I, Kurt August Robert Laatsch, was born in a little
hamlet called Schwenz, County of Cammin, Pomerania on January 29, 1922. Schwenz was a village of about 300 people and
about 3 miles from the Baltic coast. Our
beaches were anywhere between Heidebrink, Dievenow, Poberow to Treptow.
In 1936 I graduated from school and started working
on a farm called Dom Schwenz. In 1937 I
applied for an apprenticeship at Volkwagenworks. I was called in for preliminary testing,
which I passed, but I could not be accepted since I was not a member of the
Hitler Youth Organization. There also
was a “Stop Law” to prevent people from moving away from agricultural farming.
I then tried to join the Navy but was denied because
I was considered too short. The
paratroopers, which was a new branch of the Air Force, also appealed to me, but
again, I was denied because of my height.
I then volunteered for the regular Air Force and was called to Berlin
for testing. I stayed on the land until
I was drafted into the Air Force in August of 1941.
My boot training was in Belgium near Antwerp and
another part of it was near Calais in France.
I was then sent to tech school in Giessen near Wiesbaden. After finishing tech school I was transferred
to a bomber group in northern Norway at Bardufoss near Tromso and Narvic. Our bomber group consisted of Heinkel 111
torpedo-bombers and JU88 dive-bombers.
Our targets were allied convoys going from Iceland to Murmansk,
Russia. On one of our bombing runs we were
hit in the belly by anti-aircraft fire and sustained damage to the right engine
and hydraulics or the right landing gear.
We had to return home on one engine and could not lower the right
landing gear, even by hand crank. We
crash landed and caught fire but the crew of 4 all survived with minor injuries
and burns. It was a very scary
experience.
I spent a couple of weeks in a Navy hospital in
Narvik recovering from my injuries.
After being released from the hospital I was sent to Moss just south of
Oslo for further training on aircraft engines.
The training was in a former Chevrolet factory. I completed my training in the last week of
Dec 1942. When I returned to my base my
commander informed me I was scheduled for a 4-week furlough to go home. I went to Oslo to board a troop transport to
take me to Denmark to catch a train for the rest of the trip back to
Germany. When I returned from my
furlough, my bomber group had been transferred to Italy to fly bombing missions
in Africa to assist Rommel.
I stayed in Norway until May of 1943 when I was
transported to an Air Force hospital in Berlin because of an ear
infection. I was there from May until
August of 1943. While in Berlin I was
able to visit with many relatives in the area as well as my sister Betty and my
then girlfriend Hilda. I had a great
time until the allied forces dropped leaflets warning the civilian population
of the upcoming bombing raids. The
entire hospital was relocated to Upper Silesia.
In November of 1943 I had surgery on my ear. I was sent home in December of 1943 for 4
weeks to recuperate from my surgery.
After my recovery I was sent to a reserve unit in Frankfurt on the Oder. While in Frankfurt my orders were processed
to have me transferred back to Norway after another 4-week furlough. During this furlough I got engaged to my
girlfriend Hilda. This also gave me a
better chance at another furlough to get married.
In May of 1944 I got back to the base in Norway but
my unit had not yet returned from Italy.
The crews in Norway did odd jobs such as maintaining aircraft engines
that were stored in depots.
In July of 1944, since the bombing squadrons did not
return, a number of the “left over” crew were transferred back to Germany to
join the paratroopers (oh yeah, now I was tall enough to join the elite
group). After, excessive retraining, we
were moved to a base in Mulins just south of Paris. We only got as far as Paris when we were
stopped by Patton’s tanks. We never saw
the base in Mulins. After Patton’s tanks
moved through our unit backed out of Paris, it was very early in the morning,
around 4:00am. At about 6:00am that
morning “all hell broke loose”. The
French underground shot at anything that looked like Germans on retreat. Our unit managed to reach the east side of
Paris and hid in the forest. We could
only move at night since the American fighter planes were strafing anything
that moved on the highways. We finally
got to the city of Metz in Elsac Lorain.
Our unit was there until the allied air force dropped leaflets warning
the civilians of upcoming bombing raids.
Our unit was pulled out and transferred back to Germany to Gustrow near
Rostock on the Baltic Coast. We were
retrained there as Pioneers whose function was to build bridges and lay
boobie-trap mines.
While there I applied for leave to get married. I was approved and I got home on Oct 14th
1944. I married Hilda on Oct 17th
1944 and left the next day, never to see our home again.
In Nov. of 1944 my unit, the 6th
Paratrooper Division, 28th Regiment, 15th Company, was
transferred into Holland. We were
stationed at the former fighter base at Arnhem (very well known from the movie
“A Bridge Too Far”). From there our
company moved around to several frontline positions fighting Canadian and
Polish troops under the command of General Anderson.
Just before Christmas 1944 I received orders to
report to a base in Lingen near Oldenburg for training as a non-com. I was very glad to be away from the
frontlines, at least for a while. The
training lasted until Mar 25th, 1945. I went back to my company and met up with
them near Mechelen, Holland on Mar 27th. I was assigned a platoon and we took position
in a trench having the enemy well in sight.
On Mar 28th, two new replacements (about 17 years old) knocked
out the last 2 tanks in a column of 4 with bazookas I had obtained from an
artillery unit about ½ mile behind us.
We had nothing else other than rifles, machine pistols and one machine
gun. Our position was under artillery
fire for 5 days and nights. I had
arrived back for the last 2 of those days.
Only 11 men remained from the original unit. All the rest were killed, wounded or had been
taken POW. We were only at half strength
and the replacements we were receiving were boys only 16 or 17 years old. They clung to me like I was their father (and
I was). On the night of Mar 28th
the company Commander told me he could be reached at the Battalion Command Post
and that he couldn’t tell me what to do but to do what I thought was best. Part of my platoon had taken cover in a
bunker formerly used by an anti-aircraft unit.
Two tanks had taken position on a hill on the road ahead and kept the
area under fire. During the night I went
to a nearby farmhouse and asked the family, who was hiding in the cellar, for a
white towel. The lady was glad and
handed me a whole white sheet. They knew
it meant surrender and an end to the fighting.
Their house had been under fire since the tanks believed we were hiding
in there. We spent the rest of the night
preparing to surrender to who ever it may be.
At daybreak on Mar 29th, 1945 a convoy of
allied soldiers passed by our bunker. I
stepped out and waved the white sheet.
They yelled “hands up” and that was the end of the war for our platoon.
One of our soldiers, who spoke some English, asked if
they were British or Canadian? They
responded that they were British. Their
Captain asked me in broken German “Wo haben sie ihre waffen?” (Where do you
have your weapons?). I told him we had
taken them apart and thrown them away.
He nodded “ok”.
We were very glad to have the British take us as
POW’s. They had just relieved the
Canadian’s the day before. We had
watched the Canadian’s chase some of our soldiers out of a farmhouse into a
field and mow them down with machine guns the day before. The British marched us back, first to a farm
shed where I ran into my buddy from training in Lingen who had been taken POW
the day before. They then moved us into
an open pasture where we spent the first night.
My buddy and me stuck together after that. The next day we were transported back across
the border to a train station in Kleve.
I had been in Kleve just before Xmas of 1944 where I was supposed to be
moved into the “Battle of the Bulge”, but when the weather cleared for the
Allied Air Force we were moved back into Holland.
On Easter Sunday 1945 we were moved from Kleve to
Bruegge, Belgium where we were held in a former German Navy mine depot. There were about 20,000 POW’s in that
camp. More than 2,000 of them were paratroopers. For a couple of nights, German JU-188’s
circled over the camp. This prompted the
British to move all of the paratroopers to England. They were afraid of a weapons drop and that
the paratroopers would attempt a break out of the camp. This was the furthest thing from our minds,
we were all glad the war was over for us.
All of the paratroopers were transported by cattle
car to a harbor in Ostende not far from Anwerp.
We boarded a couple of Liberty ships and were moved to a soccer stadium
at Wembly, London for just a day or 2.
From there we were transported to Leeds and than marched in columns of
100 through the town on our way to the POW camps in Otley. There were 3 camps in Otley, Camp #1 was for
Officers only. Camp #2 and #3 were for
all other soldiers. Each of those camps
could approximately 2000 POWs.
We arrived there on May 1st 1945. The war ended for Germany on May 8th,
1945. We went on work detail for a
couple of weeks and then my buddy and me were put into separate camps. He was moved to southern England and I was
moved to a camp near New Castle at Ponteland.
Since the war was over simple strings of barbed wire replaced the rolls
of barbed wire. On weekends we were
allowed to move freely into town with a curfew at 10:00 PM. I joined a group of 35 volunteers that was
moved to a small camp at Catton, which is near Allendale to work for a Mr.
Blair.
In the fall of 1946 Mr. Blair asked me to stay on his
farm. The British government was
allowing this. I agreed to stay and was
treated very well. In the spring of 1947
I developed an ear infection and was hospitalized in Hull, England. I was later sent, with a guard, to see a
specialist. The specialist asked when I
had had the previous surgery and I told him in Nov. 1943 by a surgeon named Dr.
Veitz. The specialist knew Dr. Veitz and
had studied with him in Prague before the war.
I asked him if I needed another operation and he said maybe in another
15 years, but not to worry, I would recommend that you be sent home.
On August 10th 1947 I was notified that I
was being sent home. The trip went from
Harwich to Rotterdam to Munsterlager to Lueneburg. On Sep 1st, 1947 in Lueneburg I
was reunited with my wife Hilda nearly three years after we got married. It was her birthday. What a lucky day that was!
