven were crammed in, the hatch was shut. The machines took off under artillery fire in the midst of this throng of soldiers, some of whom grasped the wings in their despair, cursing, looking like a pack of crazed animals. Neither Gens nor I saw any prospect of getting into such an aircraft!
Thus we spent another whole day in this crater: a sergeant from my battalion with a leg wound joined us. Finally the three of us succeeded, on the early morning of the third day, 20 January, when less and less aircraft landed and most of the wounded had abandoned hope, to get a flight through the intervention of the young officer in charge of the airfield. The machine had put down some distance from the usual spot, where no others came, and therefore there were no large numbers of people nearby. I crammed my batman Max inside and I got aboard last. Above me was a filthy-dirty NCO bleeding from a neck wound who had to stand upright so as not to bleed to death! I rested with hands and feet against him as I lay in the bomb-bay.
It was a miracle – the aircraft started! We did not see anything else for we were all so exhausted that we fell asleep at once.We were unloaded at Stalino and cared for outstandingly by the Luftwaffe. In the military hospital there I received treatment for the first time. I had a lung infection and almost lost my hand to frostbite. Swiss surgeons operated on it at Cracow to avoid amputation.We Stalingrad-returners were barred from entering the Reich on Hitler’s orders so as to prevent us telling of the suffering at Stalingrad, and were brought to the Carpathian mountains instead for our cure.
Source :
Book "Survivors of Stalingrad: Eyewitness Accounts from the Sixth Army 1942-43" by Reinhold Busch
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