36. White Eagle
Over Silesian Border
Polish-German Frontier
0430, 29 August 1939
In one of a hundred Ju 52/3m transports commandeered from Lufthansa in execution of mobilization orders laid out in 1936, Wilhelm Volkmann droned toward Lodz. The pioneer battalion was the very tip of the spear aimed at Poland, on the very edge of 7. Fliegerdivision's airborne assault. In this first assault, the transports carried only parachutists; the following wave would land the remainder of the division in gliders.
In each transport, eighteen men sat facing each other in two rows along the walls aft of the bulkhead, knee-to-knee with their parachutes pressed back against the hull and their boots against the rattling, perforated steel deck. Against the forward bulkhead, next to the exit door just aft of the port wing, sat two men. One of these was a Luftwaffe cargo specialist, distinguishable as the only man in the cargo hold who had no helmet, just a crushed peaked cap with a set of headphones over it. The other was Wilhelm Volkmann, as white-knuckled and wide-eyed as the troops he led.
Between the two of them, a set of three bulbs told them where they were on the mission. The bulbs were red, yellow, and green, with the red lamp currently lit. As Wilhelm glanced over at Bechtel, tense and gripping his knees, and Fitzgerald, singing something, probably off-tune if he could just have heard it over the three droning BMW radials, the red lamp flickered and died and the yellow lamp lit. Wilhelm stood, holding up both hands, fingers splayed. "TEN MINUTES!" he bellowed. He held up his own static line, a long stream of yellow cord attached to a steel hook, which he snapped on to a cable running the length of the Annie's centerline. "GET READY!" Moments passed, then he continued the commands: "STARBOARD PERSONNEL STAND UP! PORT PERSONNEL STAND UP!" As he pointed at each file, they stood, the two files interweaving to form a single chest-to-parachute caterpillar from the door aft.
Wilhelm formed his hand into a hook, the yellow bulb backlighting it. "HOOK UP!" he yelled, and eighteen hooks snapped onto the central line. "CHECK STATIC LINES!" Each trooper ran their hand along the perceptible length of their static lines, to where they vanished into the deployment bags containing their parachutes. Once this was done, an eerie stillness filled the Annie's cabin, no one moving further than they had to, right hands upraised at the base of the snap hooks for their static lines, left hands on the butt of the submachine gun slung at their side. The three BMWs droned around them, drowning out everything but their thoughts, and Wilhelm continued the litany. "CHECK EQUIPMENT!" Each man patted down the man in front of him, ensuring that everything was properly secured, and Wilhelm himself was checked by the soft-capped loadmaster.
"SOUND OFF FOR EQUIPMENT CHECK!" Each trooper slapped the backside of the man in front of him, bellowing "OKAY!" over the engines and the wind whipping in through the missing door. Bechtel leaned forward, thumb and forefinger forming a circle. "ALL OKAY, SIR!" Wilhelm nodded and turned to the loadmaster, holding out his static line. "SAFETY CONTROL MY LINE!" he bellowed, and the loadmaster took the line while Wilhelm leaned forward, hands on the door frame. He stuck his head out, looking aft to make sure no other transports were in their slipstream. He also glanced down - a mistake, as the ground slid away dizzyingly below them, the moon glinting off some nameless stream. The Annie dipped into a shallow dive, going from four hundred meters to a little over a hundred, and Wilhelm pulled himself back.
Minutes passed in tense silence, the entire cargo hold static, holding in place until the Annie crossed the release point and the light went green. Wilhelm's bladder felt ready to burst. When it lit, he held up one finger, roaring, "ONE MINUTE!" Moments later, he added, "THIRTY SECONDS!" He again advanced to the door, facing aft of the wing with his right foot trailing, hands on the door frame. Wilhelm took a deep, slow breath, and counted to ten seconds. He took one last, long glance back into the cargo hold, taking the static line back from the loadmaster, and yelled "STANDBY!" at Bechtel, who nodded. The moment rapidly approached, and when he had counted out thirty seconds from positioning himself, he looked out the door, letting out all of his air in one massive bellow: "HUTIER!"
He thrust off hard with his trailing leg, hurling himself into the void and bringing his legs together, body forming a shallow vee with his limbs pressed tightly in. One... two... three... He felt a hard snap and looked up, first confirming that another jumper was out the door, second that his canopy had spilled from the deployment bag, filling the night sky with a shroud of silk, black against the stars. The single-riser design meant that at this point, he was nothing but a passenger, dropping toward the ground, so he looked down instead, trying to estimate his distance. He spent less than ten seconds in the air, coming down with his feet pointed and springing forward in an acrobatic roll. The butt of the submachine gun, stock folded away, jabbed into his side painfully, but other than that, his landing was complete, and he reached up to yank at the quick-release at his shoulder before the parachute could drag him. In ten seconds, he had transformed from a passenger on the disappearing Annie - he strained futilely to see his aircraft as the armada droned over - to a fighting soldier on the ground. He forgot harness and parachute for the moment; they could be recovered in the morning if there was a morning. Instead, he focused on gathering his men. At such a low drop, there was virtually no scatter; an athlete like that American Owens fellow could cover the entire length of their stick's drop in under ten seconds.
Around him, other platoon leaders did the same, scanning the faces around them to see who was missing. A handful of men were beaten to death against the corrugated skins of the Annies as they flew away, their static lines not releasing. A handful were betrayed by their parachutes, cigarette-rolling and ending their lives feet-first in the space between the hangars and the baked-earth runway. A few more, unnerved by the fact that this was their first jump into war, had missed their static lines completely, and with no reserve, had merely leapt from the airplane with no chance of landing. Far more casualties were caused by the ambitious, acrobatic landing required by the single-riser parachute and poor steering control, but these were not fatal.
In theory, the assault had three objectives: the hangars, the terminal, and the control tower, each assigned to one company of the engineer battalion. In reality, the truth was that no landing ever went quite as planned, and in addition to his stick, Wilhelm found himself heading half a platoon from the company tasked with the control tower. His goal was the terminal building, and they jogged toward it, half armed with submachine guns, half with nothing heavier than knives and pistols. The other stick was led by an Unteroffizier Schlage, much more phlegmatic than anyone else who had made the drop.
They jogged quickly, quietly toward the terminal building, expecting no resistance and meeting none. The brief before the jump had indicated that, at most, they would face airport security and local police, nothing more. Every one of them knew that mobilization orders had been sent out by the Poles, and knew that Lodz was one of the mobilization centers... so moving quickly today would be the difference between success and failure. At the terminal building, Wilhelm charged Bechtel and his squad with effecting a breach, expecting the worst in front of the broad, open plate-glass facade. Instead, they found a sturdy padlock on the door, a problem fixed by Fitzgerald's massive boot, bursting the lock and throwing the door open. The only resistance inside was a doddering old night watchman, whose pants went dark and wet upon seeing the dark-suited, helmeted figures burst through the door.
The makeshift platoon fanned out, securing the otherwise empty building and establishing a makeshift perimeter. Over time, members of Volkmann's company converged, the section from the hangar company dispersed to the hangars, and a clear picture of the jump emerged. The first wave had been utterly successful: Lodz airport was in German hands within ten minutes of the first green light. The second wave began arriving just after sunrise, the big DFS 230 gliders fluttering in along the cleared runway. A company was detailed with clearing them off the runway as quickly as possible; after the first rifle regiment's worth of reinforcements had arrived, the runways suddenly became a hub of activity as the Junkers transports began landing to disgorge their payload rather than bring the gliders. Each transport carried nearly twice as many men as each glider, and Breslau was almost literally a stone's throw away.
As quickly as reinforcements arrived, they speared northeast towards the Lodz city center. As usual, the engineers led the way, lightly burdened by ammunition, grenades, canteens, small arms, and knives - the heaviest weapon they carried was an MG34 per squad, no flamethrowers having arrived yet. A three-kilometer jog along the access road brought them to the first signs of civilization, and the first confused resistance, farmers without uniforms but armed with fowling guns and Nagant rifles left behind by the Russians in the War. They were quickly swept aside, but they held the German advance by five minutes.
Wilhelm's platoon finally reached what could be called the city's edge proper, and could hear the sound of trumpets in the city center over the sound of the city waking up. They immediately broke into a shop front, setting up behind cover in a butcher shop; Wilhelm grunted at the hopefully ironic omen. "All right, here's the plan. We'll leapfrog forward by squads. Bechtel," he snapped, "take your squad, go up the street no further than the next corner, let us know if it's clear. Move in file, and when you're there, send back a runner. If we don't hear in ten minutes, we'll assume you're dead, and we'll advance as a platoon to investigate. Got it?" Bechtel gulped, nodding. Wilhelm found himself wishing for the more serene Schlage.
Minutes later, a runner came back, slightly winded. "Couple of people moving around up the street, but we can move up, sir," he reported, and Wilhelm's platoon again took point as the company came in behind. They finally made contact with the confused reservists in the city center, in the Old Market. Fighting broke out, and the Poles resisted bravely enough, tipping carts and making whatever cover they could. Their cadre were provided by a mix of veterans of the Austrian, German, and Russian armies in the War, fighting using methods thirty years out of date. They never truly stood a chance against the doctrines pioneered by Hutier, preached by Calsow, and perfected by Student. Wilhelm Volkmann was a prime example of these doctrines, scurrying from squad to squad, trying always to stay with the squad on the move as the others poured close-range fire on the Poles. His platoon flowed along one side of the market square, creating breaches between buildings without bothering with the door and creating a rats' nest of makeshift fortifications along the west edge. The rest of the company mirrored his actions, first along the south edge, then in a thrust across the center of the square. By noon, the heart of Lodz was in German hands, and the black-and-white Reichskriegsflagge flew over the Poznanski palace, where Student established his headquarters.
The parachutists had taken a total of two hundred and thirty-five casualties in the day's fighting; of these, one hundred and eighty seven were fatal, and of the fatalities, one hundred thirty were sustained during the jump itself. They held in place, replacing counterattacks through the city by stiffening resistance, for three days, until the roar of Maybach diesels signaled the end of the battle of Lodz. The Panzers had arrived.
They crossed over the border the hour before dawn
Moving in lines through the day
Most of our planes were destroyed on the ground where they lay
Waiting for orders we held in the wood - word from the front never came
By evening the sound of the gunfire was miles away
Moving in lines through the day
Most of our planes were destroyed on the ground where they lay
Waiting for orders we held in the wood - word from the front never came
By evening the sound of the gunfire was miles away
- Al Stewart, "Roads to Moscow"
Polish-German Frontier
0430, 29 August 1939
In one of a hundred Ju 52/3m transports commandeered from Lufthansa in execution of mobilization orders laid out in 1936, Wilhelm Volkmann droned toward Lodz. The pioneer battalion was the very tip of the spear aimed at Poland, on the very edge of 7. Fliegerdivision's airborne assault. In this first assault, the transports carried only parachutists; the following wave would land the remainder of the division in gliders.
In each transport, eighteen men sat facing each other in two rows along the walls aft of the bulkhead, knee-to-knee with their parachutes pressed back against the hull and their boots against the rattling, perforated steel deck. Against the forward bulkhead, next to the exit door just aft of the port wing, sat two men. One of these was a Luftwaffe cargo specialist, distinguishable as the only man in the cargo hold who had no helmet, just a crushed peaked cap with a set of headphones over it. The other was Wilhelm Volkmann, as white-knuckled and wide-eyed as the troops he led.
Between the two of them, a set of three bulbs told them where they were on the mission. The bulbs were red, yellow, and green, with the red lamp currently lit. As Wilhelm glanced over at Bechtel, tense and gripping his knees, and Fitzgerald, singing something, probably off-tune if he could just have heard it over the three droning BMW radials, the red lamp flickered and died and the yellow lamp lit. Wilhelm stood, holding up both hands, fingers splayed. "TEN MINUTES!" he bellowed. He held up his own static line, a long stream of yellow cord attached to a steel hook, which he snapped on to a cable running the length of the Annie's centerline. "GET READY!" Moments passed, then he continued the commands: "STARBOARD PERSONNEL STAND UP! PORT PERSONNEL STAND UP!" As he pointed at each file, they stood, the two files interweaving to form a single chest-to-parachute caterpillar from the door aft.
Wilhelm formed his hand into a hook, the yellow bulb backlighting it. "HOOK UP!" he yelled, and eighteen hooks snapped onto the central line. "CHECK STATIC LINES!" Each trooper ran their hand along the perceptible length of their static lines, to where they vanished into the deployment bags containing their parachutes. Once this was done, an eerie stillness filled the Annie's cabin, no one moving further than they had to, right hands upraised at the base of the snap hooks for their static lines, left hands on the butt of the submachine gun slung at their side. The three BMWs droned around them, drowning out everything but their thoughts, and Wilhelm continued the litany. "CHECK EQUIPMENT!" Each man patted down the man in front of him, ensuring that everything was properly secured, and Wilhelm himself was checked by the soft-capped loadmaster.
"SOUND OFF FOR EQUIPMENT CHECK!" Each trooper slapped the backside of the man in front of him, bellowing "OKAY!" over the engines and the wind whipping in through the missing door. Bechtel leaned forward, thumb and forefinger forming a circle. "ALL OKAY, SIR!" Wilhelm nodded and turned to the loadmaster, holding out his static line. "SAFETY CONTROL MY LINE!" he bellowed, and the loadmaster took the line while Wilhelm leaned forward, hands on the door frame. He stuck his head out, looking aft to make sure no other transports were in their slipstream. He also glanced down - a mistake, as the ground slid away dizzyingly below them, the moon glinting off some nameless stream. The Annie dipped into a shallow dive, going from four hundred meters to a little over a hundred, and Wilhelm pulled himself back.
Minutes passed in tense silence, the entire cargo hold static, holding in place until the Annie crossed the release point and the light went green. Wilhelm's bladder felt ready to burst. When it lit, he held up one finger, roaring, "ONE MINUTE!" Moments later, he added, "THIRTY SECONDS!" He again advanced to the door, facing aft of the wing with his right foot trailing, hands on the door frame. Wilhelm took a deep, slow breath, and counted to ten seconds. He took one last, long glance back into the cargo hold, taking the static line back from the loadmaster, and yelled "STANDBY!" at Bechtel, who nodded. The moment rapidly approached, and when he had counted out thirty seconds from positioning himself, he looked out the door, letting out all of his air in one massive bellow: "HUTIER!"
He thrust off hard with his trailing leg, hurling himself into the void and bringing his legs together, body forming a shallow vee with his limbs pressed tightly in. One... two... three... He felt a hard snap and looked up, first confirming that another jumper was out the door, second that his canopy had spilled from the deployment bag, filling the night sky with a shroud of silk, black against the stars. The single-riser design meant that at this point, he was nothing but a passenger, dropping toward the ground, so he looked down instead, trying to estimate his distance. He spent less than ten seconds in the air, coming down with his feet pointed and springing forward in an acrobatic roll. The butt of the submachine gun, stock folded away, jabbed into his side painfully, but other than that, his landing was complete, and he reached up to yank at the quick-release at his shoulder before the parachute could drag him. In ten seconds, he had transformed from a passenger on the disappearing Annie - he strained futilely to see his aircraft as the armada droned over - to a fighting soldier on the ground. He forgot harness and parachute for the moment; they could be recovered in the morning if there was a morning. Instead, he focused on gathering his men. At such a low drop, there was virtually no scatter; an athlete like that American Owens fellow could cover the entire length of their stick's drop in under ten seconds.
Around him, other platoon leaders did the same, scanning the faces around them to see who was missing. A handful of men were beaten to death against the corrugated skins of the Annies as they flew away, their static lines not releasing. A handful were betrayed by their parachutes, cigarette-rolling and ending their lives feet-first in the space between the hangars and the baked-earth runway. A few more, unnerved by the fact that this was their first jump into war, had missed their static lines completely, and with no reserve, had merely leapt from the airplane with no chance of landing. Far more casualties were caused by the ambitious, acrobatic landing required by the single-riser parachute and poor steering control, but these were not fatal.
In theory, the assault had three objectives: the hangars, the terminal, and the control tower, each assigned to one company of the engineer battalion. In reality, the truth was that no landing ever went quite as planned, and in addition to his stick, Wilhelm found himself heading half a platoon from the company tasked with the control tower. His goal was the terminal building, and they jogged toward it, half armed with submachine guns, half with nothing heavier than knives and pistols. The other stick was led by an Unteroffizier Schlage, much more phlegmatic than anyone else who had made the drop.
They jogged quickly, quietly toward the terminal building, expecting no resistance and meeting none. The brief before the jump had indicated that, at most, they would face airport security and local police, nothing more. Every one of them knew that mobilization orders had been sent out by the Poles, and knew that Lodz was one of the mobilization centers... so moving quickly today would be the difference between success and failure. At the terminal building, Wilhelm charged Bechtel and his squad with effecting a breach, expecting the worst in front of the broad, open plate-glass facade. Instead, they found a sturdy padlock on the door, a problem fixed by Fitzgerald's massive boot, bursting the lock and throwing the door open. The only resistance inside was a doddering old night watchman, whose pants went dark and wet upon seeing the dark-suited, helmeted figures burst through the door.
The makeshift platoon fanned out, securing the otherwise empty building and establishing a makeshift perimeter. Over time, members of Volkmann's company converged, the section from the hangar company dispersed to the hangars, and a clear picture of the jump emerged. The first wave had been utterly successful: Lodz airport was in German hands within ten minutes of the first green light. The second wave began arriving just after sunrise, the big DFS 230 gliders fluttering in along the cleared runway. A company was detailed with clearing them off the runway as quickly as possible; after the first rifle regiment's worth of reinforcements had arrived, the runways suddenly became a hub of activity as the Junkers transports began landing to disgorge their payload rather than bring the gliders. Each transport carried nearly twice as many men as each glider, and Breslau was almost literally a stone's throw away.
As quickly as reinforcements arrived, they speared northeast towards the Lodz city center. As usual, the engineers led the way, lightly burdened by ammunition, grenades, canteens, small arms, and knives - the heaviest weapon they carried was an MG34 per squad, no flamethrowers having arrived yet. A three-kilometer jog along the access road brought them to the first signs of civilization, and the first confused resistance, farmers without uniforms but armed with fowling guns and Nagant rifles left behind by the Russians in the War. They were quickly swept aside, but they held the German advance by five minutes.
Wilhelm's platoon finally reached what could be called the city's edge proper, and could hear the sound of trumpets in the city center over the sound of the city waking up. They immediately broke into a shop front, setting up behind cover in a butcher shop; Wilhelm grunted at the hopefully ironic omen. "All right, here's the plan. We'll leapfrog forward by squads. Bechtel," he snapped, "take your squad, go up the street no further than the next corner, let us know if it's clear. Move in file, and when you're there, send back a runner. If we don't hear in ten minutes, we'll assume you're dead, and we'll advance as a platoon to investigate. Got it?" Bechtel gulped, nodding. Wilhelm found himself wishing for the more serene Schlage.
Minutes later, a runner came back, slightly winded. "Couple of people moving around up the street, but we can move up, sir," he reported, and Wilhelm's platoon again took point as the company came in behind. They finally made contact with the confused reservists in the city center, in the Old Market. Fighting broke out, and the Poles resisted bravely enough, tipping carts and making whatever cover they could. Their cadre were provided by a mix of veterans of the Austrian, German, and Russian armies in the War, fighting using methods thirty years out of date. They never truly stood a chance against the doctrines pioneered by Hutier, preached by Calsow, and perfected by Student. Wilhelm Volkmann was a prime example of these doctrines, scurrying from squad to squad, trying always to stay with the squad on the move as the others poured close-range fire on the Poles. His platoon flowed along one side of the market square, creating breaches between buildings without bothering with the door and creating a rats' nest of makeshift fortifications along the west edge. The rest of the company mirrored his actions, first along the south edge, then in a thrust across the center of the square. By noon, the heart of Lodz was in German hands, and the black-and-white Reichskriegsflagge flew over the Poznanski palace, where Student established his headquarters.
The parachutists had taken a total of two hundred and thirty-five casualties in the day's fighting; of these, one hundred and eighty seven were fatal, and of the fatalities, one hundred thirty were sustained during the jump itself. They held in place, replacing counterattacks through the city by stiffening resistance, for three days, until the roar of Maybach diesels signaled the end of the battle of Lodz. The Panzers had arrived.
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