OZ BABY BOOMERS: BOOMERAMA

Our morse-code training course had entered the final, crucial stage. Those of us still left had to sit the final test and achieve those magic 80 letters per minute. Very few of us, excluding that genius Birznieks, had reached that mark during training. The test was performed by Corporal Dzelme, and that gave us some hope. His exceptional ability to send morse clearly and separate the dots and dashes, even at high speed, gave everybody the chance to achieve their best. There is great difference between a good and not-so-good sender.

I somehow managed to receive 82 letters per minute and retained my place in the headquarters group. I could be well satisfied. Given the circumstances, I had done all that I could to maximise my chances of staying alive. The rest would be a matter of luck or fate or whatever you like to call it.

Our hopes that the war would end before the course was completed did not materialise. We were almost ready for the front ... the Eastern Front. The Germans wouldn’t trust us on the Western Front. They knew where our sympathies lay.

The safe, reasonably good life in the village of Borntuchen was over. We were sent some 60 kilometres by train to the communications battalion near the divisional headquarters. My farmer friends from across the road gave me some potatoes and a full loaf of bread as a farewell present.

It was November 1944 and the weather was getting very cold. We were now together with the old soldiers of the communications battalion and supposedly on equal terms with them. We lived in timber-and-fibro barracks and slept in two-storey bunks made out of undressed timber planks. In the middle of the room there was a cast-iron heater but coal was in short supply and often we had to sleep in a cold room. We even tried to steal coal from the supply stores but it was a risky business. The German guards threatened to shoot us. A single 15-watt naked globe was our only light.

The situation on all the fronts went from bad to worse for the Germans. That delighted us. At this stage the Eastern Front was still a long way from us and we cheered any advance of the Western Front ... out of German earshot, of course.

My small reserves of potatoes and bread were soon exhausted. Many got sick with hepatitis A or, as we called it, yellow sickness. Soon I also contracted the disease and for the first time I had a few days off digging bunkers.

We soon found ourselves engaged in digging trenches and building bunkers. This was hard work. We had to cut down pine saplings and build bunkers, partly submerged in the ground, and then cover the lot with earth.

The food supply was insufficient in quantity and of poor quality, and this time there were no farmers to barter with for extra supplies. My small reserves of potatoes and bread were soon exhausted. Many got sick with hepatitis A or, as we called it, yellow sickness. Soon I also contracted the disease and for the first time I had a few days off digging bunkers.

I am on duty in the battalion kitchen peeling potatoes. I am angry with myself because I have lost the little kitchen knife given to me by my good Aunty Lote on our parting in Riga. It is 8pm, we have just finished cleaning up, and I return to my living quarters.

I am told by my sergeant to pack my belongings. I am being sent to Czechoslovakia to a driving school. Six of us have been selected from the battalion and I am amongst them. I can’t believe my luck. This means another six weeks of training, another six weeks closer to the end of the war. Surely, the war will not last that long!

Much had been talked about such a trip and all the benefits that come with it. Everybody was hoping to be selected and I was one of the lucky ones. This digging trenches and cutting timber for the bunkers had been getting me down ... not to mention the poor food supply, the constant hunger, with no chance of getting something on the side. I don’t think I will be sleeping much tonight.

As will be seen later on, this trip to Czechoslovakia probably saved my life. It certainly saved me from digging trenches, cutting timber and building bunkers. It also saved me from living in those bunkers, but most of all, it saved me from the horrors that occurred when the Russian troops overran the bunkers and slaughtered many of my mates a few weeks later while I was in Czechoslovakia.

The following morning — 16th December 1944 — I was up early and packed my meagre belongings. I returned my rifle and associated cleaning implements. I received my travelling documents and food for three days. The food this time seemed to be of better quality and quantity — cheese, salami and a 1.8-kilogram loaf of bread, also a packet of tobacco.

The six of us marched to Liebenberg Railway station, where we had disembarked six months ago to begin our training. The only difference was the weather. It was mid-summer then, the fields were green and the trees full of fruit, while now it was cold, with the wind driving powdery snow straight into our faces.

We arrived at the station exactly at 8.30am, just in time for the arrival of our train. Even at this late stage of the war, train timetables were strictly adhered to, except when there were bombings. After less than an hour, the train pulled in at Sofienwalde station. There were Latvian soldiers from other units waiting there to travel to Czechoslovakia for the drivers training school. All told there were now 120 of us.

At Sofienwalde we had to transfer to another train, this time into three cattle wagons. The wagons were overcrowded to the absolute limit. We had just enough room to sit side by side along the sides of the wagon, leaving just a narrow passage in the middle. During the night, we slept on the floor with our legs enmeshing in the middle. There was no walking space left but in the centre of the wagon there was a small cast-iron heater and a few bits of coal. We stoked the fire and sat down to a well earned meal. It was only the first day and we had plenty to eat.

The train moved slowly and often stopped on sidetracks to let regular trains past. We apparently had low priority but we didn’t mind that at all. Every day lost was another day closer to the end of war. Every day spent on the train was one day less on the front. We travelled through the night and in the morning arrived at Schneidemle station, where we spent the whole day on sidetracks.

A normally fed person wouldn’t touch it but for us hungry soldiers it seemed quite palatable. Most importantly, it came on top of our normal rations.

There was provision for travelling soldiers to be issued with hot soup. During my travels as a soldier I had the opportunity to taste soup at various railway stations and holding centres. I think one cook was responsible for them all. The taste and appearance were exactly the same, no matter where we went. There were no potatoes nor any other vegetables that you could detect, but some sort of millet or other birdseed, boiled in water with a pinch of salt. A normally fed person wouldn’t touch it but for us hungry soldiers it seemed quite palatable. Most importantly, it came on top of our normal rations.

On the morning of 18 December 1944 we arrived at Frankfurt am Main railway station (there is an other Frankfurt in Germany, Frankfurt am Oder, near Berlin). The train was to stay there for several hours so we all went into town to the nearest soldiers kitchen to get some of that peculiar soup we had acquired a taste for.

After more than six months I was again in a major city. Trams, electric trains, civilians galore, stores full of goods that we hadn’t seen in Latvia since our occupation by Hitler in 1941. Was there really a war on?

Unlike Stalin who had starved and murdered his kinfolk for decades, Hitler had, at the expense of the rest of Europe, provided his citizens with a fairly high living standard right through the war. It partly explains why the German nation followed him right to the end. After the war most Germans pretended to be anti-Nazi, but I say that is a load of bulldust. Most Germans adored and loved him. And, of course, Hitler had another outlet for his cravings to kill — the Jews.

Since then, many thick volumes have been written to describe the horrors of Hitler’s concentration camps, where an estimated six million Jews and others were killed by his regime. Seldom is it mentioned that Stalin, his one time friend and tutor in crime, had murdered three times as many innocent people before Hitler had gassed his first Jew — and he continued to do so long after Hitler’s death, right to the time of his timely death in 1953.

Perhaps the value of a Jew’s life is three times that of a Russian, Pole, Ukrainian, Latvian or other nationality. Germans and their allied war criminals have been hunted down, tried and given their just penalties. At the same time, Soviet war criminals — and there is no reason to believe that they were any lesser in numbers, rather the opposite — were often in the judges’ seats. When they sat in judgment of Hitler and his associates at the Nuremberg War Criminals Tribunal, the highly qualified and respected judges from America, Britain and France sat alongside known mass murderers from the Soviet Union.