大象传媒

SS-Sturmann Gert Hartwig Pries

"My training lasted from 9th January 1943 until the 6th April 1943 in Licherfelde West, Berlin. There was a very large barracks there and I was trained as a panzergrenadier. The barracks itself was vast and situated at the back of the main building was a vry large wash and shower room. Meals were taken in the main building and also there was a very large swimming pool there too".
"The main training that was undertaken was was battle training, marching, shooting, how to stay a live in actual fighting and above all we were always taught to behave as a soldier of the Waffen SS. The first thing we were told was to respect your comrades and to always keep yourselves clean. Weekends were cleaning times for the barracks and for furniture such as tables, chairs, beds and cupboards, everything went outside to be washed and scrubbed. Cleanliness was very important. We were also told and believed that we were fighting against Bolshevism and for a free Europe".
"Our training was very hard and geared for action in Russia". A typical day would start..."...0.500hrs. Wake up, cleaning rooms, shaving and washing. Breakfast. 0.600hrs. Parade and then instruction on arms from pistols to 20mm antiaircraft guns. Instruction on uniforms, warfare and self defence. We never trained with live ammunition. Arms and uniforms cleaning were done every day, everything had to be 100% clean as there was an inspection every night. We even had to clean our toes and underwear as cleanliness was number one priority!

"Meals were taken in a very large hall and on entry there was an inspection for very clean hands, boots and uniform. The food itself was good but at that time as a young soldier we were always hungry".
"Everything we had to do in double quick movements, running, marching, shooting, digging foxholes and as is said in English a lot of "Bull" but I really think there was a reason for it as we had to be toughened up. We thought then that the instructors were just spiteful but we knew later that this was not so. From the first day there was a lot of shouting but it must have been very hard to mould so many different men into a team who could rely on one another. The instructors were very hard men but also very fair. One could always rely on them for help and understanding if we had a problem. There was never any personnel badly treated".

After Training for almost four months Gert was sent to Russia. Kharkov had just been taken by I SS Panzer Korps and there was now something of a lull in the fighting in preparation for the Kursk Offensive. Gert's journey was by train to Russia...

"...I took a train ride of eight days to get to Russia and once there I noticed the landscape was one of vast empty spaces, no trees or bushes for tens of miles as far as one could see. The villages were large but very poor with no gas, no electricity and no toilets either. Water had to be fetched from a well and the toilets were mere holes in the gardens. The towns and cities of course were more like western towns and cities. How those people lived like that I will never know.
We had battle training just outside of Kharkov and I was with several other men who were trained as Kradschuetzen (motorcycle troops). We had 12 BMW bikes and I stayed with this unit (which was the 1st Aufklarungs Abteilung der 1st SS Panzer Division "Leibstandate Adolf Hitler" for the whole of 1943 as well as in Italy. I took part in the battle of Kursk, Belgorod and later in Tcherkassy and Zhitomir. It was a terrible time, with me on a motorcycle between hundreds of shooting tanks, with hundreds more burning tanks and crew members all around me.

In August 1943 the whole of the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler was transferred to Italy to guard and Mussolini and Gert also went with them...

"...after the battle of the Mius line near Stalino we were sent to Italy on an open goods train with the motorbikes fastened up and one tent between three of us. It took all week in beautiful weather to get to Austria near Innsbruck where we unloaded. We then went by road over the Bremmer Pass to Bolzona, Lake Garda and all over Northern Italy. The people were very friendly and made us welcome everywhere. Compared to Russia it was almost like a holiday. We had a very good relationship with the Italian people. I did not take part in any anti-partisan operations as we were there to help and guard Mussolini near Lake Garda".

In October 1943 Gert was sent back to Russia.

"...I was sent back to Russia and into the battle at the Rollbahn Kiev-Zhitomir. At Christmas 1943 I was fighting near Tcherkassy, Proskurov and Tarnapol. After escaping from .....and .....to somewhere in Poland and then on to Belgium. Two things stuck in my mind of the time I was in Zhitomir, there were thousands of German soldiers escaping through a very wide valley, one kilometre away on either side were Russian tanks firing at everything and anything. I have never seen so many men dying from bullets, snow and cold. When we got out of this hell I went to the field doctor with frozen legs and feet. He sent me to a field hospital and told me how to get there, on a narrow railtrack from a clay pit to the brick yard where the field hospital was. It took me two days and nights of walking, all by myself, in a terrible snowstorm at 25 degrees below zero to get there. I walked non-stop, too afraid to sit down to take a rest for fear of freezing to death. I eventually arrived in Jasoy (Rumania) then on to Poland.
Gert was then sent to Belgium...
"...there is not much I can remember about this time as I was very sick with a fever similar to Malaria. I was sent to Normandy by road travelling only at night past Paris to a point near Caen".

Gert was sent in anticipation of the Allied landings which took place on the 6th June 1944 in Normandy and he recalls that...

"...this was a very different type of war to that which we had been fighting in Russia. There we were fighting against severe weather, from constant harassment from partisans and constant man to man fighting. In Normandy we fought an unequal battle to stay alive from the constant shelling and air attacks. We were fighting the Canadians, who were very good. They were tough and fair fighters but we gave them as good as they gave us. My firm belief is that if we had an airforce as good as the Allied airforce then they would not have won in Normandy. We could only make any movement at night as our airforce was non-existent and a complete let down to the ground troops.
I became a despatch rider to the Hauptsturmfuehrer of the 1st Aufklarungs Abteilung of the 1st SS Panzer Division, which was commanded by SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer Gustav Knittel. It was a job and a half in so far that I was constantly dodging aeroplanes and being fired on from both the air and from the ground.
As far as I can remember besides our 1st SS Panzer Division there was the 12th SS Panzer Division, 21st Panzer Division and the 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions as well as the Panzer Lehr Division who were in action with us in Nomandy".
After the breakout from Caen by the Canadian and British troops the Germans were pushed back across France and with the Americans attacking simultaneously the Germans were in grave danger of being surrounded in the pocket at Falaise. Gert took part in the retreat across France and like thousands of other German troops was almost cut off at Falaise...
"...the battle of Falaise was a killing field on a grand scale. It was here that I was wounded. It was a lovely day, brilliant sunshine and a good day hunting for the Allied Air force and I had to dispatch to another unit. I had to keep one eye on the road and one eye on the sky. Going pretty fast round a bend towards a road lined by very large trees. There they were. Three American tanks with soldiers sitting on them and the next thing I saw and the next thing I saw was tracer bullets coming towards me. I jumped off my motorcycle and ran through some bushes with bullets whistling all around me. I eventually got away. After running for about twenty minutes I felt short of air and had a pain in my left side. I put my hand inside my coat and tunic and felt blood, it was running down into my boots. A bullet had entered the front of my shoulder and had come out at the back. That was at about 14.00hrs. Six hours later I got back to my unit, was bandaged up and was sent to the field hospital. On the way out of Falaise we were travelling on an open troop carrier and under fire and shelling we turned over into a aditch. Men without legs or arms and other wounds also fell into the ditch screaming and crying for help. Shells landed all around us burning and killing. I eventually got a lift on a lorry and under fire we got out of Falaise and back to Germany to a hospital. I must add that members of the 12th SS "Hitlerjugend" were the best and most courageous soldiers I ever met".

Gert spent the rest of the war in Germany and was eventually taken prisoner by the Americans.

"I became a POW four weeks before the end of the war and was taken prisoner by the Americans, handed over to the British at Goslar then sent to Wolfenhistell where there was a very large POW camp. Someone told the British that I was a former member of the Waffen SS and four British soldiers with guns at the ready came and took me to an interrogation camp. I don't know if the British called it an interrogation camp but to us it seemed like that. I don't know if there were only Wafen SS prisoners there as it was a very large camp. I was there from May 1945 and was held until Christmas 1945. The camp was under a built up road with beds three and four on top of each other. There was no bedding, blankets or underwear to change into, and only very little food was given to us. We were interrogated occasionally. It was always the same British sergeant who interrogated us. He spoke perfect German and wrote down every answer that I gave him. I think he was trying to find out if I was lying to him. He told me the first time that he interrogated me that if I lied to him he would put me away for 25 years. I told him that I did not tell lies. He asked me what I did in the army and I told him that I was a dispatch rider, his answer was "Bloody Hell!" You are the first German I've met that hasn't said he was a cook!"
He then, very cleverly and friendly asked me a lot of questions such as where I served, for how long, how other soldiers behaved, what I thought of Hitler but he never mentioned the Waffen SS. Of course he knew I was already a member. So it went on for the next 6 months and during this time we had to work on roads and farms. I also worked in the stores of an RAF base and it was here that we stole a piano by taking it apart and slowly taking it into the camp.
"In December 1945 the sergeant gave me a release certificate form and was told that he was pleased that I was a clean soldier. (I wish I still had that certificate to show you but I somehow lost it over the years). I was told that I was clear of any war crimes and that I was an ordinary POW. Life as a POW was never pleasant but we tried to make it as comfortable as possible - as much as the guards would let us. Life in the POW camps in England was not too bad, it very much depended on the behaviour of the POWs and the individual guards. To pass the time we played sport such as football, listened to music, singing and other games. We were not segregated in England and there were Army, Luftwaffe, Waffen SS together in the camps and there was never any hatred betwen us. We were not graded by colours or by any other means and I never heard of this practice until you mentioned it to me".
"On Christmas eve 1945 I was loaded into a goods train guarded by British soldiers with dogs (that was eight months after the war). It took two days to get to Belgium and once there I had to march under terrible beatings by the guards to a camp on a hill under a few trees. One hole was dug for fourteen men and a tent put over the top of it. There was one blanket per man with no flooring and we had to sleep in the damp soil in the freezing snowy weather. We had no food for two days. They made us get up at 05.00 for rollcall and sometimes we stood until 12.00hrs to be counted. I lost three stone in weight in those four months in Belgium. In April 1946 I was sent by boat from Rotterdam to Tilbury Docks in Essex, England. I was in the hold of the ship in oil and water for the whole journey. All the terrible treatment stoppped once we landed in England. We were then sent by 2nd class train to Leicester, then on to Sheffield and then to Spalding. I was released in May 1948 but I don't think my belonging to the Waffen SS had anything to do with my late release from captivity".
"My home town was not occupied by the Soviets as it was just north of Hamburg. I stayed in England because I married a very pretty English girl. Some British people treated us well and some just ignored us, I believed it depended on how we behaved, how we worked and how we adapted ourselves to the British way of life. There were of course some people who hated us but then there were some of us who hated the British".
"Then in May 1948 I worked on the farm of a Mr Bob Whiteman in Gedney Hill in Spalding. He is 89 years old now and was, and still is a gentleman. He treated me like I was an English worker and to repay him I worked very hard and showed him respect".
"It took a long time to learn English, I wrote down ten words every day and spoke them all day. The next day I added another word and so I kept on going from there. Of course I had help from English people especially from the girls".
"In January 1949 I married an English girl, she was lovely and so pretty and only 18 years old. I must have been the very first German to marry in England after the war. It must have been very hard for her being married to a former enemy and it lasted only five years. She left and I kept the children and I am very proud to tell you that I have four children, five grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and I am a very happy old man. My youngest son was in the British Army for ten years. I worked for a very good farmer in Spalding and am still in contact with him. I thank him for his help and fairness".

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