Stuka Pilot

Our store of bombs and petrol on the aerodrome are running low, and no supplies are reaching us as Rumania can no longer be held. Our only chance is to move to the other side of the Carpathians and to attempt there to form a new front out of the remnants of our armies which are able to fight their way out of Rumania, and such other troops as can be scraped together anywhere as reserves. It is perfectly clear that our heavy artillery will never get across the Carpathians, but will be left behind in Rumania. If only a large part of our gallant army could extricate itself from this witches’ cauldron of treachery for which the Rumanian government is to blame! Weapons can be replaced, however difficult it may be, but men never! Our ground staff gets ready to take the road over the Bazau pass; we use up the last drop of petrol attacking the Russian spearhead which has thrust closer and closer to Buzau. Partly, our missions take us far behind the Russian lines to relieve German units which are still engaged in bitter fighting here. It is a pitiful spectacle, enough to drive one to desperation, the way these veterans of the Russian campaign, surrounded by the enemy, still butt their heads against an oncoming wall of vastly superior numbers until gradually they have nothing left to resist with save their small arms. The artillery have long since used up all their ammunition, soon they will not have even a rifle or revolver cartridge. To attack and attack again is the only way to endure it. A little Stalingrad.

Now our stores on the aerodrome are finally exhausted and we fly west over the Carpathians to our new operational base at Sächsisch-Regen in Hungary. In this little town almost everyone speaks German; it is a citadel of the Transylvanian Germans. Here there is a German church and German schools; as one walks through the town one never has the feeling that one is not in Germany. It nestles picturesquely between chains of hills and little mountains, with large tracts of woodland in the vicinity. Our airfield is on a kind of plateau with woods on either side; we are billeted in the town and in neighboring purely German villages N. and N.E. of it. Our operations at the moment are directed against the enemy pushing across the Carpathian passes from the east. The country offers excellent defensive positions, but we have not the strength to hold it, having lost the essential heavy artillery in Rumania. Even the most favorable terrain cannot be defended against the most modem weapons by heroism alone. We make low level attacks on the Oitoz Pass and the Gymnoz Pass and the mountain roads to the north of them. I have had experience of mountain flying in the Caucasus, but the valleys here are extremely narrow, particularly at the bottom, and it is necessary to gain considerable height before one can turn round in them. The roads over the passes are tortuous and for long stretches are engulfed in cuttings hewn out of the craggy mountain slopes. As the vehicles and tanks generally keep under the lee of the cliffs one has to be devilishly careful not to bump into them here or there. If another formation is out in the same area at the same time, perhaps approaching its target from the other side of the valley and not so quickly recognized through the haze, then for a fraction of a second “Death lays a bony finger on the joy-stick” when the one formation meets the other flying in the opposite direction. That is a greater danger than the flak, through this is by no means negligible. It is partly sited on the mountain sides, to right and to left of the roads over the passes, because the enemy flak has realized its relative ineffectiveness if it remains with the convoys on the road while we, for in stance, attack a unit lower down from behind another group of rocks. There is for the time being not much fighter opposition. Are the Russians so slow in getting the Rumanian airfields in operation? I doubt it, because they have plenty of supply lines and the available airfields, at Buzau, Roman, Tecuci, Bakau and Silistea, are perfectly situated and amply sufficient for this battle. Presumably the Ivans do not take any too kindly to mountain flying; they seem especially shy of low level flying in the valleys because of the possibility of suddenly running into a cut de sac blocked by a sharply rising mountain. I gained the same impression two years ago in the passes and valleys of the Caucasus.