Joscha

[Tony]

Joscha... I didnt really know that you served during WWII... what unit were you in?

[joscha]

Very briefly: drafted in August 1940, I went through 4 months of old-time Prussian Basic/AIT, then learned how to drive, was sent to a transportation unit of the assembling 100th LID, trained as an infantry man, volunteered for pratrooper training, and broke both thighs on the qualifying jump; the jumpmaster, who was the very last on the stick, broke his pelvis in the same accident. Returned to the Army, volunteered for Panzer and was accepted. Trained as loader, with crosstraining as driver, gunner, and radio man, went to the 3d PD from after Smolensk to past Moshaysk, was wounded, returned to Germany and spent 1942 recuperating after having been shot through the lung. Speaking Engklish somewhat, I was sent to the Linguit replacement and Training company for further training. Early in 1943, I was returned to Panzer Replecement Bn and was sent to the newly created 216th Sturmpanzer Abteilung. Went with this unit through the Kursk battle, Dnepropetrovsk, and other delightful places. Being wounded again, I was returned to Germany and caught up with my unit in Italy.

In October 1944, I was transferred to a training unit to be used as a Tiger II driver, I did, and I was captured by the Russians in late April 45. Esacaped, was captured y the Americans and released to go home.

Actually, quite boring; but at least I survived where so many of the same age died. Joscha

[Jason Pipes]

Joscha, you have such a great tale to tell! In fact, I'm going to be on the East Coast coming up soon and I'd love to make plans to meet up with you in person and talk to you about your exerpiences, etc. Do you have a number I can contact you at in private to arrange such a meeting?

[Matt]

Hello Joscha

I remember reading in a post on the old forum that you served with the Americans in Vietnam (and were severely wounded), could you give a brief description of the events that led to you serving in Vietnam?

Thankyou
Matt

[joscha]

I am glad I can set you straight: even though my parent unit was MAC-V, there were a lot of people who went all over the Republic and even beyond; Cambodga comes to mind, and Laos. While I never went even one step into these countries, I nevertheless was NOT an REMF, I went into the boonies as my job required.

Suffice it to say that I was listed as a field investigator. As such, I visited outlying units and teams, and while being a guest at an A-team, I was wounded in a night action. Nothing out of the normal - Mr. Cong jumped that team's site and lost 35 men in the process. I was wounded in both legs and the left foot. Nobody was KIA, and I was the only WIA. That little scrap earned me the Bronze Star.

So, you see, nothing all that dramatic.

My best. Joscha

[Jason Pipes]

Joscha, what is your last name, if I might ask? All this time you've been posting on Feldgrau and I have never thought to ask about it.

Also, I must say, you have lived an, er, interesting life. I know you keep saying that it's been nothing interesting, but you claim to have done an awful lot. And now you were wounded in Vietnam and were awarded the Bronze Star? I'm begining to find this all a little hard to believe, and wouldn't mind a little something to back it up, like a last name!

No offense intended.

And in case anyone finds my above comment to be unwarranted, let me post here for all to read the autobiography Joscha sent me sometime ago for posting to this site. It includes language only someone in their mid twenties from the US would use, example after example of totally unbelievable experiences (going from being a driver in the 100 light division to paratroop jump school to a Sturmpanzer unit, eventually ending the war as a driver in a King Tiger tank equipped with NIGHT VISION EQUIPMENT! Not to be topped, Joscha claims to have spent the last days of the war driving around a fully loaded and fueled King Tiger tank that was partly responsible for taking out 28 Soviet T34s. Add to this list of unbelievable experiences a post-WWII stint in Vietnam and the award the American Bronze Star?

Read this account and decide for yourself. Joscha, I think you have some explaing to do if you want to keep your "WWII Vet" status on Feldgrau.

----
Anyone calling me a hero is mistaken. I have met some guys, who should be called heroes, but most of them got the shaft and the wrong people got the fruit salad. In my case, I got what I deserved, but when you think of 32 (countable) times going into battle, and every time you know damn well that this engagement could be your last one, then you suffered from a very high pucker factor. You just could not forget how your buddies sounded over the platoon frequency as they roasted because the hatches were twisted out of shape and they could not escape. (If you don’t know what fruit salad is and what you feel when the pucker factor is up in the sky, ask a grunt. He’ll be glad to set you straight, REMF.)

I was drafted into the German Wehrmacht in early August 1940, and learned how to be a truck driver; that is, after the full four months as a recruit suffering through the peacetime Prussian Basic and AIT. I swear to you I still can recognize every single blade of grass on that wide meadow on which we had the pleasure to learn how to hit the dirt, crawl and all the other delights of Basic. I also learned how to disassemble the Karabiner 98k blindfolded and, as a bet, with my left hand tied behind my back. After those baby-fat killing months I learned how to drive a truck. Remember, I am from Central Europe and this was 60-some years ago; motor vehicles were still not all that common. To this day, I hate with a purple passion the bastard of an instructor who delighted in making me climb up the poles of traffic signs I had neglected to heed, and clean them with my hanker-chief.

Late in 1940, just before X-mas, I was transferred to a newly formed division, the 100th Light Infantry Division, which later died at Stalingrad. Being really shafted for the first time, I wound up in the infantry. We went as Army reserves from Rumania through Bulgaria and wound up near Saloniki in Greece. We never fired a shot and nobody disliked us enough to pop a few rounds at us. In Greece, I had time to ponder and I decided that walking was not my preferred activity. That was shortly after Crete, and the very high losses of the first wave of the paratroopers had to be replaced. The call went out for volunteers and guess who was dumb enough to figure flying into combat was a better idea than walking miles and miles.

Next station – Stendal, the paratrooper training establishment at that time, early in 1941. Basic/AIT times ten! Nice barracks, the “Albrecht der Baer” casernes. Time passed and I was about to qualify. Stendal had, at that time, six or seven landing areas, only one of which was blessed with a huge boulder that dated back to the last ice age. Some ice, retreating toward the North Pole, had gotten tired of the hunk of stone and had deposited it right in the middle of a huge, freshly plowed landing zone. I was the last man on the stick and behind me came the jumpmaster (say the words jump pay, good buddy!). And so we floated down from dear old JU 52; all was serene, lovely, and I already had visions of a smart uniform, newly minted PFC wings, and JUMP PAY!! Oh yeah. The chute opened as it should and…

As I was only a few meters away from Mother Earth, there was a slight puff of wind; it turned me around and tossed me toward that damned boulder. Slam bam, no thank you, ma’am. And I had two broken thighs. The jumpmaster was worse off; he suffered a broken pelvis. Both of us wound up in the station hospital, he in a single room. Since we had the doors open during the day, I learned an awesome amount of brand new, and very innovative cuss words from the jumpmaster, who was right next door from our four-patient room. About three days after we went to this hospital, the jumpmaster and I had the great joy of listening as the combat engineers blew up that boulder. End of my career as a paratrooper; I was offered a transfer back to the Army and chose Panzers.

Just south of Vienna is a small place called Moedling (Beethoven and Schubert fans, be alert!) and that place was then the replacement battalion for the 3d German Army Panzer Division – one of those who froze half to death between Moshaysk and Moscow. After training, and I mean training that was peacetime type, what with cross training as driver, loader, gunner and in first and second echelon maintenance, a bunch of us were sent to the Eastern Front as replacements for combat losses. We were set up as a marching battalion at Warsaw and went along Rollbahn #1 to Smolensk. Riding from Warsaw to Minsk, we stopped one night in the Forest of Slonim. When you think of a forest, you usually think of a small patch of woods; that forest was hundreds of square miles, with one rutted and totally wrecked road through. Remember this: 100 square miles is only a patch of ten by ten miles!

In one of his speeches about the attack on the Soviet Union, Hitler stated that the Soviets had placed a huge number of divisions along the German-Soviet border. What I saw when traveling through that forest were huge masses of well-camouflaged tanks, artillery, trucks, and other war materiel. Slonim was then only some 30 kms from the German-Soviet border and I must believe Hitler when he speculated that he had taken the jump against the Soviets because a few days later, they would have attacked. To judge from that much war materiel, I am inclined to believe Hitler. The Nazis were not the only ones who lied through their teeth.

A huge mixed convoy travels slowly along the non-existent roads of the Soviet Union, and so we took a few days to get to a very large tent city some ten miles short of Smolensk. We stayed there the night and just across from our block of tents were Waffen SS men. One of them heard me talking in my home dialect and came up to me; you could have floored me, he was a class mate of mine from 1937 and lived only about two minutes away from my home. I wondered what he was doing in the SS uniform and he told me that he had belonged to an Army replacement battalion at Warsaw when some SS officers came and transferred the whole bunch of guys to the Waffen SS. He proved this by showing me his old Army Pay Book and the new SS Pay Book. He went to the “Das Reich” division, which, in 1941, was still an infantry division. The next day we were picked up by some guys from the 3d Panzer Division and I never saw the man again; he perished during the terrible winter of 1941/42, so his mother told me in spring of 1942. The 3d Panzer was originally under Guderian and we fought some bitter battles at Vyasma, Gshatsk, Orel and Bryansk, before we could break through and move in the direction of Moshaysk.

Near Vyasma, I saw a terrible sight. We overran a Red artillery position and everybody was dead. What was so scary was that all the dead Ivans had their lungs exploded inside their bodies; there was no visible sign of artillery impacts, craters, or torn and twisted steel. Their guns were still manned, the loaders still had shells in their hands, but everybody was dead. We were ordered never to speak of what we had seen, that a new kind of weapon (but not poison gas) had been tried out, with devastating results. For the rest of the war, I never again saw such a sight and I still wonder what the weapon could be that would wreak such total destruction of life, but not destroy materiel. At that time, nerve gases (tabun and sarin) lasted for days before they chemically broke down; we were at this position only about half an hour after it had been destroyed. (A few weeks ago, I saw a program on the History Channel; it dealt with air-fuel bombs, and their devastating results. Could this have been a predecessor? I never heard of such a bomb in that war. Maybe???) Also in this area, a company-sized unit of women in uniform attacked one of our infantry outfits. They put up a hell of an attack, I must admit, and stopped only when they were dead. This was the only time I heard of Russian female infantry.

At times we were in support of the (then) 2d SS (Infantry) Division “Das Reich”, at other times we were in a loose Corps formation with other Wehrmacht units. We fought our way up to Moshaysk; and that was not easy because the damn mud-period set in in October. You would not believe how muddy it got. Infantry types lost their boots in the mud and never found them again. Vehicles gave up their ghost because their engines were strained to such an extent that they burnt out, or thew their rods through the steel of the engine block. Not even the tanks and huge tracked trucks could make it. And then it got cold; I mean C-O-L-D!

The mud froze and we were able to again get supplies through, but what we got was gas and ammo, not winter gear. The fighting started up again and we slowly made our way, trying to pass Moscow to the north. There was little serious fighting, but we received some very bad news. Soviet tanks of a kind nobody had ever seen or heard of before were knocking the hell out of our own Panzers and our 50 millimeter guns were just about worthless against them. The unit I was with, 2d Bn, 3rd Panzer Regiment, never ran up against one of them, the soon to be dreaded T-34s, with its 76 mm gun.

One time we came onto a scene of what we then considered unbelievable horror. Eighteen German soldiers, infantrymen apparently, without boots and jackets, had their thumbs wired together behind their backs and had been killed by the famous “Commissar-shot”: the back of the head. Until then, the fighting had been relatively clean; we had heard of such previous cases, but now we saw what the Reds really did to our men. Pictures were taken, and everybody in the neighborhood was asked to see the scene of this crime. The Reds even had taken the Id tags from the murdered men. After that, things changed; few prisoners were taken.

We kept slogging our way a few klicks a day (gas was tight!) and then, one day, we cleaned up a small battle site and our tanks stopped for relief measures (well, coffee agitates the kidneys, right?). Now, the guys who were in charge of constructing the Pz-IIIs had foreseen this problem and had made a small hole on the bottom plate of the tanks; we were supposed to get a rubber hose and pee through it. Didn’t work, nor did the second method: screwing together the rubber hoses of our gas masks. Yes, I know; everybody has seen the gas mask containers at the butts of the infantrymen, but that would not have worked inside the tank, and so they came up with some two feet of rubber hose to lead from the mask to the filter. The result was you suffered until you could get out and do what horses do so profusely when it is cold. And one cold day I did.

Dumb, what I did; I grant you that. I got out of the tank, as always with my MP-38, and, without looking over the landscape, I unbuttoned and let go. I aimed right into a foxhole…. occupied by a very much alive enemy (I told you, you can’t trust those damn Reds!). This guy took umbrage to being leaked on and shot me with his pistol (must have been an officer; no one else in the Red Army wore pistols). So this pissed on and pissed off Ivan shot me through the right lung. The last thing I felt was something slamming into my chest and another whack at the top of my shoulder. Then everything went black and (so I was told later by the commander of my tank who had suffered frostbites and had been transferred back to Moedling); I took my MP off and fired all 32 rounds into the Russki.

I woke up at the evacuation hospital at Moshaysk one very sick guy. The medic had been a moron and had not properly checked for an exit wound. He had taken very good care of the entrance wound, but had not found the exit wound; probably because in was way up on the shoulder and not where it should have been, the bottom of the shoulder blade. At Moshaysk they gave me blood expanders and other goodies and expected me to die. One time I heard two doctors talk about who would be sent back to Germany with the next Red Cross Train, and one of them, standing right by my bed, said: “let’s take him, too. If he dies on the way, he will at least be buried in the Home Land”. And so they put me on that train and home I went; when I arrived at Ludwigsburg hospital, they were horrified how much blood the black uniform had been encrusted with. They were hell-bent to burn the Panzer uniform -- over my dead body!

Recuperating in various hospitals after Ludwigsburg, I was finally sent to a Station hospital at Linz, my hometown. For about two months I was at the Linz Station Hospital, and then was sent on recuperative leave for two months to my home. I had a glorious time; extra ration as a combat wounded hero, and a steady supply of willing girl volunteers who took care of many of my other needs. Almost healed, I was sent back to Moedling where I just could not make it, I was still too weak. A record search revealed that I had been trained as a tank driver and so I had to accompany a tank from St. Poelten to the Ukraine. We got there just before the enemy started his disastrous Spring offensive. The infantry had prepared the positions there, and all we had to do was put the Panzer into the field revetments they had built. A few days after that, all Hell broke loose. Hell hath a name: Operation Star, the failed Zhukov undertaking.

I had seen many Russian dead by then; after all the road to Moscow was not lined with happily smiling faces. What came at us in the Ukraine were waves after waves of infantry – the first two waves had weapons, the third and further waves had to pick up the rifles from their dead and wounded and continue in our direction. The second day of that offensive, I was told there had been seventeen waves, all of them rotting in the fore field; thousands of them. Also, I saw with my own eyes a box of factory-made dumdum machinegun bullets and on the box the words “Springfield Arsenal”. No comment is necessary.

And yet, in all that slaughter, the worrying about whether we would have enough ammunition, the stench of the burnt powder, all that dust and noise, one funny episode sticks to my mind.

Our tanks were spaced about 60 to 70 meters apart. The spaces between the tanks were usually filled with a squad of infantry. I was helping the loader transfer some ammunition from the bottom well and, with the hatches open, you could see and hear pretty well. Suddenly, I heard the most horrifying scream; I looked out of the open hatch and saw the weirdest thing. There, between our tank and the next one, a Sergeant was running in circles and screaming like a banshee, holding his rear end and hollering until he finally collapsed. Don’t forget, there still was sporadic Russian rifle fire. Somebody from this squad dragged him behind our tank and we finally found out what happened.

His steel helmet had received a direct hit; the steel had been pierced, but the bullet had lost almost all its speed and had traveled INSIDE THE HELMET to the rear of his head, exited, went along the spine and lodged, hotter than hell, right between his cheeks where it sizzled to a standstill. Never in the rest of my life did I hear such unearthly screaming.

After the Soviet Spring offensive collapsed, we turned the Panzers over to some Panzer division, I don’t remember which, and those of us who had brought the Panzers, went home again. Because of my knowledge of a foreign language, I was transferred from Moedling to Vienna, the Linguist Replacement Company. Stationed right in the middle of the city I had exchanged hell with paradise. Good and plenty food, and all those wonderful young girls who loved to take care of the needs of a man who had been to the East Front twice! As I said, PARADISE.

Ah well, what can I say; even earthly paradises do not last forever, and late in 1942, I was returned to Moedling and the humdrum of garrison life. A life which did not last forever either, because in March 1943 I was transferred to Neuruppin, north of Berlin, where I promptly got into trouble. There were some large and rich estates in that area with a lot of horses. Panzer Regiment 6 used to be a Cavalry Regiment until it was turned into a Panzer outfit. And Panzer 6 used to be officered by just these noblemen in the area. Horses and Junkers love each other, but I did not like horseshit shoveling, which we were supposed to be doing for the estate owners. So I made some rather plain remarks that I served my country by being a Panzermann, not a horseshit shoveler, and was, shall we say, detested by some of the officers. But I had my revenge; while we were entraining, I stole the finest male of seven-week old German Shepherd puppies the owner’s bitch had whelped, and took it with me to France, Russia, and Italy. Of course, just like any other German company dog, his name was Gulasch. Neuruppin was an Armor replacement unit for the Eastern Front, we left there in early May 1943 and went to the Amiens area in northern France, where we received the new battle tanks, the Sturmpanzers. These contraptions used the ubiquitous Panzer IV carriage, had no turret, and used a Czech-developed 150 mm (6 inches) short-barreled howitzer; this gun was used with awesome results.

The ammunition was just as awesome; the regular HE shells weighed a bit over 38 kilos, that is over 83 pounds (with the shaped-charge shells weighing in at 68 pounds); the propellant was in a separate cartridge, weighing almost 8 pounds. The ammunition capacity was stated as 35 shells; but every single loader found some space to squeeze three more shells in places not built as an ammo holder did. The weight of the ammo was not the worst. The worst was that when the tube was at the highest angle, shoving over 86 pounds into the breech and up the spout was a problem. There were some very nasty and hot words spoken between gunner and loader after the tenth round or so. Kindly also bear in mind that, if and when there was a real ruckus, you went into battle more than once; at Kursk it was normally three times a day. That is a back-breaking 110 rounds plus, amounting to an incredible 9,130 pounds in the course of an engagement that made you go into battle three times a day. Since there was so very little space, the loader was the only one who had to manhandle the shells. Usually, after every combat run, I curled up on the floor and was gone. Let someone else feed the beast with gas and grease, ammo was my only concern and I made that very clear to gunner and driver. After I had a lengthy discussion with a very snotty Prussian gunner, we arrived at the solution (which, later, was included in the gunners’ manual): after the fifth shot, the tube would be laid flat and the loader would have a much easier way of serving the tube.

Having been unloaded at Orel, we proceeded to the Kursk salient. Our positions were at the northern bend of the salient, facing Malo Arkhangelsk. It was clear from the very beginning that we would and could do nothing but infantry support in the form of a “fire brigade” outfit, and that’s what we did; admirably so. When we went into action, no eye remained dry. Just imagine 44 6-inch tubes firing simultaneously at the enemy. All you saw was ripped-apart bodies. We saved many a German life when we were called into action. Of course, after the first attacks, we usually were used piece-meal, a platoon at a time.

TIME OUT! Whatever I am going to tell you from now on, is seen from the viewpoint of the loader of this beast. Also bear in mind that the 216th StuPA was, to some extent, a pilot project that needed numerous changes in the course of the rest of the war. For instance, my platoon had two or three of them with 13 forward gears and that turned out to be nonsense; that gear was soon replaced with the standard heavy gear. Bear all this in mind and you will better understand the differences in various accounts.

Kursk was our first battle, and what a slaughter it turned out to be – on both sides. STAVKA, only recently, admitted to having lost more than 7,500 armored vehicles of all kinds. The German losses are put at over 3,500 armored vehicles, with the true number unknown. The reason given by the new Bundeswehr historians is that, at the very end of the war, the Soviets captured Zossen near Berlin, the main site of the OKW (Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht), and they had destroyed much of the files on site, and sent the rest to archives in the Soviet Union. Today, nobody knows where; that’s due to the excellent record keeping of the Soviet’s.

Late in the evening of 4 July 1943, it started raining pretty hard and the fine black earth turned into slushy stuff, as we went forward to our final jump-off sites. The entire Abteilung (battalion) was there and at 0430, 5 July 1943, hell broke loose. All the tubed artillery, the rocket outfits, the heavy mortars let loose in a slowly rolling barrage that turned the forefield into a wet, dirty place with innumerable shell craters. Company by company we were pulled out of the first attack line to be re-ammoed and gassed up, sent into battle again, as the light got better and the larger field fortifications became visible, only to be blown to bits by us. That first day we went into battle three times, shooting over 100 rounds of 150-mm shells. But that also was the first day we had the pleasure to meet the new 85 mm gun on hundreds of T-34s. Lots of them were destroyed by the tank destroyers attached to us and to the attacking infantry. Just remember, July in the Russian Plains, 35 to 40 degrees (centigrade, of course; that makes it 95 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit) out in the open. Inside, with little air currents, it became unbearable. The stench of burnt powder, sweat and fear, plus the baking sun…try it some time!

The first day we almost got to Malo Arkhangelsk. And the second day, I believe we finally were at the railroad station of that village – what was left of it. Dead Russians intermixed with Germans, burnt vehicles of both sides, with the score at about 2:1 for us; it was a hell of a fight for that tiny place. And dust, choking dust everywhere

And so it went on, the second day, the third. The man who had trained me in France, Master Sergeant Reich, was killed the second day. And on that third day, just as I had fired off another round, there was a very loud bang, smoke, and I was out of the hatch. Ask any Allied tanker of WWII how he knew his tank had been shot down. Buddy, when that happens, you KNOW it! My platoon commander, 2Lt Siegfried Hirthe (May Allah be kind to the soul of a fine man, a great officer and a true warrior) told me later that his StuPA had been some 25 meters behind my tank and heard the hit. I shot out of the hatch like a cork from a champagne bottle and hit the earth running. Remember how hot it was? I was clad in boxer shorts and boots and that was all. I ran the hell away from the smoking hulk. My face was bloody, my nose broken and my eyes covered with blood and so I ran, not toward our rear, but parallel to the main fighting line, with everybody taking a pot shot at me. When I finally came to, I was in one of the large shell craters, somewhat out of breath.

Three dead: driver, gunner and commander. The 85-mm round from a T-34 had smashed through the view-slit of the driver, decapitating him; the left-overs then went through the belly of the gunner and finally killed the commander right behind the gunner. Since the tank did not explode or even burn, just smoke, the repair crew had the lousy job of scraping off the remains from the inner surfaces and repainting them. Oh yes, the beast was combat ready in another two weeks or so, but by that time Kursk was over and we had gone southeast, to extinguish some other fires. Also, we needed to get our heavy maintenance and repair at the Tritoschnaya tank factory (the Soviets had been nice enough not to destroy it when they had retreated to the East in 1942). And soon we were in the saddle again.

Then came stunning news: our company commander, First Lieutenant Vester, who had been despised for not being with his unit in combat, or so far back that he was safe in his command tank, had been arrested by the Chain Dogs and was to be court-martialed. At that stage in the war, only the combat unit had real coffee, smoked real cigarettes and had enough and good food. Our first lieutenant had stolen coffee and cigarettes from his officers and men and sent a 5-kilo package with every man who had gone on front leave, ordering them to send the package, or deliver it personally, to his wife in Berlin. Only recently I learned that he also had stolen a fur coat. The beans had been spilled by a young man who, in civilian life, had been some middling big shot at headquarters, Hitler Youth. He had written his boss, and his boss had set the Gestapo in motion. The slime was busted to private and sent to the 217th as loader; he was killed during the invasion of France by a tank destroyer’s lucky shot. A good combat officer, 1Lt Marre, took over and led the unit until the war ended.

Dnyepropetrovsk followed, and Zaporoshe, Kharkov, and at some tiny hamlet called Himmelreich (Heavenly Kingdom), the last of our panzers went out of action. Right after that little.scrape, as vicious as it was, I got one of my annual middle ear inflammations and was sent to a field hospital. My lower jaw had already locked up from the infection and I could no longer chew. Treatment was started there and on the second night, we received a visit from the “bombing Ivan”. I heard that this was an old Martin bomber from the late 1920’s that delighted in bombing hospitals and other undefended targets. How true that was! That night changed my life to a great extent

The Martin bomber came, dropped a bunch of bombs on the hospital, its Red Cross clearly visible in the bright moonlight, and so this Hero of the Soviet Union made his run. I was severely wounded in the head and groin, was out for two days and was sent by train to Germany, after having had some meatball surgery performed. As bad as it was, there was one great result: I received a “hunting license”.

TIME OUT! Every army creates its own slang, and the German Army was no exception. Examples: A commander who thirsted for the Knights’ Cross, was said to have neck pains or a sore throat; the 50 mm gun in the Panzer III series was called a clap syringe; the MPs were called chain dogs because of the shield they wore on their chests fastened to a chain around their neck. The hunting license was a very special piece of paper, with the signature of a doctor of full Colonel rank, stating that the holder of this paper had been severely wounded in the head and, therefore, should not to be held fully responsible for his actions when enraged. I have already hinted that I did not love the Prussians without a few reservations.

When I next heard of my unit they had been pulled out of the Ukraine and sent to St. Pölten, in Lower Austria for re-everything, including full rehab of the few still existing StuPAs and (I believe this was truly a First), to tell the makers of the tanks what was wrong, what was right, and what must be made better, or easier. The result of this interaction was that the second batch of StuPAs was better in many ways than the original models. Their silhouette was lower, and thus the tanks were less top heavy; also, the new models received a driver’s periscope, the seat of the commander was moved, a machine gun was added, and so on.

It was early in March 1944, when I was again considered healthy enough to return to my unit, which had been sent to Italy in the meantime. Some companies were sent to the Frosinone area, the Liri valley, and my company was at the Anzio/Nettuno beachhead. There, my platoon faced the Tommies, an outfit that had been pulled out of the China- Burma-India theater and sent to Italy, in part to get rid of their malaria, which they promptly presented to us via the mosquitoes that infested this swampy ground.

TIME OUT! The German soldier of World War II felt no hatred for the individual French soldier, or the British Tommy, or the Ami, as we called them then. The French were pitied because of their miserable upper-echelon officers and the fact that they were forced to fight with over-aged weapons; the British were respected as good fighters under lousy commanders, and the Americans, well we didn’t really know what we should think about them, they were to new in the business of war. The Russians were hated with a red-hot passion because every one of us had seen what they did to German POWs. The tankers of the British empire forces, and the American tankers were looked at with pity, because they were sent into battle in “rolling coffins” that even a 50mm gun could and did blow away. All those of us who had been in tank battles felt sorry for them, because they had a lousy chance of survival. Only when they had a massive number of tanks on their side did they have a chance. Personal valor is fine, but at least your own people must give you a chance to survive. One Panther against one M-4 equals four dead Amis and a pile of rusting junk. Often, the Brits and the Americans were referred to as ”the comrades of the different APO number”. That held true for army personnel; any airman was hated with the same passion as we hated the Russians, because of what they did with their bombs to our homes and families. Yeah, yeah, I know; but with the flyboys, war had become very personal.

Frosinone fell into the hands of British paratroopers and Monte Cassino. Anzio could not be retained. Rome had to be given up, and then came the Gustav Line. Heavy fighting ensued and our battalion shrunk from three to two effective companies, and the companies from four to three and then to two platoons, with no chance of getting replacement Panzers.

In October 1944, I was sent back to our new replacement unit, at Kamenz in Saxony. I brought with me a beautiful case of yellow jaundice and wound up in a hospital near the garrison town, where I stayed for over two months; it was that bad. Receiving recuperation leave again, I went to Linz and had as good a time as was possible; not bad at all, because the black panzer uniform was still quite a magnet for the gentle gender (and did I enjoy this!). After that, in the first half of February 1945, back to Kamenz and that was a long trek because of the bombings and the jabos (mostly American fighter-bombers). While on the train, we stopped some 30 kms short of Dresden, which was being pounded into dust. We stood and waited for two days before they could move us to Leipzig, and then from Leipzig to Kamenz.

After arriving at my station, I was asked about my drivers license and since it showed I was able to drive a truck, was issued a truck, a boy-soldier riding shotgun and, with a dozen other trucks, we were sent to Dresden. There, we went to the collecting points for the dead. Hundreds of POWs (Kurt Vonnegut, the US author, was one of them; he wrote about it in his “Slaughterhouse Five”), criminal prisoners as well as a large number of KZ inmates were going through the rubble, collecting the dead. As God is my witness, of all the dead people I hauled, NOT A SINGLE ONE WAS A MILITARY MAN. All of them were women, children and very old men; refugees from the east, fleeing from the Russians, only to be murdered by the British and American air forces. I will never forget the little girl whose cranium had burst open, because her brain had exploded from the heat. I hope to God, she was dead by then. I also hope I will meet Bomber Harris in Hell when my time comes and God sends me there instead of to a new life. Our morale at Dresden was so bad that we received a liter bottle of vodka a day per man and as much food as we wanted to eat. None of us could eat or sleep much. The present German government speaks of some 140,000 victims; I am convinced the number is way over 250,000.

After returning to Kamenz, we received new uniforms, because the stench of death was in them even after cleaning. After a few days, I was sent to a unit where I received training in Tigers. The new Royal Tigers were a beauty to handle. Pure luxury: a relatively comfortable seat, a steering wheel, hydraulic gear, a dream come true. Off to Naumburg-an-der-Saale, where we picked up two brand new Royal Tigers. These beauties had a few goodies built in, and on. A night-vision gizmo, no less; a far cry of what they are nowadays, but you actually could see orange blobs and distinguish what they were, larger objects or smaller ones, standing still or moving. All very primitive, but the other side had nothing even remotely like it. Such gear was unusual on a Tiger II; I think it was a sort of pilot project.

Towards the end of April 1945, our two Royal Tigers were detached from an outfit called Kampfgruppe Simmel (big name, few tanks, and children as infantry) and sent to help an infantry unit that expected to be hit by T-34s the next morning in the fog. So we went there. No kidding: we had our ammo racks full with 88 extra-long and our gas tanks were also full; and that was very extraordinary in the last weeks of the war. I drove mine into position and could hear some Russian voices, clanking, smell gas and the stink of makhorka, the Russian smoke. The Ivan did not care about us, they could hear only two vehicle engines and so they went on their merry way. Until the proverbial ultimate product of the digestive process impacted on the electrical air circulatory system. In less then three minutes our gunner and the other knocked out 28 Soviet armor only because we had those blessed night sight gizmos. Pandemonium on the other side, heavy machine gun fire from us and our infantry and the Ivan vamoosed, leaving merrily burning tanks behind. I still remember the next morning; the regimental commander, an old guy from World War I, had tears in his eyes when he shook our hands. That was the last time I could smile happily, because shortly after that I was captured before blowing up our tank; I don’t know what happened to the other Royal Tiger. There were some combat engineers around with a load of explosives. We packed our Tiger II and boobytrapped it. We were about a mile from it when we heard the big BOOM.

At Kamenz, before I had been sent to pick up the new tanks, I had scrounged up a set of Infantry uniforms. I did this in the hope that I would have time to change into grays. This saved my life, because the Russians hated German tankers with white-hot passion. I, personally, know of no Panzer man who was taken prisoner by the Russians and returned home. Not a single one.

When we went into a prison camp, we were some 18,000 men; most of them were children of 16 or so, and a large number were old men of the Volksturm. Some weeks later we were down to 6,000, thanks to the kind administrations of Major Yuri Shevtchenko of the NKWD, the camp commander. To this day, and until my dying day, I swear that, should I ever again run into this swine, I will rip his testicles off and feed them to a dog. Should he have died, I hope I to find his grave so I could tear it open and @#% on the bones of this monster. So help me God. He allowed us no food, except what we could scrounge from the unharvested fields, and the meat was that of rotting horses; the Russians had shot up an entire breeding farm and the corpses left rotting. No wonder these children and old men died like flies.

The wood we had to get from a forest nearby and that was my salvation. One day, sixteen of us were sent out for wood and, as usual, the guard was drunk. While we gathered fallen branches, he fell asleep. We killed him. Every one of us beat him until we knew he was dead. Then we fled. Three of us went west; running as fast and as far as we could, travelling by night, mostly. One guy drowned in a small river because he got cramps and just went under, and the other was from Berlin and went north. I hope he made it. We avoided the villages as Russians occupied them; at night, we could hear the women screaming.

I kept going west and hoped that I would run into our people; I did not know that by then the war was over. One morning I sacked out in a haystack on a farm. I did not even hear the jeep coming up, and had no idea about the pet dog of the GIs of the 69th US Infantry Division, the “Rail Splitters”. The jeep stopped at the hayloft and the dog jumped out and ran toward it, barking like mad. He must have smelled me, because I stank to heaven by then, all those weeks without soap; the only bath I had was when we crossed that small river. And so I became a POW again.

They put me on the jeep and brought me to a German Army garrison they had taken over; a battalion headquarters, I guess. They had an aid station attached and the first thing they let me do was get some of the German Army uniform pieces laying around, boots, a piece of soap and a towel. And that was my first bath after a long, long time. After I looked a little better than a man lost in the woods, they brought me to the mess hall and fed me. They let me eat as much as I wanted, with the inevitable results. I got severe stomach cramps and vomited all the good food out. I was taken to the aid station and answered whatever questions in my poor English. The doctor prescribed three days of white bread, eggs, and milk and slowly I became human again, weighing 106 pounds. I am 5’10”, with a broad bone structure.

After about five days at that US unit, I was brought to the huge POW compound at Naumburg-an-der-Saale. I must have been a sort of rarity, because when I entered the compound, I was brought to the headquarters, where just about every officer looked at me. From the looks, every one was a Jew. Their commander, CPT David Berger (May God bless his soul), spoke to me in fluent German (he had been born at Dresden) and detailed me to the officers mess. I worked there and was asked by the officers about my experiences in the Russian POW camp. None of the Americans believed a word I said and one of then threatened me with returning me to the Russians. They might have done that, if I hadn’t kept my mouth shut about killing the Russian guard. Talk about coincidences: at that POW cage I got together with my uncle, whom I hadn’t seen in two or three years. He had been drafted into the Luftwaffe as a shoemaker.

A 1Lt Nickel, also a Dresden Jew, interrogated me at length and told me he hoped, for the sake of both America and Europe that I had lied about the Russians. I wonder what he thought about me and my story in say, 1950, when the Korean War broke out, and stories of North Korean atrocities became known

Shortly before I was discharged, there was a hell of a row among the officers. By then it was out: Saxony and Thuringia would be turned over to the Soviets. The row was whether any of us prisoners would also be turned over to the Russians. To the everlasting credit of CPT Berger, he flatly refused to do so, not even the Waffen SS. His statement is graven into my mind:” NO! I will not turn over even a single prisoner, not even a single SS man. None of us known which ones are draftees and who is a volunteer. These men will be discharged like anyone else. END OF ARGUMENT! We have 135,000 POWs, and if it takes 24 hours a day, WE WILL SEND THEM HOME”. And we were processed and sent home.

And that, dear children, is all I can tell you at this time. Sure, there’re many things I forgot and, later, will remember, probably at 0300 in the morning, but that is just about all. All I got out of World War II, is a badly abused body, some ribbons and pieces of metal that tell me and those few who are interested, that I have been in some strange and dangerous places. Oh, yes, World War II also made me a stateless person and, indirectly got me to the United States where I built a new and much better life for me and the people I love.

[Matt]

Thankyou for posting that Jason.
Your comments are not unwarranted.
I have made up my own mind.

Matt

[DeviLocK]

I would never believe a world war two veteran to write such an autobigraphy with words like, "X-mas" and "baby-fat", etc. Before I even came down to read the autobiography, I noticed Joscha's signafure, "Move, you ^77&%#4@0(*! You wanna live forever?" - Primus sergentus in the VIIth Roman Legion". That "^77&%#4@0(*!" alon began to shake the credibility and my confidence on this person claiming to be a veteran. Another major questioning is a veteran who claimed to have such a richess of experienece would never describe places he was been as "delightful". All the front-line soldiers would never have been to "delightful" places, not even at home. I did not even finish the third graph, and already stopped reading. This biograhpy is too fictional and unreal, way too over the edge. I might read the complete of it some day only for a comedic release reason.

One thing that separates a fake or true veteran is in his or her attitude towards war. A common soldier who has gone through all harshness of war, and all the roughness it has given does not encourage or, in any chance, promote wars. They only promote the repect to those who are like them. Quite frankly, that signafure gives it away.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Please excuse my English. English it not my first language.

[HaEn]

I don't know Joscha, nor have I served in the Wehrmacht with him, mine was the W.SS. Keep in mind people that those of us who ended up inthe U.S. after many years of relocations, use our language slightlydifferent than most people do. I have for example indeed used "delightfull" sarcastically in some of my postings. I too served in a different army after the war (the Royal Netherlands'). I fail to see how his history would show that he is not a vet. Just an observation. HN.

[Commissar D, the Evil]

Well, my only observation is that Joscha has been good company on the Forum and I hope these doubts blow over quickly. I remember that folks have doubted Rudi in the past and that I myself, a long time, ago cast doubt on one of HaEn's posts (which, by the way HaEn, I apologize for, if I haven't already.) The point is that the internet puts us all in contact, but only we really know who we are. Best Regards, David

[Jason Pipes]

The point is that Rudi's story is not over-the-top sensational, he provided a last name to his story, his background and existance has been verified by various researchers and historians, etc. As of yet the same can not be said for Joscha, and although he has given me the opportunity to contact him in person and discuss this matter, his story is so full of holes I find it hard to believe coming from anyone of any age. The jury is still out on this one.

[anthony]

Hi,I just stumbled upon this thread. Mr. Pipes, did you edit any part of Joscha's resume?. The reason I ask is that the vocabulary is interesting.Both my parents came to Australia about 50 years ago. Mother is German and Father is Czech. Over that time when my Mother writes something there is a certain pattern, maybe a word positioned slightly differently but it is obvious, you could describe it as a signature vocabluary. In the nicest possible way, it is obvious that the contributors on this site have their own specific vocabulary pattern when writing in English depending upon the country of origin. I have looked and looked but something is not quite right with the one described.
Some people may remember a few years ago on another site a contributor claimed to be a veteran of one of the SS Panzer Divisions I don't recall which, however, he strung people along for months and of course people hero worshipped him. It turned out that he fabricated the charade with the aid of war diaries of which there are some very detailed publications. He claimed to be a German citizen, however he could write English better than I could without a hint of vocabulary accent. It turned out that he was a young man in the UK I believe.
There is something not quite right here, unless the paragraphs have been edited to aid the posting.

[Jason Pipes]

Nothing was edited in the autobiographical account sent to me by Joscha. Whatever correct or incorrect spelling or word usage is present is totally of his own doing. I posted it as it was sent to me, complete with the usage in the first few sentances of "...most of them got the shaft..." and later the equally fine gem "...we never fired a shot and nobody disliked us enough to pop a few rounds at us..." Unless I'm mistaken pop a few rounds and getting the shaft are simply not terms someone like this would use. But I digress.

[Ian Earl]

If Joscha is a fake I totally and utterly condem his actions.
However I do think that a better way could have been found to find out more of his background before this kind of "trail by the press" took place.
I, myself, once had a doubt cast about my own military service but thankfully I had my medals which are inscribed with name, rank and regt number as well as PAMPAS,(its like a service record card), to verify my service.

Even if he was to satisfy Jason with proof of his authenticity a few people will now always have doubts.

A shame that he was not contacted prior to all of this.

Just my humble 2 cents worth.

[Sepp]

To all them know-it-all historians:
How can you tell what a 'real' vet does, says, and looks like and what distinguishes him from a fake one? All you know comes from the books, and most of you don't even have a profound knowledge of the German language (this is also true for me concerning English). Though some may have been in the military, obviously most of you have never seen any combat action at all (good for you).
I am not a veteran (born in the late fifties), but all male members of my family have served in both World Wars, and I had enough time to talk with them, their friends, my friends fathers etc. about their adventures and experiences. And I can tell you, those people are in may cases absolutely different from the more or less famous veteran authors and writers. The books are one thing, real life is something completely different!
Most of you claim to decide what's right and wrong. Guy Sajer is a fake because he wore his cuff title on the wrong sleeve? Maybe he is, but unlike nitpicking scholars he and most people in similar circumstances had other problems than using the right designations for something or to remember other regulations that were irrelevant for the bare surviving. And when you analyze an old foto and state 'This i a T34/85, serial no.###, look at these unusual track shoes' etc. etc., most vets I know will get bad feelings and say something like 'Yes, one of those Russenpanzer drove over the foxhole next to me, turned around crushing and burying the poor inmate. Glad it wasn't me'. Nobody in this situation cares if it's been a tank from this or that brigade or manufactured east or west of the Ural mountains! Most vets can't tell the difference between a Pz IV D and a Panther G, and yes, why should they? Let them call every German tank a 'Tiger', but what the heck does this matter at all? They were in the Wehrmacht, they fought in Russia or somewhere else! You have carefully studied your books, sitting comfortably in the proverbial Ivory Tower.
Joscha is a liar because he says he sat in a Sturmpanzer and rode a tank with night vision equipment? Well maybe he is, and maybe he is not. Neil Armstrong has been the first man on the moon, but if you would meet him in a bar and he would tell you his story, would you believe him or not (provided you do not recognize him, of course)? Even if some events are absolutely singular, they have happened to somebody and why should the guy next door NOT be this guy? Just because it's so unlikely?

And you green heroes decide who is a vet and who is an impostor, what is German and what is not? Please think about it over and over again. Just because your books say 'it happened like this', this must not be the 'truth', and please do not forget that everybody has his own, very subjective truth, especially when involved in heart-shaking experiences. There is nothing like the absolute truth!

'We are dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants. We see thus more and further than they do, not because our sight is more acute or our height taller, but because they lift us into the air and elevate us with all their gigantic height.'
Bernard de [Chartres], XIIème siècle

Regards,
Sepp

Please apologize for my poor English