SS Charlemagne: The 33rd Waffen-Grenadier Division of the SS

Finally abandoning the idea of a frontal attack, the enemy then attempted an encircling movement to envelop Neustettin. The French were deployed on the hill outside and enjoyed a relative calm until about 1600 hours, while to the north and south of them the German battalions were in direct contact with the enemy. A territorial battalion was holding the station area in the northern sector, but was fighting without ardour, and the officers had to intervene forcibly several times to make their men hold out. They could not give ground, even though directly menaced and having a line of retreat. In the southern sector, a Russian tank attack succeeded in reaching the barricade on the road from Tempelburg and a furious fight broke out. The Germans knocked out two tanks and the attack was repelled with heavy losses among the Russian infantry. But at 1700 hours the enemy succeeded in taking the bridge across the railway and occupying the station, while in the southern sector their cavalry came round the lake bordering the town on which the defence was anchored. The encirclement had been completed in an hour!

Colonel Kropp, the town commandant, then decided to withdraw his units, starting with the battalion defending the station sector on the left wing, with the battalion on the right wing acting as a rearguard and withdrawing by echelons to the fortified Pommern Stellung line at Barwalde, 10km west of the town, where they would await the withdrawal of other German units to this new line of resistance.

Of this engagement, Lieutenant Auphan later reported:

As soon as the order was received, the battalion on the left retreated in disorder, while the battalion on the right, which was meant to act as the rearguard, did not even wait for the order and pulled out well before my battalion retired last into the town. The rally point was the command post of the German regiment, five kilometres from the town on the Bad Polzin road, where the German colonel was supposed to be expecting his units.

The German colonel had fled with his baggage, abandoning maps, papers and telephone. Soon afterwards the command post was hit by a volley of mortar bombs and bursts of machine-gun fire coming from the direction of the lake.

I therefore decided to follow the retreat to Bärwalde, but two sections sent ahead as scouts reported that the route was already cut by Russians occupying the first village. It was hardly possible to engage them, but the railway line appeared clear, so that was the route decided upon. Pursued by the enemy, the battalion passed through a barrage of missiles, splitting into two detachments, Fayard’s on a railway engine, and Auphan-Tardan’s, which continued on foot.

Both rejoined the Division at Körlin.

Lieutenant Tardan’s report on the same episode ran: