The first thing to do was to get out of my parachute, which was developing a mind of its own and starting to drag me through the spiky grass. I managed this with my one good arm and then tried to conceal both it and myself in what little cover there was on the exposed beach. In my innocence–ignorance, if you like–I imagined that if only I could keep out of sight long enough, we would launch the promised counter-attack, drive the Tommys back into the water, and take the opportunity to rescue me at the same time.
But, instead of this wishful scenario, it wasn’t long before I saw through the grass two upturned soup bowls slowly approaching me–British helmets! Their wearers were advancing with extreme caution, prodding the sand ahead of them with thin sticks as they came. When they were about twenty metres away from me they raised their rifles and shouted: “Hands up!” In those days my English was non-existent, but their meaning was obvious. I still had my pride as a Luftwaffe officer, however, and didn’t want to subject myself to this indignity. So instead, and with some justification, I remained lying on the ground, my face screwed up in pain, and waved at them with my right arm.
They cottoned on at once. When they got to me they helped me to my feet; but not before first confiscating my silk parachute. Then they searched me for weapons. But in the west none of us wore side arms when flying on operations. Finally, they indicated that I was to accompany them. We were to walk in single file, with me in the middle, while they resumed their ceremonial prodding of the ground, explaining that we were in the middle of a German minefield.
“Bugger it,” I thought to myself, “after all that, and now you’re probably going to die a hero’s death blown up by one of our own mines.” But we got out safely and made our way to a small tent with a red cross painted on it. Here a medic gave me first aid by folding my left forearm against the upper arm and binding both tightly together with my shoulder. It made the pain much more bearable.
I must say those lads treated me very well. They got me a warm blanket–it was still rather chilly this early in the morning–and motioned for me to sit or lie down next to the tent. They gave me a mug of hot cocoa and offered me a cigarette, which I gratefully accepted. It must have been my nerves, for up until that time I had been a strict non-smoker. (I was to remain a slave to the weed from that 7 June 1944 until finally giving up the habit in 1962.)
As I lay there sipping my cocoa and smoking, I was able to watch the vast amounts of war matériel pouring ashore over the kilometre-long stretch of beach in front of me. Marshals were herding every vehicle on to some sort of artificial track that led from the beach up to the high ground immediately next to Ver-sur-Mer–and all this was going on without the slightest sign of any countermeasures from our side. The Tommys must have pushed quite a way inland already. Only once did a mine go up between the landing craft crowding the water’s edge, but it did no damage as far as I could tell.
In the afternoon I was taken to a small patch of open ground in the centre of Ver-sur-Mer, which was being used as a collecting point for the first German prisoners. About twenty were already there. I hadn’t seen a single local inhabitant as I walked through the ruined village, which had been badly knocked about by the pre-invasion bombardment. Two armed sentries were patrolling the low stone wall that enclosed the area of grass, no more than about thirty metres square, that we now occupied. A few tents had already been put up to offer us some protection from the cold of the night ahead. From this I deduced that our captors were not yet prepared, or able, to transport us back to England.
From our ‘prison camp’ in the village I could no longer see the beach itself, but the battleships lying further out to sea were still clearly visible. After darkness had fallen they provided an awe-inspiring and fascinating spectacle. Every few minutes one or other of them would fire a salvo from its enormous 40-cm guns. For a moment a vivid orange cloud would blossom out of the blackness and from it would emerge the glowing pinpricks of the shells as they climbed slowly–or so it appeared from this distance–high into the sky on their way inland…and still no evidence whatsoever of any counterattack, either by land, sea or air.
This, together with the fact that I had been separated from my comrades, the Staffel and the Geschwader, and was no longer able to help Germany in her present hour of need, filled me with a sense of deep depression. Naturally, my thoughts turned to my family back in Rosenheim, especially my mother and sister, whose letters to me would now be returned to them stamped ‘Fallen for Greater Germany’. But fortunately it was only a few weeks before they learned from information broadcast by the British authorities that I had survived and was in captivity only slightly wounded.