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Josef Nowak: Rhine meadow camp of Rheinberg

Chapter 1: Rubble, nothing but rubble

Detention on April 13, 1945 -- prehistory of the capitulation at the flak tower in Bemerode in Hanover -- the last meal before the detention -- a bridge, a captain, confiscations of transports -- Italian staff at the flak -- location of Ahlten -- allied posters against "soldiers not being detained" -- a little bit of alcohol for the criminal allies -- contusions in the lorry -- sight seeing tour in the ruins of Hanover in the dust -- driving to the west

from: Josef Nowak: Seeded on the field. War prisoner in the home land.
(Mensch auf den Acker gesät. Kriegsgefangen in der Heimat)

translated by Michael Palomino (2013)

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[Nowak was a journalist - then detained after the capitulation of April 13, 1945]

On Friday, April 13 [1945] - no, I will never believe in prophecy, palmistry or astrologists. I know the arts of magic taking the money from the stupids, but they never got one penny from my side. When I met them I always had my press identity card with me and I had any right to pass. But there is a big superstition in the country now in many heads saying that even the state's leaders have to calculate with superstition - thus I will not conceal this date. It will be a hint for everybody who is investigating for the causes of bad events which are told.

On Friday, April 13 [1945], almost at 10 o'clock in the morning, two Canadian military policemen - everyone with a machine gun around his neck - were pushing me into a little garage which was like a prison of their head quarter. Precisely 48 hours before I had made my separate peace with the allied forces.

[Prehistory from the capitulation to the detention: the flak tower in Bemerode in Hanover]

The heavy flak tower where I was doing my military service was in Bemerode, some 100 meters from the main gate of the Hanover exhibition site. Such a flak is very appreciated at the front against tanks, but in the home country it's task was to shoot into the air. Goodwill was not missing, but [p.7] its grenades had a long way to go. They needed 28 seconds for being up in 9,000 meters of height until they were exploding there. In this time the air planes of the enemy could pass three, four, or even five kilometers. Additionally ammunition was scarce. For performing a curtain fire we had to apply for a ration coupon at the office of the Reichsmarschall [Göring].

Concerning the catastrophe [the capitulation of Germany] it had come near in these days before April 13. The boss [of the flak tower] was standing near the radio of the main command post in the evening hours. He was drawing or writing something into his little booklet, and then he was repeating the figures. His voice was full of emotions. then he shouted new values of shooting to the three staff members being responsible to install the distances. They were cranking like fools.

-- E1 ready! - E2 ready! - E3 ready!
-- Fire!
-- Fast group fire! Group! - Bell! - Bell! - Bell!

All four seconds grenades were shoot from the 16 tubes. Some seconds later everyone on the command post was realizing what was going on. We are shooting a road crossing in a distance of hardly 16 kilometers. We don't see the American tanks. We cannot hinder them with our ammunition either. But they will suffer a heavy storm of missiles and then they will stop for some days. This play was finished rapidly. Suddenly we got fire from the side. There tank batteries had been installed. This is not [p.8] a fair fight. Our canons are on heavy cement basements. We can shoot horizontally into the landscape and vertically into the air and to all sides, but we cannot move the guns. But the tanks are changing their positions after every shoot. The mice are in the trap. The cats are hacking them with their lethal claws by the grid.

In a ceasefire - the Americans were making their lunch time regularly and rigidly - the lady Lissy came on a bicycle coming from Hanover. Lissy loved one of our gun leaders. Love provokes over natural forces to women. Lissy brought remarcable news. We consulted our flak tower boss. Then we saw in his face that he was realizing why he could not get any news or reading from any department nor regiment nor brigade any more. There was no brigade any more, no regiment any more, no department any more. The Americans had intruded Hanover from the west and were even reaching the northern suburbs. When we had to do something in the war yet a fast return from the hedgehog position was the only thing being left to do. It seemed that there was a tiny gap yet for the flight to the east. Our boss was opening the secret envelope with the secret order for this case. And now his mouth was falling down to his Order of Merit he had on his chest [p.9].

[The last meal before the capitulation - two swines are slaughtered]

He ordered now to slaughter the two swines which were living in a little stable of the flak tower. Then he was also bringing a box of cognac. We were horrified. The end of the world would be near. We were sitting down for the feasts. For many members of our battery this was the last good meal in their life, for others it was their last meal eating one's fill before the hunger began. We were eating the meat fast like Eskimos on the Melville Bay when they were eating after their long hunger in winter after the ice was crashing and they had caught some seals. The meal was accompanied with much schnapps for not being killed by a biliary colic in the case we would not suffer the heroic death. Without being spoken out we knew that the war was in it's last hours. The only question was how and where would be the end for everyone.

[Leaving the flak tower]

It was a mixed heavy flak battery where we were doing our service. On this flack tower were working 40 German soldiers, 50 Italian policemen called "carabinieri" in their homeland, 28 flak assists with the age of 15 to 17 years and 22 girl assists working in the office, in the kitchen, on the radio measuring station - all defending their home land. The chief was taking the resolution now - by the pressure of us German soldiers - to order the flight for the girls and the boys first. But the youth did not want. They wanted to have a noncommissioned officer with them. The chief was asking who they wanted to have. I was breathing easily. They wanted to have me. Now the chief was denying their wish for a long time and this was not without reason. I was [p.10] the only one of the battery who could speak Italian, also the only one to whom these forgotten children of the south were trusting really. Youth was winning. Discipline was getting cracks already like the ice in the sun of February. Any moment the surface could blow up into pieces.

[A bridge - a meal - confiscation of transports]

We were leaving. [The location of] Ahlten was in the middle between Misburg and Lehrte. Ahlten was the next goal of the march. On a bridge at the Hindenburg Watergate a rude captain of the air force was blocking me. I presented him my marching order.

-- boy and girls flak assists can leave where they want, but you, noncommissioned officer will stay here!

In vain I was referring to my marching order and to my duty to nurse the girls and children. He had a corps order, the captain declared. The bridge will be defended up to the last drop of blood. Up to where? I could not say anything anymore, and also my stomach was blocked. At the end of the bridge was installed a canon 8.8cm already. I should be - as an artillerist - the leader of the gun. Avery soldier will be stopped and will be a member of the fighting unit which will consist until now only by me and the captain. If there were tank shells? No, he had none, but they were on the way.

Some hours we had a new work stopping any car passing the bridge. We were like crusaders in the time of Götz of Berlichingen [p.11]. Two men were with a handcart having a double centner of sugar on board. Stolen without doubt.

-- Down with it!

A lorry came and wanted to pass the bridge with a high speed. I was giving him a friendly signal with my pistol. The drivers had ravaged a storage office. Beer, schnapps, wine --

-- Down with it!

A baker was coming in a high speed.

-- Down with it!

The plundered people were cursing much. Why they shouldn't? We had a great understanding in our hearts. In this kind war was just friendly for us. One day long one could continue like this having the time for it.

In the late afternoon I could make clear to the girls - with all my force of convincing them - that they were only hindering my work when I had to take fast resolutions. I had the intention to save my last drops of blood for other opportunities. The girls were leaving as a vanguard. But the boys wanted to stay at any price. They did not follow any order, no advice, no pleading. NO, they would not respect at all leaving me alone. The captain was satisfied. Better this fighting unit than no one. When it was evening time I was holding a war session with my boys. I suggested them to march half a kilometer waiting for me there. I would come [p.12] later. I looked for the captain in his bunker and he was explaining me the situation of the war - as a precaution - and then I logged off for being at my post on the bridge. Five minutes later I had reached my boys and I brought them to the location of Ahlten without difficulty where the girls had prepared a big quantity of potatoes already serving them fried.

[The flak tower of Bemerode with problems because of the Italians - the last fight the self destruction]

I just had the fork in the hand when there was passing a car by. It was my chief [from the flak tower]. He was tearing me off from the fried potatoes and pushed me into his car and was heading back to Bemerode. The Italians had rejected the order, were pretending to be deaf and dumb and made faces like tired oxen during a hot summer time. Well. But how I should pass the bridge passing the captain who was chasing my blood there? We were passing the channel without any special event.

Again in Bemerode I shouted: Camerati [comrades], amici [friends] and I gave a little speech which could not be understood by my boss and when he had understood then he had shot me on the spot.

-- Evviva, dottore, evviva [jolly good fellow is our doctor]! the Italians shouted giving me their hands embracing me and suddenly they were soft and could obey. With a sunny morning the next spring day was beginning. All, also the last man had to help and to bring the ammunition boxes to the guns. Over 400 grenades [p.13] every canon should shoot. We were shooting the bullets with an angle of 10 grades into the landscape. A noise like hell began. The eardrums were aching with the hammering explosions. Sweat was flowing in streams over the breast and passing the back. We were watching with a stiff view into the air swirls, we were breathing powder fume and dust. Then all was silent suddenly. It seemed that the whole creation was dead. The guns had given their last thundering choral. During washing and preparing the marching off self destruction was prepared. The chief installed explosives. I was looking back to the two commando devices, these wonder works like fast brains calculating automatically the angle by the distance and the height being steered by electronic thinking being able to track the falling or the turning air plane determinating it's location within a part of a second when the grenades would cross it's way. I was looking back to the radio measuring device with it's magic green circle in which the coming airplane was shown like a toothed flame. I was looking back one more moment to the Marburg device. There was said that there were only three such devices. They were just new yet. They were working like eye nerves and air planes could not hide by electronic disturbances either. What a pity - [and then the flak tower was blown up].

[March to Ahlten]

We are on the way when open [p.14] bodies of the devices are falling aside. Ruins, rubble, ashes, this is the end of human creativity.

When we came to the Hindenburg Watergate this "bridge" there was no person "up to the last drop of blood". There was no defense any more. Also the captain with his corps order had been taken by his fate. Only the canon was there yet and was lonely showing it's tube into the air in a melancholic way. The Italians were like in a phlegm on the bridge on the bridge railing leaving their anti-tank bazookas slowly to the water. Pietro Bertolino, the Maresciallo, in English a Marshall, was giving a reproachful glance to me:

-- in somma, dottore - in queste circostanze - mi sembra, dottore - cosa fare - bisogna salvare la pelle -
[Well, doctor - under these circumstances - it seems to me, doctor, that we only can save ourselves now].

Well, I had just the same idea considering the situation under these conditions. Now the Italians had enough and wanted only to save themselves.

-- Addio, amici, arrivederci, signori, sia in campo di concentramento, sia nel cielo -

[In English]: Bye bye friends. We see us again in the prisoners of war camp or never again on this earth.

Shortly before leaving from Ahlten to the unknown destiny to the east I was logging off at my chief. I wanted a farewell visit with my friends in Lehrte and I wanted to wait for the battery at the entrance of the town. I swung myself on the bicycle having a Belgium carbine [p.15] over my shoulder, four hand grenades and a pistol at the belt, and then I was biking fast. On the way to Lehrte the gate of a foreigner's camp was opening suddenly. Men and women were coming out. They certainly will think that I would be the last soldier who had left Hanover. Here there was a case of manslaughter. This was obvious. I was coming down from my bike and tear my pistol from the case -

The slaughterers are going back with a grumble. Without risk they would like to murder, but nobody wants to die with it. I push my bike along the gate and then I begin biking again. Poor fools I think yet, how well that you have no idea what had happened when the following batteries had seen my dead body at the entrance gate. No one of them, no man and no woman had survived such a murder in the morning hours.

My girl friend Annemarie was at home. During her father was destroying my shooting gun in a near water, the daughter was giving me - within a rental treaty - a blue suit and some brown shoes. Changing the clothes I heard rattling the chains of the heavy tanks of General Eisenhower on the near motorway. I had finished the state of war with them. Passing the American convoy of tanks and lorries I was biking home then. Bride and daughter did not hesitate to admire my intelligence. War was over for me. But was it really? [p.16]

[Posters of the "American" occupation - enlisting order for German soldiers under condition of kin liability for women and children with heavy threats]

One day later there were posters fixed on all walls of the town [of Hanover] indicating that all civilians housing a not detained soldier yet are threatened by worst revenge. Women and mothers of German warriors were especially included into this threatening trial. This kind of text we knew already. Also in the Third Reich denouncing had been normal by parents against children and by children against their parents. This tradition should not stop so fast.

[The position with the Canadians - robbery in the garage confiscating everything]

On Friday, April 13, 1945, I was just going - protecting and bewaring wife and child from American death of being shot - to the neighboring Canadian military police convincing them of my good consciousness and of the fact that I was never in any armed conflict by my own will with the allies, and explaining that I had used the first opportunity to stop the war. When I had not done this walk on Friday, April 13, then I had been able to explain all to an officer. But when I was welcomed by a sergeant and he was not showing any sign to hand me over, then I was conceiving that I had got in a hot water. The Canadian sergeant did understand as much as any other sergeant had understood of the Wehrmacht on Earth. He was handing me over in a short action to the already mentioned humans with machine guns, and they were - as already mentioned - pushing me into a [p.17] garage. There they were searching my pockets and robbing me of any metal objects. The most important of them was a nail file. They forgot only a tiny pocket knife in my vest pocket. Now my status was sinking I think when they did not find any watch on my left wrist. They were at the left and at the right side of the garage gate watching me. But their duty for being soldiers did not hinder them to chucking a cigarette to me from time to time. Their deposit was without limits. A population with such reserves had to win the war.

[The mother of the house wants to share her alcohol deposit - and the soldiers take all]

In the meantime it was lunch time but there was no lunch for me - also when there was a Hague Convention and a Geneva Convention - but there was only something to laugh. The owner of the house, a women I knew from seeing, came to the garage. She did not speak English fluently but some English nonsense she was speaking. She was presenting the Canadians a hole in the cement floor with a wooden trap door, and then she encouraged the winners to open the hideout. They did her the favor and then they found a box with alcoholic beverages. Dear mom I thought, are you totally mad? Also when you don't know the story about Ilias and Odysseus, when you suffered two world wars already, you should know that the soldier [p.18] in his fury of destruction will not care anything, nor beer, nor wine, nor schnapps. Old lady, perhaps you thought that there would be time of celebration now. Perhaps you thought that the military police will be content with one bottle of Aquavit. After a long quarrel the lady was ready and crying and begging for getting one single bottle for herself. But the warriors were remaining hard:

-- This is for American soldiers!

When she had shown some silverware there had been jokes yet when the situation had been urgent. But alcoholic beverages were an earnest affair and was not allowed for remaining in the hands of the enemy like shooting guns. Madame was leaving and was crying bitterly. In this moment also she had lost the war.

Now it is time that the woman is taking the lunch meal from her stove. She was preparing many things for this day of coming home.

[The transfer to the overcrowded lorry - humans compressed like animals]

My part was not forgotten. What will think bride and daughter now? They are abroad at the fence? Did they get an officer bringing him to reason? There are more than twenty cigarette butts on the floor. At least, at least there is a sergeant on the door.

-- Come on!

I am coming on. They are pushing me like a suit case into their jeep. To the right - to the left - straight ahead and against to the right. There is a long convoy of lorries, cannot be lost, this is a mobile prison for thousands of warriors. It is no [p.19] cattle transport what is going on here. Never I saw cattle herded with so few reason and cure. The lorries were resembling to giant boxes put upright full of sprouts. No one is falling from the box. No one can fall from the box. They are pressed together densely, sticking together. There is no space any more. I look to the Canadian.

-- Come on!

I am going down and up again, first I am standing on other feet, then by the time on my own feet. We are waiting a wile yet. Soldiers have their time, and prisoners have even more. There is nothing to loose but the meal, really nothing. All are mute, with stiff and without moving, dumb like cattle on an meadow in the rain. It is as if there had been a shock stopping all tongues. There is no word, no question, not even a curse. They are herded like animals but they don't match together. Everyone is alone whereas the space is used up to the last millimeter by their shoes. Their faces are empty, without expression, as if they had been formed by clay before and would not have been touched yet for being alive. They are not awoken from their faint yet. They did not conceive the new world where they have been driven in. Perhaps they only have to recover from their skull fracture first first. They are not conceiving yet the new kind of being which is dictated now by their fate. they are not as far yet [p.20] conceiving where they are, where they are going. They forgot where they came from. They are derailed and they are waiting without feeling and hope that there will be help bringing them back on the rails. And some of them are perhaps in a mood like Odysseus and his friends after having fled from the horrifying hell of the giant Polyphemos. They are just not in the mood to tell yet.

[Sight seeing tour in the ruins of Hanover - a dusty "reeducation" - then driving to the west]

The convoy is not moving yet? Well, yes, now it is passing the town. The town? It's a violated town, hacked into pieces, half burnt dead body of a town. The lorries are entering just into the center of this broken heart. There were bulldozers leaving the streets without rubble pushing the ruins aside. The winners were thinking of everything. Their engineers knew that one day their would be times when ruins would block everything. That's why they were constructing bulldozers preparing the streets for the tanks through the ruined town. Sunken roads are opening. When there would be houses yet then the rubble would reach the first and second upper floors. 

There is the whole splendor of Gothic and renaissance culture. Only rubble, nothing but rubble - ashes, nothing bat ashes - dirt, nothing but dirt. The northern Nuremberg is converted into some hundred tons of garbage. The column house, the Wedekind house, the cone sugar upside down, the Roland hospital [p.22], the bone breaker office house (Knochenhaueramtshaus), all this you can put away within two or three days now with two or three horse cars to the big rubble dumping ground.

-- Sancte Pater, sic transit gloria mundi [Holy Father, in this way the glory of the world is going down] - the cardinal deacon is singing during the coronation of the Pope burning a straw before the Lord of Christianity. Showing the modern dictators how glory of the world is passing by they were burning whole towns. Here world glory was converted into a territory of flat clay hills within some minutes and only from time to time some carbonized timbers can be seen. Only in this town probably 20,000 people had been roasted and cooked alive by the bomber air planes when the population had not looked for a stay on the near mountains at the beginning of the alarms in it's wild panic, following the advice of the evangelist Matthew which were given to the Jews before the doom of Jerusalem:

-- People being on the roof they should not come down for taking something from their flats, and people being on the field they should not turn back to get their coat. Good luck is needed for pregnant woman and women just having given birth during those days! Pray that your flight will not be in winter -

This flight was in spring, but although hundreds of humans were burning in the streets and the dead bodies were [by the fire storm] so little like puppets at the end - as if they were gifts for girls on Christmas.

We are making one round passing this cemetery [p.22] of architecture. We are making a second, a fourth, a sixth round. We are making one more and one more round and we did stop counting already. The convoy is provoking dust without end thus provoking dust twirls touching the points of the church towers. The dust is forming a yellow red veil and the broken loaves of the churches can be seen like phantoms and are loosing against their pointed and grotesque forms. Negroes are driving the lorries. They are making rounds without end. Did they get the order to show us what it means to resist to the heroes of overseas? Are they ordered to engrave into our memories that the pride of the Western World cannot resist one hour, not one quarter of an hour, to modern destruction of towns? What a pity about the gasoline wasted here. These losers of world history being in a convoy on a sight tour of an executed town are not accepting this reeducation. They are not seeing anything, not hearing not tasting not feeling not smelling anything. They are hardly recognizing that the dust of clay and bricks has formed a layer of centimeters on their faces. Thi layer will stay there, during many weeks. In this way they get to know dirt as a new comrade in an apathetic way without having an idea how long this community with it will last. This dust is hanging in the form of flakes on their eyes, on their eyelashes, on their hairs. This dust is moving into the nose, into the eyes, ears, mouth and lungs. The last drop of saliva is dry now. They are there with open mouths like fishes [p.23] before getting the merciful blow or stitch into the neck - they are gasping for air - the prisoners of war.

Education has begun.

People with blind eyes by dust, with blocked voices by dust, suffering the fear of loosing life by suffocating, they lost the war. They should recognize this. During Trojan War there was just one more variation. Even dead bodies of the enemy were put on the war lorry being dragged around the walls of the sieged town. roman commanders were presenting the prisoners before being slaughtered or sold as slaves, in a triumph parade to the capitol. Here one little commander, banker or lawyer can be his civil profession, had organized a joy to ridicule and to torture his human war pray.

But one time the joy of victory laps has an end. The veil of dust is less and less now. By the time one is loosing the feeling to pass a sand storm during a solar eclipse. Now streets and houses can be seen, and hills with forest. I have my last view back to the dead town, with the broken ruin of the dome black by smut. This was the [alleged] location of consecration of Charles the Great and his sons and his grandsons. Apse is split in the middle as if there had been a giant lightening stroke. Under the broken sand stone square stones, under the fluent plumb and under the [p.24] glowing copper plates of the roof there was the 1,000 years old rosebush, the holy symbol of the town, buried, burnt, suffocated.

There was no prophecy, no future any more. And we as loosers were driving to the west, as prisoners with unknown goal [p.25].

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