After “From the Weinviertel to Stalingrad” and “We were the youngest” Major Michael Gurschka recently published his third book “I never found out what it was all for …”. As in his first two works, Gurschka describes the very subjective experiences and accounts of contemporary witnesses from the Second World War. Second World War – and he also talks about some of them in the following Militär Aktuell interview.
Mr. Gurschka, for your first books(-> Interview on the book “Wir waren die Jüngsten”) and now also for the new book, you spoke to numerous contemporary witnesses and then reported on their different fates. Was there one story that particularly moved you?
Yes, that of the machine gunner Ivan Mikhailovich Achapkin. He served in the 26th Army of the 3rd Ukrainian Front and I had the great honor of recovering his mortal remains on the Hochwechselstrasse near Mönichwald. After around two hours, all the bones were recovered and laid out on a tarpaulin for the mortician. I experienced the recovery itself as an intense confrontation with death on the battlefield. To write my third book, I studied the terrain of his position in detail and its influence on the operational command of the attacker, troops of the Soviet 337th Rifle Division, and the defender, troops of the German 1st Mountain Division.
And what did you realize in the process?
His machine-gun squad was attacked from the front and from the flank with flat fire, which was reinforced by grenade launchers and rifle grenades. His position was littered with ammunition remnants. https://www.militaeraktuell.at/ein-fahrender-bunker-schwer-und-massig-der-bison/
What goes through your mind when you analyze the situation on site and dig up the bones?
My first thoughts revolved around the question of whether the same thing would happen again to my generation or future generations. While Ukrainians and Russians fought side by side against a common enemy in the Wechselgebiet in April 1945, today, some 80 years later, they are hostile to each other as parties to the conflict in Ukraine. Against the backdrop of the impending disintegration of the European Union, which was created primarily for peace within Europe, this fact gives me pause for thought.
Is there another story that particularly sticks in your mind?
The fates of Heinz Fischer and Hans Fischer, both from Saxony, have interesting geographical connections to me personally. Heinz Fischer was drafted into the Panzergrenadier Regiment 2 Konopacki at the age of 16 and, on the march to the front, his regiment was taken to the Absdorf area near Tulln on the Danube around April 15, 1945. After a short period in position, we marched on or back to the north-eastern Weinviertel, where I later grew up. Supported by grenade launchers and Wehrmacht units, Fischer’s battalion managed to repel units of the 285th Guards Rifle Regiment of the 93rd Guards Rifle Division in a counterattack and temporarily throw them out of the village of Altlichtenwarth.
And what is the parallel with Hans Fischer?
He was also 16 years old and, without (!) belonging to a military unit, was taken by rail from the Kynschlag/Protectorate military training area via Prague to the Lower Austrian-Czech border region with 30 other young people and simply abandoned to his fate. What followed was a long odyssey in prisoner-of-war camps between Horn in the Waldviertel and Rustavi or Tbilisi in present-day Georgia. On September 2, 1945, he describes his arrival at the “Oflag, Officers’ Camp, XVII A” near Edelbach, northwest of Horn, as follows: “This camp consisted of stone barracks. The elder of the barracks told us that French officers had been held prisoner here during the war and that the French had dug tunnels for possible escape. Compared to the other camps, this one was clean. It could be judged by the fact that the German camp management paid more attention to order and discipline. There was also a regular and well-planned daily routine.”
Are there any commonalities, i.e. experiences that practically all of your interviewees had to report in the same or a similar way?
First and foremost, this was dealing with a lack of resources of any kind at the front and as prisoners of war, as well as at home. At the end of the fighting for Vienna, for example, contemporary witness Hertha Gratschmayer (born in 1928) reports on the collapse, the Soviet and British occupation and the new beginning from the perspective of a 16-year-old: “Somehow I feel obliged to pass on these experiences to the following generations – based on my mother’s wisdom not to despair even in difficult, often seemingly hopeless situations, but to carry on living according to the motto “Somehow it always goes on – if not straight ahead, then perhaps around the corner. Her later husband Otto Gratschmayer (born in 1925) was a member of the Fahnenjunkerregiment 1239 and survived the heaviest artillery barrage of the Second World War in 1945 near Frankfurt an der Oder, during the battle for the Seelow Heights as part of the Berlin operation. Second World War. He, in turn, reports on the hardships of Soviet Russian captivity in camps around Moscow: “You wouldn’t believe what people are capable of when their acquired sense of justice and sense of order disappear and only the survival instinct rules.”
What is it like to be confronted with such stories? Are you e that go away easily? Or do you need time to digest what you have heard?
I would like to begin by answering this question with two other stories: Primary Leopold Preier, a general practitioner and specialist in general and pediatric surgery (born in 1928), reported on an air raid on his home town of Ginzersdorf: “We ran back to the village as fast as we could. When I arrived at my parents’ house, my breath caught in my throat: our house had been hit by several bombs! I rushed into the devastated front room and saw Josef lying on the floor in a huge pool of blood. Blood was pouring from a gaping wound below his right groin. A shot from the ship’s cannon had shredded his femoral artery. Josef was pale as a sheet and dying. ‘We won’t see each other again …’ he stammered. He didn’t survive the transport to Großkrut to the main dressing station.” After the war, Leopold Preier studied medicine and later worked at Lainz Hospital and Mistelbach Hospital to train as a general practitioner. He continued his career in 1962 at the Gottfried von Preyer Children’s Hospital, where a pediatric surgery department was established at the time.
So these experiences may have influenced Leopold Preier’s career choice?
Easily possible. In any case, he was unintentionally confronted with a situation in 1945 that resulted in the death of his friend Josef. In his later life, he saved the lives of countless young patients as a pediatric surgeon.
And the second fate you mentioned?
It is about Wilhelm Lehmann, a native of Allgäu (born in 1926), who spent around five years as a Soviet Russian prisoner of war in Nikolayev on the Black Sea. Today, he lovingly supports a Ukrainian refugee family in Austria. He is now 98 years old (!) and, in addition to his work on the house and garden and after a corona infection, he accompanies the family to the shops, to the authorities and to kindergarten and school. The language skills he acquired in captivity come in handy. In this case, what was once a terrible story later turns out to be a good thing, but it is of course terrible to be confronted with the stories.
Can these stories become too much at some point?
Of course I did. When the sleepless nights became too much for me, I took days or even weeks away from the documents. To compensate and to digest what I had heard, I did endurance sports. However, the two stories I just mentioned also show how terrible experiences can inspire and be digested and overcome despite everything, and how people can grow with their tasks even into old age.
What goes through your mind when you think that something similar to that described in your book is currently happening again in Ukraine(-> Current news on the Ukraine war)? And in some cases even in areas that became battlefields during the Second World War.
With regard to the operational reports concerning the infantry, I ask myself how I would have acted in the various combat situations and, as an instructor, how I would have had to prepare my platoon and company commanders in the fighter force for such scenarios, even if not immediately. There have been no significant changes to the infantryman’s or hunter’s trade over the past 80 years. Positions, dugouts and trenches are still built today, as they were in the Second World War, in defensibly favorable terrain using shovels and spades, or they are constructed by machine and rolled up with rifles and hand grenades during an attack, as videos produced by drones in Ukraine impressively demonstrate.
So despite all the technology and modern weapons systems, “modern wars” still end up as man-to-man combat at the end of the day?
Yes – and to be successful in this battle, you need years of good training. In my 20 years as a member of the Jagdkommando task force, I was able to experience how enormous the need for time and material resources is, as well as the need for personnel resources, in order to reach the application stage as well as the consolidation stage in various combat technology processes. Achieving this with the troops in order to meet the definition of “combat engineering” is an indispensable factor for mission accomplishment in operations. Hesitant and indecisive behavior on the part of commanders and/or gunners, as well as uncoordinated and non-drilled combat techniques, will have a devastating effect on the number of own soldiers killed in action.
So if you don’t practice enough and prepare well, will you regret it in the event of higher losses?
“Combat technology = craft = doing”. Just as a craftsman has to handle tools, materials and building materials on a daily basis, for example to concrete a foundation, a hunter has to handle weapons and weapon systems, ammunition and combat equipment in order to successfully fend off an attack on a positional system, for example. Dealing with technical, material and personnel challenges, changes and achievements on a daily basis in order to make processes more efficient is more or less a life task in both areas.
