English Translation

October 13, 1943 in the German East. Since the beautiful, short weeks of my vacation, I am now R I again, an advance observer of an M-S.I.6 company. It is 4,oo o'clock in the morning. I am currently on guard on my B position and time to follow my thoughts, as far as this is possible during the exerted observation in stock darker night. It is sensitively cold, and more sensitive than light rain from invisible grey has transformed the usual dust into murky clay. In such hours of solitude in Russian expanse one likes to quarrel with his fate. Here and there the silence is brought down by a shot. Where are the red or bundled signs of light, where the Soviets' every morning attempt to take our pre-spinning nose on the bridge head? For days we heard at this hour of the first dusk the convulsive hurray call of a storming heap of Asian Mongol tribes. Of these sub-humans no German, at least we men, can wait for grace. It is said to be particularly on guard. Massively, their shattered bodies lie before the HKL after the beaten-down attacks of the previous days and pollute the air. Yesterday, until nightfall, already at 4 o'clock, heavy cabs at the height of 193,5 were shot, on which we have built our bunkers for 10 days in rain, frost and storm beside comrades of heavy Ari and the grenade launcher. That means drum fire and big attack, we know the Ivan. Feverly, the bunkers were reinforced in the night, connecting ditches were drawn, a running pit was dug to the infantry's battle ground, like the moles we dig ourselves in the tough mud. Our uniforms, faces with full-beards gradually take on the camouflage color of the earth, so that we hardly recognize ourselves. For a very short time, we only need to gain strength for a new difficult day. Hours later. The expected drum fire suddenly bursts into an uncanny calmness, with lighter, heavier and heaviest Russian Ari, grenade launcher, Pak and armored cans. We too are shooting lock fire and shooting down. The radio fails through splinters, the wire is shot down, we no longer have any connection to the position of fire and have to stop shooting. A messageer sets out on the dangerous path of troubleshooting. Will our bunker endure? When will they attack? Can the comrades of the infantry, who have no bunkers, only holes in the ground, stand by the fire! Russian Pak is close to the opposite slope and shoots at every single head that rises out of the ditch.How many times in the last few days our full-shots have destroyed these guns. Time and again they bring new ones into position. Material, ammunition and humans still have the colossus, at least it brings them to unfold in the focal points in an enormous mass. Suddenly the artillery, the grenade platters and the pak shoots behind us. Now they have to come. Immediately we are out of the bunkers. A look to the left and right, also the others are out and see moments staring forward.From half-left and right brown figures jump shooting from funnel to trich- ter, they come closer and closer.