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~lHCK (on W(ISS ~ MfMmR Of ~OMBAT AND ~ONSClfNCf BY A~OlDlfR Of THf WAfHN-~~ JOH""" ~OSS To the soldiers ofmy regiment who were killed in action in Northern Karelia, in the Lower Vosges, andat the borders ofthe Reich 1 Romilly 1 2 The House by the Mountains 9 3 Brunswick 18 4 Choices 29 5 Revelations 42 6 Wild Geese 45 7 Jager Training 54 8 A Glimpse into an Abyss 62 9 In N 0-Man's Land 66 10 The 66th Parallel 72 MAP: Positions of Alaska, Scandinavia, and Karelia Relative to the Arctic Circle (66th Parallel N. Lat.) 73 MAP: Defensive Sector, 3d Battalion, SS-Mountain Infantry Regiment 11, 1942-44 74 MAP: 6th SS-Mountain Division Sector, January 1942-September 1944 76 11 St. Nicholas Day 81 12 Patrol on the North Flank 89 13 Combat Patrol 97 14 Summertime 112 15 Sennozero 116 MAP: Operations of 3d Battalion, SS-Mountain Infantry Regiment 11, vic. Lake Sennozero, July 1944 117 v Vt BLACK EDELWEISS MAP: Battle for Sennozero, June-July 1944 119 16 Imprisoned in Germany 131 17 Finland Quits 140 MAP: Operation BIRKE (BIRCH)-The German Withdrawal Through Finland, September-October 1944 141 18 From Tuhkalla to Kuusamo 145 19 Kittila 153 20 Muonio 159 MAP: Rear Guard and Breakthrough Operations vic. Muonio, November 1944 160 21 March Through the Polar Night 167 22 Interlude in Denmark 176 23 Reipertsweiler 180 MAP: Encirclement of Elements of the US 157th Infantry Regiment, 16-20 January 1945 184 24 Lampaden 194 25 The Condemned 201 Epilogue 204 This book was conceived and for the most part written a long time ago. I was then a prisoner of the US Army from March 1945 to December 1946. The idea of editing and publishing the manuscript had never crossed my mind in the following decades. The war and what followed were a closed chapter. The subject surfaced only when President Reagan and Chancellor Kohl vis ited the German military cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, in 1985. This visit raised worldwide protests, namely because some young Waffen-SS soldiers were buried there. Including these soldiers in the memorial ceremony was widely regarded as an outrageous affair. Since then the indiscriminate damna tion of Waffen-SS soldiers has become even more pervasive and intransigent. Apparently, in the sixty years since those soldiers fell in battle, the rubble, which the collapsing Reich heaped upon the course of their short lives, was not removed. The book is a personal account of my war years, first at school and then with the Waffen-SS, which I joined early in 1943 at the age ofseventeen. I saw combat with the 11 th Gebirgsjiiger (Mountain Infantry) Regiment for a year and a half, mainly in the far north and later at the western frontier of the Reich. For all the differences in theaters of war, troops, and personal back grounds, however, I think that this book is also about the volunteers of my age group in general; about their thinking and feeling; about their faith and their distress; and about their endeavors to live up to their ideals, even when hope was lost. My regiment was part of the 6th SS-Gebirgsdivision (Mountain Division) Nord, which fought from the summer of 1941 until September 1944 in the wilderness of the North Karelian front, near the Arctic Circle. The division belonged to the German 20th Gebirgsarmee (Mountain Army), which defend ed the northern half of the Finnish-German front, a line stretching some 900 miles from the Arctic Sea down to the Gulf of Finland. When Finland quit the war in September 1944 and the 20th Army had to leave the country, the Nord became the rear guard of the southern Corps and fought its way along the Finnish-Swedish border up to northern Norway. In the bitter cold and darkness of the Arctic winter, my regiment marched down the Norwegian coast until it reached the railway at Mo i Rana, ending a trek of some 1,000 miles. Rushed to Oslo by train, and after a few days rest in Denmark, we moved to the Western front, where the Nord participated in Operation NORDWIND in early January 1945, a bloody clash with the US Seventh Army in the snow-covered hills of the Lower Vosges. In the battles and the war of Xlll XIV BLACK EDELWEISS attrition that followed, the frontline units of the Nord were destroyed bit by bit. When the front reached the Rhine in March 1945, only remnants of the division remained. The rest was annihilated in the hills northeast of Frank furt on 3 April, just after Easter. I had no intention of writing military history, a field in which I am no expert. Instead, I have chronicled combat the way I saw it, from the per spective of an average soldier who, more often than not, lacked an overview of the general situation, but who was intimately familiar with life (and death) in the foxholes. What I wanted to do was to portray these young volunteers under arduous physical and mental conditions and to show how they reacted. Likewise, the characters of my story are real, to include those in my family as well as in my unit, but I have changed their names. They stand for a Euro pean youth who, at that time, saw themselves actively united in an effort to resolve a secular conflict between the Occident and Bolshevism. Since that time I have enjoyed a rich professional life as a corporate lawyer with various international ties. My desire to understand the historical, politi cal, and moral aspects ofWorld War II has always been there, however, result ing in my reading of a wealth of material and then grappling with its inherent drawbacks and inconsistencies. I chose not to follow the advice of some, to rewrite the prisoner's manuscript from the perspective of a man of my age. Such a balanced view of the past, based on so many decades of experience, traveling, and reading, in particular about the crimes committed behind the frontlines in the East, seemed inappropriate for the voices of those combat soldiers who did not live to mature and grow, but instead had to die young in their limited perception of the world. The same notion applies to those who survived and found themselves, at that age, indicted and convicted as mem bers of a criminal organization. My generation's task was to clear away the ruins of the war and to rebuild our country. As I said before, however, there is still much rubble left. If this book would uncover a small part of that long-hidden ground, I would have done my part for my comrades. -Johann Voss This book wouldn't have reached the first stage of publication without "Ducker's" scholarly help; he was the first to read the manuscript, conclud ing with the advice to cut the original text in half. Steve, my young friend in the US Army, Ranger and writer, proved himself a constant source of encour agement during the period the manuscript was floating in the doldrums. I deem myself lucky to have found at last Kit and his wife, Patti, as empathet ic publishers who not only were great editors but, by their relentless efforts, created from my text a real book. It was Wolf, my comrade of past days and my late friend, who brought us together; he wasn't to live to see this book nor his own-appear in print. Hugh, staunch Vietnam veteran, professional soldier, and friend, walked the Reipertsweiler battle ground with me, terrain he is so much more familiar with than I; together we could clarify important points. Tom Houlihan contributed the illuminating maps; working with him via e-mail was pure fun. I very much appreciate the gracious permission of Richard Warfield of Everett Books, Gaithersburg, Maryland, for use of his privately-owned photos. I am also indebted to the management at Munin Verlag for permission to use certain photos which originally appeared in Gebirgsjiiger im Bitd by Alfred Steurich. I am especially grateful to Ken Nieman of Brookfield, Wisconsin, for his very kind permission to use the photo which appears on the cover of this book. I also very much appreciate the contribution of Ron Wolin who allowed the image ofthe Edelweiss badge from his truly world-class collection to be so prominently displayed on the cover of this book. All of them I want to thank very much-not least Marit for her patience with which she endured the many hours I took from our joint time of retirement. xv A Guide to Tactical Unit Symbols Types of Units Sizes of Units American, Squad Finnish, German or Soviet Section Platoon ~ ~ Infantry Company/Batteryrrroop ~ ~ Mountain Infantry II Battalion/Squadron III Regiment rn rn Medical Brigade/Group/ X Combat Command "t" I Machine Gun Section rn I XX Division XXX Corps Example XXXX Army ~~:~~~~~~ Infantry 3 Dt<I11 XXXXX Army Group Regiment 11 XVi 1 ~OMlllY It has been raining for the last two weeks with only a few breaks. The bitu minous main road on the huge camp site is wet and shining. Inside our cage, the paths are sodden; large puddles are everywhere. Gusts of wind sweeping across the plains of Champagne make the canvas of our tents heave and jerk at their ropes. The few sunbeams during the day do not warm the heart; they shed a pale light on the rows of tents and the watchtowers that stand out sharply against the ragged sky.

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