OZ BABY BOOMERS: BOOMERAMA

So here we were, camped at Laushana, mostly with no communications nor information of any kind. We were concealed from the outside world. We didn’t even know that there were more Latvian conscripts in other villages, not so far from ours. We mostly had no access to radios and newspapers.

There was no postal service, no electricity, but one of our boys, Jelins, had with him a small homemade radio. Its batteries were just about flat and its range was very short. The rule from the top was German, but the day-to-day running was left to Latvian officers. I was the only one in our platoon who could understand German — and not very well at that — so I was freed from training for two hours each day to listen and jot down the salient points of news bulletins concerning the Eastern and Western Fronts.

All the news came from German sources — the BBC was out of our range — and were obviously biased, but you didn’t need to be very clever to understand that “planned tactical withdrawals” and “shortening the front line” actually meant defeats and forced retreats. My bulletins were not much good but they were eagerly awaited when we had a break from training at lunchtime.

From our first day at Laushana, my friend Arnold Prieditis [AP] and I had been separated. I was rather tall, while AP only came up to my shoulder. He was built a bit like David Boon — a keg on legs. The practice at Laushana was to group people by height. I was with the tall boys while AP was with the very short ones.

Food rations were meagre and we were always hungry. A few Polish farmers still tended fields not used by the military and they were also top-class speculators on the black market. We could exchange bits of clothing, rings and watches for bread, milk, even meat. In a very short time our unessential belongings were gone and we were as hungry as ever. We were a ragtag, barefoot army.

One morning, after about three weeks at Laushana, we were asked to assemble on the field in long columns. A party of Latvian officers had arrived to interview conscripts for specialist units. The leader of the group was Captain Veveris, an officer from independent Latvian Army times. The regular commander had been recently killed in action, and Veveris was temporarily in charge of a communications battalion.

This was the first and the last time I volunteered for anything in the German Army... We said goodbye to Laushana and many unpleasant memories.

Veveris was looking for people willing and able to learn to become radio telegraphists and telephonists. From the outset my aim had been to be involved as little as possible in direct contact with the Bolsheviks and to preserve my life. This seemed to provide an opportunity to lessen my exposure to the perils of war, but the main attraction was the training schedule — 16 weeks, mainly in classrooms. The war couldn’t possibly last longer than 16 weeks!

I offered myself as a candidate for Captain Veveris’s battalion, but so did many others. He questioned each of us about our education, our former employment, etc. I was one of the lucky ones to be accepted, but he made it clear from the outset that his needs were well less than the number of accepted candidates, and that the final choice would be made after a few weeks of training sessions. This was the first and the last time I volunteered for anything in the German Army. My friend AP followed my example and also volunteered. We were together again.

We said goodbye to Laushana and many unpleasant memories. On 7 September 1944, the 110 or so accepted members of the training communications battalion formed a column and marched away to begin a different life in the army. AP and I kept together but we knew that couldn’t last. He was such a shorty.

On the way to our new base we marched through several small villages and saw many more Latvian conscripts. Like us, they hadn’t yet been issued any footwear or clothing, and they were mostly barefoot and in rags. No soap, no shaving blades, but we had to be clean shaven and of clean appearance. It only indicated the hopelessness of the situation in the once proud German Army. The end was near, but would we be alive to see it?

We crossed the old German–Polish border and were on German soil again. The roads changed from dirt to asphalt, something our bare feet didn’t like. They quickly bruised and were cut by the protruding bluestone chips. We marched about 20 kilometres before reaching our destination — a rather prosperous-looking German village with a pub, several shops and a restaurant. We were warned by our Latvian commanders to be polite and friendly or else there would be trouble. After all, we were only barefoot foreigners, while they were members of the Master Race, the builders of a Greater Germany and a New Europe.

We were told that only a quarter of us would be needed for the communications battalion, and that the rest would be sent back to our original base camps. While the tests were on, we all lived in a large barn, sleeping on the bare earthen floor. Then those who didn’t come up to the required standard — the majority — were sent back to their base camps. I was one of the lucky ones to be accepted, so was my friend AP.

The situation with clothing and footwear was desperate. Just about everyone was barefoot and the remains of our clothing sometimes failed to cover our private parts.

We had also been told that only about half of those chosen would be trained as radio telegraphists — “funkers” was the German term — while the rest would be trained as telephonists. We all wanted to be funkers because they formed a motorised unit, while the telephonists worked mainly on their feet, carrying reels of wires on their backs. I was lucky again and became a trainee funker. No such luck for AP, who became a telephonist.

I felt reasonably satisfied with myself. Out of many bad options I had achieved the best. I now had to start learning morse code. It would have been simple enough if there was plenty of time available, but to absorb the required skills in a short time was anything but easy. The acceptable level for a divisional-headquarters radio telegraphist was 80 letters a minute, receiving and sending. Those who could not reach that level would be sent out to regiments and would be carting their equipment on their backs. We all aimed for the top and worked very hard at it.

At first we concentrated on general training and had only short discussions on the coming morse training. Day in, day out, we ran, jumped and crawled to exhaustion — all the usual tortures to make soldiers out of us. The situation with clothing and footwear was desperate. Just about everyone was barefoot and the remains of our clothing sometimes failed to cover our private parts.

It was well into autumn and the weather was getting colder every day. The only way to keep warm during the night was to cuddle close together on the bare earthen floor of the barn. Washing was another problem. Every day we had to run three kilometres to the nearest lake and wash ourselves there. This had been a welcome break from training when the weather was warm, but now it was anything but pleasure — and our instructors made sure that nobody missed their dip in the cold water. Some of the weaker ones became sick but surprisingly the majority of us felt no ill effects.

Then our real instructors arrived — sergeants and corporals, all with years of experience in morse teaching and all capable of sending and receiving at speeds that seemed impossible to us beginners. I was lucky again — probably because I was in the “tall boys” platoon — and was assigned to the top instructors, Corporal Aire and Corporal Dzelme, who was from my native Ventspils.

I had a healthy respect for their abilities and sense of fairness, and tried my best to be among the lucky ones who would stay with the divisional headquarters. At first the target of 80 letters per minute seemed unachievable. When Aire and Dzelme gave us demonstrations of their skills and asked us to record, we couldn’t recognise a single letter.

On the positive side, our contact with Latvia had been reestablished. About two thirds of Latvia was under Stalin’s rule again but my parents lived in an as-yet-unoccupied part of the country and I received letters from them. My relatives in Riga, however, were under Russian rule.