SS Charlemagne: The 33rd Waffen-Grenadier Division of the SS

A little later, the detachments of SS-Lieutenant Weber and Staff-Sergeant Hennecart took up positions on Wilhelmstrasse adjacent to SS-Lieutenant Christensen’s combat team on Hedemannstrasse. Most of the men were concealed behind the ground floor or cellar windows, or inside the entrances to the buildings. Look-outs were deployed behind the heaps of rubble covering the pavements. Suddenly came the throbbing of engines, the characteristic clanking and creaking. A lone tank rolled along Wilhlemstrasse checking the terrain. Sergeant Vaulot raised the grilled sight on his Panzerfaust and thumbed forward the safety catch. He calmly aimed the tube on his shoulder with the foresight on the explosive head in line with the lower notch on the grill. He aimed and pressed the trigger. The detonation released a jet of flame to the rear, fatal to anyone in line behind for three metres, and there was a cloud of white smoke. The projectile, stabilised by four flanges, pierced the air at 45 metres per second. Then came the shock of the explosion, the jet of focused gas penetrating the armour with a diameter of ten centimetres, thanks to the hollow charge. A rain of metal fragments projected within the crew space, provoking the ignition of exploding shells and a series of detonations that seemed to shake the heavy machine. Then came the final explosion in a cloud of dust and smoke that dislodged the turret, spreading innumerable bits of debris around. The experienced firer then took care to take cover by crouching against the wall or throwing himself to the ground.

For ‘Gégène’ – the name given to him by his comrades – it was all in the day’s work, but a good job nevertheless. This plumber from Pantin was of a retiring nature, at least with regard to his superiors. In the course of the two years that he had spent in the ranks of the LVF nothing had been said of him, save as an example of discipline and application to the service. As a combatant, he had advanced slowly, no doubt with the encouragement of SS-Lieutenant Weber in the Company of Honour then in the combat school. On the 26th February, during the fighting at Elsenau in Pomerania, he had destroyed a heavy Josef Stalin tank, and on the 26th April he had added two more tanks to his score in Neukölln, so this was his fourth.

A change in Soviet tactics then took place that was to be repeated during the fighting. The first phase was the ‘cleansing’ of the route by 120 mm mortars, the effectiveness of their bombs being at its maximum in a street. Then guns of the tanks, the 85 mm of the T 34s, or the 122 mm of the Josef Stalins, and the 57 mm anti-tank guns fired their explosive shells directly at the facades of buildings where they had located firers. Under cover of this bombardment, other tanks tried to tow back the wrecks blocking the route. They were to find this more successful under cover of darkness but, for the moment, it was broad daylight. The mounting curls of smoke and the dust suspended in the atmosphere practically blocked out the spring sky. Sticking to the men, it rendered less and less discernible the brown and green flecks on their combat uniforms in which they were nearly all clad. A tenacious smell of burning rubber and decomposing bodies filtered through everywhere. The sounds of battle and the persistent rumblings became less and less perceptible to the ears over accustomed to hearing them.