Presentation Date: July 28, 2005
Hubertus Hubert Von Marschall
* In April 1941 wolunteered for the army and was assigned ot the Nachrichten Ersatz Abeilung No. 13 in Honnover.
* By beginning of the offensive to Stalingrad first with the 6th armny over the Don River and transferred to the 4th and 11th panzer armee rolling down the caucasus foothills.
* In august 1942 in Maikop promoted to corporal and sent back to Germany to home unit in Dresden-Uebigau, there volunteered to the infantry due to the enormous losses of officers in that brance.
* In sept 1943 ordered to Herresgruppe Mitte and sent to the 256th Grenadier Division, 456th Rgt. there wounded on the 2nd day of combat and southwest of Rschew as leader of a company.
* From Sept 1943 to March 1944 spent several military hospitals in Russia and Germany (Heidelberg one of them).
* August 1944 able for combat - leading company with 5 platoons and 200 soldiers as reserve to the front in Poland.
* In December 1944 commanding Sturmgeschuetz-Begleitschutz No. 214 (self propelled assult guns).
* In January 1945 transfered to the Nacy headquarters in Glueckstadt/Elbe of the 2nd Navy INfantery Division.
* In April 1945 the division was ordered to defend the so called Wesere/Aller Linie and on Aprill 22nd he was TAKEN PRISIONER by the Ox and Bucks near Bremen and spent half a year in Belguim (Camp Jabecke). * Beginning of the offensive to Stalingrad first with the 6th armny over the Don River and
transferred to the 4th and 11th panzer armee rolling down the caucasus foothills.
* In august 1942 in Maikop promoted to corporal and sent back to Germany to home unit in
Dresden-Uebigau, there volunteered to the infantry due to the enormous losses of officers in that
brance.
* In sept 1943 ordered to Herresgruppe Mitte and sent to the 256th Grenadier Division, 456th Rgt.
there wounded on the 2nd day of combat and southwest of Rschew as leader of a company.
* From Sept 1943 to March 1944 spent several military hospitals in Russia and Germany (Heidelberg
one of them).
* August 1944 able for combat - leading company with 5 platoons and 200 soldiers as reserve to the
front in Poland.
* In December 1944 commanding Sturmgeschuetz-Begleitschutz No. 214 (self propelled assult guns).
* In January 1945 transfered to the Nacy headquarters in Glueckstadt/Elbe of the 2nd Navy INfantery
Division.
* In April 1945 the division was ordered to defend the so called Wesere/Aller Linie and on Aprill
22nd he was TAKEN PRISIONER by the Ox and Bucks near Bremen and spent half a year in Belguim (Camp
Jabecke).
Serving the Fatherland
Hubertus "Hubert" von Marschall's Wehrmacht experiences
Hubertus von Marschall was born in Bolivia in October, 1923, the son of a German father and Bolivian mother. His father had gone to South America to pursue a career in banking and mining. When the family returned to its historical home in Thuringia, Prussia four years later, young Hubertus was schooled there.
Hubertus then went to boarding school, the last school he attended from 1939-41 was in Celle-Hannover, between Hamburg and Hannover.
Prussia is known for its military tradition, and the von Marschall lineage included Hubertus' grandfather, a cavalry general who had fought on the Somme in World War I. Hubertus's family carried on its military lineage, as the last of three cousins joined the military in early 1941. Later that year, after being turned down by the Luftwaffe for failing to meet eyesight standards, Hubertus, at the age of 17, volunteered to join the Wehrmacht and was assigned to the Nachrichten Ersatz Abeilung No. 13 in Hannover.
This was a communications battalion, and, says Hubertus, "13 was my lucky number."
The young von Marschall, in August '41, completed his training, which he recalls included having to sing the popular song Lili Marlene while wearing a gas mask. One of the least liked parts of his communications specialist training was having to climb poles.
"Up was good. Down was bad. You got splinters in your belly and in your legs."
After basic training he was sent by train to the front through northern Germany to a place called Chiolo, Poland. There, they were stopped for two months while rail traffic of ambulance trains came back west and tanks and ammunition headed east. Communications had low priority and Hubertus says they waited with "icicles hanging down from our engine, disconnected. We had a little stove. There was nothing else to do. We had to wait for the go-ahead signal."
When the train got moving again, the communications unit chugged through
Latvia and Riga and crossed the Russian border to a town called Pskov. There they left the train, were each rationed two little bottles of vodka, and slept in the auditorium of the Russian Military Academy. Next morning, with the temperature 35 degrees below zero centigrade, they were trucked to their final destination, Porchov.
"Our trucks were camouflaged with straw mats in the forest, and from now on our transportation was ... that, " he said, pointing to an image of a horse drawn sled, called a panje.
"We called them a Panje Division instead of a Panzer Division."
The task for the communications battalion was to restore telegraph and telephone lines lost when the cold weather brought them down. Hubertus says the cold was so extreme that when taking off gloves to use tools, pliers would stick to their hands. The soldiers had to fend for themselves finding shelter overnight. Some Russian houses were marked with skulls and crossbones, a symbol for typhus. Von Marschall says a cemetery in Pskov had headstones for more than 3000 German soldiers who died of typhus.
In one house, Hubertus says the babushka (grandmother) took one look at his youthful face, went next door in the freezing weather and returned with milk, which she warmed for the young man to drink.
"My comrades were laughing, " recalls Hubertus. "But, it created a good feeling with the Russian people. There was kindness..."
Communications work kept Hubertus far from the front lines. He says he did see Russian aircraft, including the Polikarpov Po-2, a biplane the Russians used for night harassment bombings, and the Germans called the 'flying sewing machine'. He also saw Polikarpov I-16 Ratas
In the springtime, when the snow began melting, turning Russia into a vast field of mud, Hubertus says his unit was loaded back onto trains for Germany. Once there, the unit was re-equipped with new Ford trucks and Hubertus carried a Czech-made submachine gun. Then, it was back on board trains heading east via Prague and Bratislava to Kharkov in the south Ukraine.
What von Marschall was a part of was the Wehrmacht's Sixth Army southern thrust to Stalingrad. Along the way, he would be transferred to the 4th and 11th Panzer Armies which rolled down the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains.
Hubertus says he was surprised to find no evidence of machinery in the factories in Kharkov - - the Russians having stripped buildings of anything the invading Germans might have been able to use. That policy apparently didn't apply to animals in the Kharkov zoo.
"We were issued anti-malarial pills. We didn't like them. We gave some to the apes in the zoo... and they spit them right back in our face."
Two Soviet armies were destroyed in the fighting around Kharkov, and Hubertus says he saw thousands and thousands of Russian prisoners in the area.
As his unit was crossing a bridge over the Don, Hubertus remembers seeing two Soviet bombers flying west, drawing heavy flak from the Germans below, then turning and heading back east.
"There came one, single Messerschmitt 109, and it went after them. After awhile we saw two mushroom clouds on the horizon and the Messerschmitt came along, wiggling (his wings) that he'd shot down the two bombers."
The tank-led drive pushed southeast of Rostow, as far as Maikop. That's where, in August of 1942, von Marschall says he was was promoted to the rank of Corporal. With the promotion, he received orders to return to Leipzig, Germany for further communications training.
By Junkers W.34 and Ju 52 he flew back to Germany, to his home unit in Dresden-Uebigau. There Hubertus volunteered to switch to the infantry due to enormous losses of officers in that branch. As part of the training in officers' school, von Marschall learned of new small arms being sent out to the troops.
"A sergeant came with something wrapped in a blanket, and he said it was our new machine gun (MG-42)," said von Marschall, commenting that the weapon is still in service in the German Army and other armies, due mostly to the weapon's 1500 round-per-minute rate of fire. "The Russians respected that very, very much."
Part of the military training happened near Berlin, and the officer trainees were housed in the Olympic Village from 1936. Hubertus remembered fondly a contingent of 20 Hungarians they lived with - - the men were "loving people, who had wine and cakes sent from home, and we celebrated, twenty people in a place where two lived."
About a month later, von Marschall was ordered to Herresgruppe Mittel and sent to the 256th Grenadier Division, 456th Regiment. Traveling by train to Smolensk, the unit then rode trucks northeast of that city, to the front, where new experiences started immediately.
"We heard thunder, day and night we heard this rumbling that would absolutely mortify you. It gave you a strange feeling in your stomach... "
Hubertus arrived one morning at his division headquarters, was given a bowl of rice soup and some Egyptian cigarettes, and pointed in the direction of his battalion. On his way there, he saw an ambulance car racing the other way, later learning the car was carrying the battalion commander Hubertus was to report to.
Hubertus remembers his first day on the front this way:
"We had in front of us a thick, forested area. Everything was quiet. Once in awhile a mortar assault. And then, when the night came, the Russians came. We never said, 'the Russians' we said 'Ivan'. It was one of the longest nights of my life. I had three very close encounters... And in the morning, I was still with my messenger. I didn't see anybody.
"There was one sergeant, standing there like a six foot tall tree and I told him to get down. He didn't and a minute later he fell down. My messenger got shot in the face. I sent him home, backwards."
Von Marschall says he suddenly was appointed to lead an infantry company. Minutes later, as he was standing in a trench, looking for a way to reach another company, when he was hit in the head by a bullet.
He was removed from the battlefield to a hospital in Smolensk, then to Vitebsk, where he was operated on. Hubertus recalls being given a tranquilizer and being held by a Russian student with a bear-like hug. Unfortunately, the Russian had eaten a lot of garlic and reeked of the odor.
After rest in a monastery, Hubertus was shipped by train to Heidelberg. He arrived in a dirty uniform, his head bandaged and bloody, and without boots. Someone on the train had taken them. In this condition, Hubertus was left at the train station, where he says he stood for two hours until he was offered a ride.
In November of 1943, von Marschall was transferred to a hospital where his mother served as a Red Cross nurse. He was there until March of 1944, when he was released back to his home unit in Leipzig. One morning, Hubertus witnessed an air raid - - several hundred USAAF bombers hitting a nearby oil refinery:
"I never forgot that. They released the bombs and it was like a thunderstorm coming down, and then this wall of fire. Unfortunately, two villages were destroyed, too. My company had to clean them up. We had a few hundred civilians killed."
Reassignment again came quickly, this time at Doberitz for a month of training in motorized warfare. By July he was back with his old unit, in the Sudetenland.
The Wehrmacht officer bomb plot on Hitler's life, July 20, 1944, brought changes in the Wehrmacht , among them, soldiers were ordered to give the full straight-armed salute, instead of the traditional military salute. And, says von Marschall, a good number of officers began voicing their objection to front-line positions. Hubertus, however wanted field leadership so badly that he demonstrated his head wound would not prevent him from wearing a metal helmet. By August, 1944 Hubertus was deemed fit for combat, and was leading a company of 200 soldiers as reserve to the front in Poland.
He was back in the front lines, in a life largely bounded by rain, muddy trenches and artillery duels. Hubertus said it was not uncommon to wear his boots two weeks at a time, without taking them off.
By December 1944, von Marschall had been assigned to command Sturmgeschuetz-Begleitschutz No. 214. That put him in charge of four self-propelled assault guns, providing close support firepower to the infantry. The standing joke about the men who rode these armored vehicles into battle was that they were "Himmelfahrt Commanders" - - it was a ride that quickly got one 'closer to heaven' , as armor targets attracted the attention of Russians.
Training also included a new weapon, the Sturmgewehr 44, which gave the infantry a higher rate of fire over a longer distance, and required new tactics for engaging the enemy at greater distances.
Sent home on vacation, Hubertus witnessed the horrific sight of Dresden's fire-bombing:
"The last day of my vacation, there were Fleigeralarms, and hundreds and hundreds of airplanes flying over, probably Lancasters. We were sitting in the potato cellar, our bomb shelter. Once the bombing was over, I went up our water tower, 150 feet, and I saw the fire of Dresden... 225 kilometers away."
While he was gone, the Russians over-ran his unit, taking about 800 of his men as prisoners. Instead of returning there, von Marschall was sent in January, 1945, to the Nacy headquarters of the 2nd Navy Infantry Division in Glueckstadt on the Elbe River. By this point in the war, sailors manning coastal guns were deemed as unnecessary, and there were more crews for submarines than there were U-boats.
In April, 1945, the division was ordered to defend the so called Wesere/Aller Line. By Hubertus' admission, with the numbers and strength of Allied ground troops and ever-present daytime airpower superiority, it was a hopeless position.
On April 22nd Hubertus Marschall ahd moved his unit of young sailors into a position where they were taken prisoner by the British unit, the "Ox and Bucks", near Bremen. They spent half a year in Belgium at Camp Jabecke, but they had survived the war.