But it then became serious in Russia. On October 1st 1941, our division took part in the great fall offensive, which at this time was about half way through. From East Prussia we advanced speedily for about seven weeks, though very high losses were involved, across the plain of Witebsk, Smolensk, Wjasma, Moschaisk, Wolokolamsk to the region around Klein, about 70 km north west from Moscow. Still the pan-German armed forces were on their triumphant advance. The winter had begun early and hard. Russia lay under a cover of snow and the thermometer seldom showed temperatures above -10 °C. For this the army was poorly, or not at all, fitted out. We had moved into a small village and quarters in Russian farmhouses.

It was at dusk on the afternoon of November 21st , 1941. I was standing with some comrades on the village street. The village lay under the threat of Russian artillery. While conversing one listened with one ear for the firing, estimating from the screaming of the shell where it would probably come down. No one wanted to throw himself unnecessarily in the snow. One of these occasional striking shells, one that had actually come down so far from us that we hadn't noticed it, drove a piece of shrapnel, scarcely the size of a bean, into my left buttock. I had a "Blighty"! At that time that's what a wound was called that was serious or complicated, and could only be operated at home, after which one also had to convalesce there.

But before that it became clear to me, I still had to go through a long time of suffering. At the beginning of December 1942 the first great retreat began. This had disastrous effects on the supplies and the medical service behind the front. For months the sick and wounded had to survive in assembly points, that is, field hospitals, mostly with primitive accommodation on straw scattered on the floor, in schools, and farmhouses.

I became acquainted with all the sufferings of the soldiers such as the cold, hunger, louse, so that it happened to me almost as a miracle when in Smolensk I, with many fellow-sufferers on Feb. 19th 1942, therefore more than 3 months after being wounded, was loaded finally in a proper hospital train with marvellous white beds.

The trip lasted six days. On Feb 16th 1942, we arrived in Magdeburg. I was disembarked and reached the reserve hospital. There our heads got shaven. I was finally rid of the itching and biting "lodgers" and landed with a sigh of relief in a real tidy bed. Above me dangled the well-known board on which an orderly had zealously written my rank, name, unit, and description of my illness. Military order was again maintained.

Since my parents lived in Berlin I immediately placed an application for a transfer there. At the beginning of May 1942 I received the welcome news that my application was approved. On May 4th I was already "in transit", as the term went. I was bundled off to the main station in Magdeburg in a scheduled train, and with that began my most carefree period of time as a soldier.

On a beautiful day in May 1942 I stood at the Anhalter railway station in Berlin. I most likely was still somewhat weak after being bedridden for a long time and appeared in need of help with my modest "saddle" bags and walking stick, for a couple of young lieutenants brought me to the taxi stand and dumped me there. My destination first of all was the apartment of my parents in Wilmersdorf. Not until another morning, the 5th May 1942, did I travel, in radiant sunshine with the suburban railway, out past Wannsee to the hospital.

Wannsee is a western suburb of Berlin. This part of the city situated around the beautiful Small and Great Wannsee is the preferred living area of the so-called upper class. In those days it belonged naturally to the prominent members of the Party. Göbbels and many other Party bigwigs had their villas there. In addition the stars of the film world, successful business people and entrepreneurs, lived here, frequently surrounded by a park-like garden.

At first I didn't want to believe it: Could a hospital be expected here? I still had no suspicion, that I was in a special hospital. I must admit that my excitement, as this adventure was happily unfolding during the train journey, grew from minute to minute. On arrival in Wannsee I enquired carefully from a station official if there was indeed, somewhere here, a "Reserve Hospital 103". Still, was I here because of an error or a spelling mistake? My amazement was great when I found out from the official that there were three sections of this hospital: Haveleck I and II and Sandwerder. I saw on my travel warrant: true, there it was, written, "Havelock I". The official said to me,"That is a real long way." With my walking stick it would become long and arduous. Anyway I should to rather take a taxi...and the driver already knew that.

The car then brought me out and went on the avenue in the direction of Potsdam over the bridge between the small and great Wannsee. Then we turned off to the right, "At the great Wannsee", at an avenue with beautiful trees leading past properties with wonderful villas which all reached to the shore of the great Wannsee. I knew the region somewhat but could still not imagine, after all I had experienced as a wounded soldier, where a hospital was said to be situated here. Then the taxi driver turned off into an entrance to a driveway that went around a round tower adorned with grass and flowers and finally stopped in front of a door.

Thus began for me on this day, May 5th 1942, the carefree years of my military time, although at that time this could not be foreseen. After all, the past two and a half years had been filled with the bleakest army business, in which the actions at the front and behind the lines - aside from the very strong military activity - had been almost,agreeable breaks. With regard to military drill I stood completely opposed to it. Since I had made no secret out of this attitude there was little chance of promotion. But shortly before being wounded in Russia promotion overtook me after all. After quite a lot of NCO's had been killed over a few days the company commander stopped me and promoted me to corporal.The senior lance corporals played a special role. Thus for example the Lance Corporal Diefenthal, who at that time in the hospital section of Haveleck I, at the top of his voice mimicking derisively Hitler and Göbbels: "Men and women of the German nation! Make more pea-meal sausages! Make more trouser buttons for the trousers of our excellent armed forces! I could still report a great deal more about Lance Corporal Diefenthal. There was a public telephone booth in the hospital. I was going past it once and the telephone in the booth rang. It was not unusual that one or other of our comrades would be called from the city, so I went into the booth and answered the call. A female voice wished to speak to "Baron von Diefenthal"!

Many years later in a Bremen hospital I met a doctor from of the Wannsee hospital. He told me that at that time, when the Russians had already taken over the city, but had not yet entirely occupied it, Lance-Corporal Diefenthal had organized one of the well-known stern-paddle steamers and took the entire hospital on this excursion-steamer right across Berlin to Bremen in safety.

How in fact I, and quite a lot others struggled, but all the same were privileged to spend the 3rd and 4th years of the war in the posh Hospital 103 on the Wannsee in Berlin, is exemplified here as follows: There was no military reveille. Each person could get up in the morning when it suited him. Breakfast was ready at a certain time, but since we were all young, an honest hunger had driven us out of bed each morning by 9:00am Only once in the month were we wakened in the morning, with a great racket, without first being notified. "Get up! Fall in!" That was an event of great importance. Each patient who had lost weight was threatened at times with the withdrawal of his permanent permission-to-go-out pass. Thus, at the sound of the call, a busy hustle and bustle got going. Some dashed to the nearest water tap in order to quickly drink as much water as possible before the entry of the weigh scales. Others tried to hide some kind of weight in the triangular bandage in which their wounded arm was supported. Wrede, the heavyweight medical officer, supervised this business with a grouchy expression, and entered the weights carefully on a list. He always made a miserable face when for example, he pulled a water-filled beer bottle out of the arm sling of an indifferent looking patient.

The medical person in charge, and with that the superior military figure, of this department was an under-doctor whose name slips my mind. This is connected to the fact that his name was little used. He had a nickname which was so easily remembered and really accurate. He was called only "Kraxelhuber". He was from Austria and distanced himself deliberately from us patients whose highest rank was staff sergeant. We had little personal contact with him. But he let us go and that for us was the most important. He examined us at regular intervals very carefully in order to keep a firm grip on the record of our progress. I had the impression he used the examination results for a scientific paper.

One day a great chess tournament was started. There was a corporal in my barrack room who in peacetime had been the Brandenburg master chess player. He played against all 20 opponents at the same time and beat them all except one game which ended in a draw. He used to lie on his bed reading a book. Then two or three comrades at the table could set up the boards and play against him at the same time, without him getting to see a chess board. One had only to tell him the one last move and then, after a short reflection, let his move be known and then continued quietly to read...and nevertheless always won.

It was a strange time in hospital in the fourth year of the war. Festive occasions were diligently celebrated! One must take into consideration that at this time in Germany it was already otherwise forbidden to organize public dances. Only the wounded with permission to go out and a permanent identity card pass in their pocket could treat themselves to the various pleasures. The pictures, the theatre, and other cultural events, which the preferred places more often than not still maintained, were available. On evenings in the Haveleck House we even sat in front of a TV. To have this already in 1942 was great progress. The set was on a big box in which a brown vertical tube of at least a meter in length had been installed. Over that, with an inclination of 45 degrees, a mirror was fastened, over the corresponding reflected mirror-picture of the brown tube and linked to the observers. This evening TV undertaking from the TV station at Witzleben took place three or four times per week. The transmission reception was naturally still not so good as it is today, but one could all the same follow the black and white presentation very well.

One fine day there was a rumour going around that there was to be a celebration with dancing and music. After some months sojourn in Haveleck I was already used to all sorts of customs and practices in this hospital, but that a celebration with dancing and music was expected to take place seemed to me, in an otherwise critical situation in the Fatherland, almost Utopian. However I was wrong, and preparations reached top speed. An orchestra was organized out of the existing band of Herm Niel's (Erica-oom-pa-pa). As far as I remember, the men came from the national labour service and therefore wore uniforms. Wine and drinks, were "organized" in all kinds of adventurous ways...one called this "acquired". There were many conscripted girls employed and these ladies arranged a real affair. The big hall dance floor was got ready and some adjacent patient rooms were vacated and tables placed in them. The big door which led to a wide terrace in front of the house was opened so that the if one didn't wish to dance one could go out into the big garden. Then on a Saturday a big bus drove in with a sufficient number of the necessary dance partners. Somewhat later our chief doctor, Oberstabsarzt Prof.Dr.Schulte arrived. He took a seat at the table of our "under-doctor", the "Kraxelhuber". The festivity could get underway. The mood became better, there was lively dancing, and in between times substantial wine was made available. Later there were people dancing the Polka who normally on a weekday could move forward only with crutches! The doctors, benevolently amused, looked on at the happy swirling. At that time I had a serious premonition crept up on me: in the next few days an entire list of transfers to the reserve troops would be given...but amazingly enough nothing of the sort occurred! It didn't seem to have occurred to anyone how so many people, despite various kinds of lameness, could move themselves so well at the dancing.

Our head doctor, Prof. Dr. Schulte normally came once a month to the external section for his visit.The monthly visits were certainly not such a dramatically big deal such as one in the hospital might otherwise experience. Certainly the rules of the military game were adhered to. The rooms were tidied up in the best order and the room senior made his announcement in accordance with the proper rules; however, that certain hectic rush that prevailed in other military places to this kind of occurrence did not go ahead as usually happens.It was recognized that with Prof. Schulte, an as big as possible percentage rate of the patients must be reported as "on leave". The Chief Doctor had a motto: "Leave raises the will to recover". So it came that each inmate of the hospital could, beside his normal annual leave, travel once more annually on the so-called complimentary leave. It had the appearance, as if some suitable work force in the writing room of the Central Hospital in Nikolassee were occupied, to find out how, within the regulations and ordinances of the German military apparatus, one could soon send the men in the section again on some holiday. Thus, it could happen perfectly well during such a Chief Doctor's visit, that the professor would say to a patient: "Tell me, have I not seen you already again and again on the last three or four visits? Sarge, think over how one can send the man on leave!"

This so-called "complimentary leave" ran something like this: if one believed, as a patient, that it was time, and one had the desire to go on leave, one took oneself on the suburban railway and travelled to a certain department in Berlin. All the available private contributions of accommodation were taken care of there. Those offering complimentary contributions for wounded soldiers were called upon constantly by the Party and State. One picked a suitable holiday place out of an extensive card file, reported this to the office and could then go there on a three-week holiday.

The cost for accommodation was borne by the host and the cost of travelling by the Army. Thus in 1942,in the fall,I was able to avail myself of that kind of a holiday in Tyrol. I was accommodated there by a farmer, had excellent catering...already at this time that played a significant roll. My host was a fit-for-active-service mountain soldier and we got along very well. I was enjoying it so good despite the advancing season, it was just at the end of the fall, that I, on the suggestion of my host, wrote a letter to the reserve hospital and requested, boldly god-fearing, a three-week extension to my leave. I had not thought it possible. My argument that the good air and catering contributed fundamentally to an excellent recovery has success. Two days before my planned departure a leave pass and money for my keep for another three weeks arrived. I must admit that such a thing, in the fourth year of the war in Greater Germany, could happen only in the 103rd Reserve hospital in Berlin-Wannsee...The patients of theHospital Department around the Greater Wannsee were always somehow or other on their way somewhere. One could really travel in splendid comfort. A pass permitted free use of all public means of travel (suburban railway, subway, buses, street cars). To those with this pass the theaters and cinemas sold a preferred ticket and one didn't have to line up as well as many other perks. One soon knew his way round the local pubs so well that one knew exactly where one, here or there, got something good to drink.

After I was finally discharged to the replacement-troops in March 1944, there began once more a short period of uncertainty. General "hero-pinching" went around. This meant the thinning out of all military departments looking for front-line soldiers. Amazingly enough I was described as no longer capable of active service and therefore no longer required at the front. In short intervals of time, replacement units of a squad were produced by doctors and officers, and each man was classified, often in a few seconds, as fit or unfit for active service. At the same time one could at any time take a look at the personal file. My sojourn in hospital had, to a considerable extent, made this useful to me. Thus, my application for a studying holiday at the Technical University in Danzig was approved and on April 17th 1944, I was able to leave for my second home in Danzig.

Translated from the German by John Milloy - Can (nimso@aol.com)

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© 2001 Dr. Philipp Hofmann