Stuka Pilot

The Russians are dumbfounded by the many little things our soldiers carry on their person. They think the snapshots of our homes, our rooms, our girls, are propaganda. It takes a very long time to convince them that they are genuine, that all Germans are not cannibals. They presently even doubt the truth of the indoctrinated catchword: Germanski nix Kultura. In a few days time, here as elsewhere, the Russians come and ask if they may be allowed to hang up again their icons and their crucifixes. Previously under the Soviet regime they have had to keep them hidden away because of the disapproval of a son, a daughter, or a commissar. That we raise no objection to their dis playing them evidently impresses them. If you tell them that there are any amount of crucifixes and religious pictures to be seen in our country they can hardly believe it. Hastily they re-erect their holy niches and repeatedly assure us of their hope that this permission will not be revoked. They live in terror of their commissars, who keep the village under surveillance and spy on its inhabitants. This office is often undertaken by the village schoolmaster.

At the moment we are having a muddy spell and consequent difficulties in getting up supplies, even our rations. When flying low over the Dnieper I have often seen both our own and the Russian ground troops tossing hand-grenades into the water and by this means catching fish. We are at war, the Dnieper is a battle zone, every possibility of feeding the troops must be exploited. So one day I decide to try my luck with a little hundred pound bomb. Gosler, our Q.M., is sent out ahead with a small fatigue party to the Dnieper.

I show him on the map beforehand the exact stretch of the river where I intend to drop my bomb inshore. After waiting until I have identified our chaps I drop my missile from between sixty and ninety feet. It falls into the river very near to the bank and explodes after a short delay. The anglers down below must have been a bit scared by the explosion, for they all suddenly fall flat on their stomachs. A few smart alecks who are already out in midstream in an ancient boat, so as to be quick off the mark in picking up the fish, are almost capsized by the wave caused by the explosion and the resultant fountain of water. From above I can see the white bellies of the dead fish floating on the surface. The soldiers join in the scramble to haul the lot in as quickly as possible. The native fishermen come out from their hiding places and also pull into the bank as many fish as they can. The lorry with the fishing party returns from the Dnieper a few hours after me; they bring back with them several hundredweight of fish. Among the catch are some monster specimens weighing 60 to 80 pounds; mostly sturgeon and a kind of river carp. For ten days we have an orgy of fish and find this an excellent diet. Particularly the sturgeon, smoked or boiled, tastes delicious; even the huge carp have no slimy taste at all. A couple of weeks later a fresh fishing operation is carried out with equal success.

Our almost daily sorties take us in the most different directions. To the east and the southeast the Soviets are continuously battering against our bridgehead at Nikopol, chiefly from the Melitopol area. The names of the key points on the map are many of them German: Heidelberg, Gruntal, Gustavfeld. They are the homes of German settlers whose forebears colonized this district centuries ago. Further north the front runs eastward along the other bank of the Dnieper beyond Zaporoschje and after crossing the river, into the Krementschuk sector. Dnjepropetrovsk lies behind the Russian lines. As so often, the Soviets exert pressure at different points and frequently succeed in making local penetrations of our front. The situation is restored by counter-attacks, generally by armored divisions. The industrial town of Kriwoi-Rog, which is in the front zone to our north, has a concrete runway, but we are not able to use it.