Meetings with „Wiking” Division Veterans

[John P. Moore]

25 years later in October 1995 at Tittling in the Dreiburgenland near Passau. Herbert Schmeißer had asked two of his closest still living comrades from 1935 to get together with him and celebrate his 80th birthday at this small inn at Tittling in the area where the SS-Nachrichtensturmbann assembled in 1938 before the entry into the Sudetenland. Schmeißer asked me to join him too as Günter Liersch and I had been attending the annual reunion of the SS-Nachrichtenkameradschaft in Schlüsselfeld. We had a great dinner, drank a lot and told stories late into the night. Below is a photo taken on the morning after. Herbert Schmeißer and his wife are on the right. In the middle is Günter Liersch and his wife and I forget the name of the man on the left, who was the former company medic.

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[Frederick L Clemens]

Nice thread. Makes me wish I was living over there.

[John P. Moore]

Thanks Fred. Unfortunately, this story does not have a happy ending. Within a year of that October 1995 birthday celebration the wife of Günter Liersch would be dead and later Herbert Schmeißer's wife would be diagnosed with Alzheimers.

After the war Herbert Schmeißer became an architect and also owned a painting company that received a lot of its business from painting the homes of Waffen-SS veterans. He had a home in Stuttgart and a country home in Welzheim that was his favorite.

I last visited Herbert Schmeißer in September 2002 at his home in the country. We spent hours in his study where he would bring out old documents and photos from the war and he would share his memories of those times with me. We went for a drive in the country (He drove very fast and aggressively) and had dinner at a fine restaurant where the food was excellent and the prices were low. He took me to see some old Roman ruins that had been excavated near his village. The walls of the old Roman fort, known as the Ostkastell, had been restored and Schmeißer can be seen here

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outside the entrance.

[John P. Moore]

He later wanted me to see some special trees that he called "Wellingtons". I had no idea what these could be. They turned out to be Douglas Firs from the NW USA that had been planted at this special place in Germany several hundred years ago.

Herbert Schmeißer's wife was to die from Alzheimers shortly after that visit. We remained in contact until a couple of years ago when he had a stroke and was moved to a "Pflegheim" (nursing home). His old comrade from 1935, Günter Liersch, who is now 95, still visits him regularly as Liersch told me in a letter last July.

As I said earlier, Herbert Schmeißer and I did a lot of drinking together. An important lesson that I learned from him is that it is okay to drink wine after beer, but you are sure to get sick if you drink beer after wine. It works!

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[Annelie]

Its so nice to read about these Veterans and their comradship kept all these years.
You have been a lucky man to sit and share bread and memories with these Veterans and with you John
at least some of these memories are shared with others and I am sure your helpfullness to them
is much appreciated. Thankyou.

Herbert Schmeißer and I did a lot of drinking together. An important lesson that I learned from him is that it is okay to drink wine after beer, but you are sure to get sick if you drink beer after wine. It works!

a lesson to keep in mind.

[Paul E]

Thanks for these great postings John , i was fortunate to correspond with Herr Schmeißer in 2004 and he sent me an excellent signed photo of himself,

regards

Paul

[John P. Moore]

Thanks Annelie and Paul.

I mentioned earlier that Herbert Schmeißer had given me copies of many letters between him and the former Standartenführer Ernst Kemper and other personalities such as Brigadeführer Wilhelm Keilhaus and Standartenführer Adolf Weiß. Below is a 1978 letter from Kemper to Schmeißer. They frequently used nicknames with each other and “Katta” was the nickname given to Schmeißer, while “Bobby” is Fritz Schütter. Work on the history of the SS-Nachrichten Abteilung “Wiking” is discussed which Schmeißer later published under the title, “WIKING Männer mit Mikrofon + Morsetaste”. Fritz Schütter is working on a broader book about the history of the SS signal troop later published as “Männer der Waffen-SS” and reissued with the present title of “Wir woll'n das Wort nicht brechen - Die Waffen-SS 1935-1945”. The FELIX – Denkmal was a planned monument to SS-Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner that was never realized.

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[Frederick L Clemens]

That's interesting. I have seen other correspondence between vets on similar topics. There is a lot of additional history there. I hate to think of what gets lost when families toss out stuff like that. I have had it happen a few times that I have contacted the surviving family of a vet and they say, "Oh, he would have loved to talk to you about the war...and, by the way, we threw all his papers/photos out last month."

The Bundesarchiv does have a few files of correspondence like this, so fortunately some of it is being preserved.

[Frederick L Clemens]

True enough, but how many times on this forum have we heard Vets give their experience (their history) only to be told they would have to corroborate their information? ...

That happens with a small percentage of vets who make unusual claims. It would be naive to accept that everything is truth because it comes from a vet or someone who claims to be a vet.

Everyone is capable of forgetting or misremembering and the majority of vets who I have corrected in that sense have been gracious or even thankful in accepting that correction. Indignation is usually a red flag.

I think this thread is a good example of vets whose goal is getting history right as their legacy rather than striving to be objects of worship. I can never repay the honorable vets who have helped me with my own research.

[Annelie]

I can never repay the honorable vets who have helped me with my own research

Yes, the Veterans have always been more than helpful when approached.

Reminds me that I have over thirty pieces of correspondence from an Rudolf Held ME 211843 POW of Benghazi, Egypt
to his family from 46-48. I am not good at reading the Deutsch and the words for me are hard to read.
In some correspondence his handwriting is so small, because lack of paper space that I can hardly see. Maybe there is
some interesting history within.

[Frederick L Clemens]

Correspondence can be a great research source. It can be very frustrating, too. It can be like decoding an inscription on an Aztec temple (not that I have actually done that).

Some of the obstacles can be:
poor or archaic handwriting, lack of context, having only one side of the conversation, use of nicknames, the writer often refering only indirectly/vaguely to something that the addressee is already familar with, etc.

It is fortunate when you have a vet give you his correspondence while he is still alive like in John's case.

One thing I might suggest for small handwriting is simply enlarging the letters on a copier or a scanner to start with.

I just recently got a collection of 200 plus letters between a Panzerregiment 35 NCO and his fiance/wife. Having a good knowledge of the regiment's history and movements is a big help in sorting and understanding the letters. Unfortunately, relationship building is the main theme and only one or two lines from each letter contain historical value.

[John P. Moore]

I'm pleased to see that people found the letter from Kemper to Schmeißer of interest. Below is a December 1976 letter from Kemper to the former SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Keilhaus. He informs Keilhaus of the book Fritz Schütter is writing about the SS-Nachrichtentruppe and requests that he write the Foreword as the last chief signal officer of the Waffen-SS (Chef Fernmeldewesen)

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[Frederick L Clemens]

His use of the term "Waffen Schutz-Staffeln" is interesting. It is rare to see it written as other than Waffen SS. Abbreviations sometimes take on a life of their own as acronyms, for example, most people would not bother to write IBM as International Business Machines, even if they knew that was the origin.

I wonder if that is an attempt (subconcious or otherwise) to avoid the negative connotation of SS by going back to the root term which is less sinister sounding - what could be less aggressive sounding than "protective squadrons"? It is the burden of every Waffen SS vet to be associated with the SS parent organization, whether justified or not.

[John P. Moore]

Fred - I had not seen "Waffen Schutz-Staffeln" used that way before either. Kemper may have been a bit to the right, considering his association with the Reichsverband der Soldaten e.V. The page below was on the back side of a letter from him to Schmeißer.

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[John P. Moore]

Here is the text side of the letter above. Kemper writes to Schmeißer about the book they are working on with Fritz Schütter, Kemper's former adjutant at the Metz signal school. Kemper quotes their former division commander, Felix Steiner as saying, "Der Kemper hat jedes Scheißhaus angeschlossen!" That meant that Kemper had the division area so well wired that every latrine even had a field telephone.

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