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

At about 1800 hours, having held out for two days with his weak battalion, Captain Bassompierre decided to try to carry out the order to rejoin the Division with the nine officers and 500 men remaining.

The order having been given, the seriously wounded were stripped of their military clothing and documents, and left in the care of the civilian German representative of the German Red Cross in Körlin. The less seriously wounded were mounted on horses, whose hooves had been wrapped in sacks to silence them, to try to move along with the column.

At about 1900 hours the vanguard under Second-Lieutenant Rigeade left the town to the east by the railway bridge under cover of a diversion on the other side of town, a barrage by all the heavy weapons to use up the last of their ammunition. Under cover of night, the battalion followed the Belgard railway line for about 4km and then slipped between the Russian lines into the woods. In fact, as a result of false information, Bassompierre believed Kolberg to have fallen, so had decided to go round Belgard by the east and south, aiming for Stettin. He marched in the middle of the column, the last troops leaving Körlin at 2200 hours. It was high time; armoured vehicles were arriving from Köslin.

There then followed a long series of marches, detours (often through woods), constant encounters with the enemy, about fifteen of them, individual acts of bravery, such as Warrant-Officer Robert saving the column trapped by Russian tanks by destroying two of them with Panzerfausts.

One night the battalion was obliged to cross a main road on which there was heavy enemy traffic in both directions. While crossing the road diagonally, the vanguard ran into a Russian guard-post. Then, risking all or nothing, instead of crossing by bounds, the battalion prepared to cross together by surprise. At the same moment a column of Russian assault tanks appeared. To avoid all being destroyed, the men suddenly opened up a violent fire. Within several minutes four tanks and a dozen trucks and other vehicles had been destroyed with Panzerfausts. Unaware of the relative weakness of their opponents, the surprised enemy fled in all directions. But the enemy reaction also cost dear; Captain Monneuse was killed and Lieutenant Dr Joubert disappeared.

Tired and hungry, the column had to abandon its wounded. One of them, a youngster of 18 and unmoveable, was finished off by his section leader. Anyone who leant against a tree fell asleep from fatigue, and anyone who fell asleep was lost.

During another fight with tanks coming out of a wood, the column was dispersed in the area north of Schievelbein. Captain Bassompierre and several survivors were captured by the Russians on 17 March.

After this dispersal, however, certain elements, guided mainly by the best NCOs of the old LVF, were able to reach the banks of the Oder, where they were captured by the enemy for lack of means to cross the river. This was the case with twenty men led by Company-Sergeant-Major Girard. Then on the night of 23/24 March, Battalion-Sergeant-Major Gobion, also ex-LVF, reached the Oder with ten men at the cost of much suffering. They tried to cross the river by the half-destroyed bridge at Wollin, found it and were fired upon, suffering three wounded, two of whom had to be abandoned. On the other bank the attention of German soldiers had been attracted by the firing. They signalled to the nine survivors and showed them where some pneumatic boats were hidden in a branch of the river, but they would have to swim to get them. One man tried but took cramp in the icy water and gave up. At dawn on the 24th, following an artillery duel from one side to the other, the Russians attacked and a group of Polish soldiers captured the nine of them in a potato store.

The vehicular column and the Divisional services that had been quartered at Gross Jestin, south of Kolberg, left at 0200 hours on 4 March with the Russian tanks on their heels, but had been able to reassemble later that morning at Treptow an der Rega. There a lone Russian soldier, who had been able to run behind the vehicles during the night and climb aboard and cause some damage, was knocked down by one of the drivers with his rifle. The column left Treptow at 0600 hours and reached the mouth of the Oder and tried to cross the river, but was unsuccessful. There were Russians swarming everywhere, and the column had another narrow escape at about 1000 hours.

Eventually the column reached the port of Swinemünde at 1100 hours on the 6th. There were about 200 men with Majors Katzian and Boudet-Gheusi, Captain Jotard, and SS-Lieutenants Meier and Weber.

Having bypassed Belgard during the night of 4/5 March, Lieutenant Fenet’s 1st Battalion headed south, southwest towards Denzin after avoiding the Standemin area, which was reported strongly occupied by the Russians. The column passed within sight of Boissin, then continued in a south, southwesterly direction.