European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Many people or many soldiers were heading back.

Higher units – Rommel and these were here, too.

That was in March. Around the beginning of April – the Rommel-army had pulled back quite a bit –

arouse this mood between us, too.

Our sergeant, a confirmed Nazi, said:

“Don’t you think it will be the way it was in 1918!

Whoever steps out of line here, will be bumped off at once.”

He tried to get control straight away.

We were in some barracks in Tunis.

There we had to guard the gates.

The ones who had been moved for disciplinary reasons were graded for that, and so we were there, as well.

In Kairouan the front came to a deadlock.

We thought: ‘Well, if the Americans come further, we will hand over the barracks.

We will be able to prevent an opposition somehow.’

But it came to nothing.

Afterwards we were appointed in the mountains.

Grenade launchers lie in ambush.

And we were positioned on a plateau, where the Americans could see and directly shoot us.

We were on a downright kamikaze mission.

If we had shot, we would have been bombarded – we wouldn’t have survived.