AT JEVER, IN northern Germany, German fighter pilots of I/JG1 were existing in much the same way as those of RAF Fighter Command had done back in 1940. On 26 February, Heinz Knoke and his fellow pilots in his Staffel were all sitting near their waiting Messerschmitts, ready to fly at a moment’s notice and, wrapped in blankets, enjoying the warmth of the early spring sunshine. It was a fine day with a clear blue sky. Nearby, they had rigged up two speakers to a radio at the Staffel dispersal and were, rather illegally, listening the BBC’s music programmes. Knoke was lying back idly squinting at the sky when the music stopped and the BBC announcer started speaking his usual ‘drivel’.
‘Shut your mouth, man,’ one of the pilots said, ‘and get on with the music!’1
Moments later, the radio was interrupted: ‘Attention, all! Attention all! Leutnant Knoke is wanted on the telephone!’
Knoke hurried off. It was the 2. Jagdfliegerdivision on the line. A large enemy formation had been picked up in the map area Dora-Dora; it was now 10.50 a.m. and Knoke’s Staffel was put on standby. Five minutes later they were scrambled. Knoke hurried to his Messerschmitt, clambered in, fired up the plane, closed the canopy enclosing him in the cockpit and then he was off, along with eleven of his squadron, and climbing up to intercept.
‘Elbe-One calling Bodo,’ he said over the radio to the ground controller. ‘Elbe-One calling Bodo. Report Victor.’
‘Bodo calling Elbe-One,’ came the swift reply. ‘Bodo calling Elbe-One. Victor, Victor.’
They climbed to 25,000 feet, Knoke receiving repeated updates, then turned north, leaving vapour trails across the clear sky. Then Knoke spotted the enemy. ‘It is an impressive sight,’ he jotted later in his diary. ‘Some three hundred heavy bombers are grouped together, like a great bunch of grapes shimmering in the sky.’
Knoke checked his guns and adjusted his reflector gun sight as they drew close towards the bombers. Now he could see them more clearly: Liberators, not Fortresses. He thought their fat bellies looked pregnant with bombs. Picking out one, Knoke muttered to himself, ‘This is where I settle your hash, my friend.’
He manoeuvred for a frontal attack, the big bomber rapidly growing in size. Knoke’s thumb hovered over the gun buttons as tracer began arcing towards him. He pressed the buttons, the Messerschmitt juddering with the recoil, but his aim was poor – only a few hits on the right wing – and an instant later he was whizzing past so close he thought he would almost scrape the underside of the bomber, only to be jolted violently as he was caught in the slipstream. More tracer followed him as he sped on and circled for a second attack. Head-on again, but this time from a little below. Gun buttons, and now machine guns and cannons, pumped bullets and shells towards the bomber and this time he saw he’d hit his mark. Swerving at the last moment to avoid collision, he banked and looked back to see the Liberator sheer away from the rest of the formation.
Twice more he attacked, this time diving from above the tail. Tracer continued to stab towards him but, with his fifty-five seconds of ammunition, Knoke was not spent yet and saw his cannons rake the top of the fuselage and starboard wing. Fire now erupted, spreading along the bomber’s wing, which then broke off altogether, leaving the Liberator to plunge, spinning, almost vertically, a thick trail of black smoke following behind. Knoke saw one of the crew jump, but his parachute was on fire. ‘Poor devil!’ thought Knoke as the body somersaulted and fell earthwards.
Knoke now followed his victim down and watched it crash on farmland near the airfield of Anton-Quelle. A farmhouse was on fire too and so, on an impulse, he decided to land. Jumping out, he ran over to help with the rescue work, bringing out furniture, animals and machinery from the burning barns, and even a squealing pig. Both the house and the barn were saved. Blackened and choking from the smoke, he now wandered around the field, looking at the scattered remains of the Liberator. Bodies – and bits of bodies – of the crew lay strewn beside the still-smoking wreckage. A hundred yards from the main part of the wreck, he found a pilot’s seat and a small undamaged doll, presumably a mascot.
Amazed by what he had done and seen, he then clambered back into his Me109, took off and an hour later was back at Jever. It had been his fourth victory on his 164th operational mission and 1,004th flight. Between them they had shot down five bombers for no losses of their own; a good day’s work for his Staffel. Later, though, as he wrote up his diary, Knoke felt more reflective. ‘I cannot help thinking about the bodies of the American crew,’ he wrote. ‘When will our turn come? Those men share in common with ourselves the great adventure of flying. Separated for the moment by the barrier of war, we shall one day be reunited by death in air.’
Brigadier-General Larry Kuter warmed to General Alexander immediately and was delighted to discover the new Army Group commander not only recognized the importance of air power but also fully supported the tactical doctrine outlined by Coningham. As if to underline the point, Alexander insisted on having his Tactical Headquarters right beside that of the newly named North African Tactical Air Force (NATAF), initially at Constantine, but soon to be relocated to an encampment among olive trees in hills 50 miles further south at Aïn Beïda. At the centre of the encampment was a large khaki marquee, which was the Operations Centre, dominated by a large map table. This marquee, noted Kuter, ‘was the heart of ground-air co-operation and collaboration.’2 There would be no more bunkers, no more disconnect and no more doubt about the common purpose. Here, in pleasant and convivial surroundings, the new Allied leadership could get on with winning in North Africa.
Coningham arrived soon after Alexander and brought with him his old friend and sidekick Tommy Elmhirst, back from London and now NATAF’s chief of administration. Coningham immediately wrote out an order insisting there were to be no more defensive umbrellas, then told his new team they were to take over command of all forward air bases, both British and American, fuse them, reorganize them and get command of the air over Tunisia. Then they would help the soldiers to run the Germans out of Africa before May. His tone was louder and more overtly bullish than that of Alexander, but had much the same effect. From the moment of his arrival, there was no more doubt, about either who was in charge or the clarity of vision. Or, for that matter, the outcome.
The two HQs began messing together. Despite the setback at Kasserine, both Alexander and Coningham exuded confidence and good cheer to all. Alexander told Tommy Elmhirst that whenever he took on a new job it was always in the middle of a retreat. ‘He was quite imperturbable,’ wrote Elmhirst, ‘and a very pleasant and cheerful mess mate – more than I could ever say of Monty.’3
There were now ‘morning prayers’ each day at which the senior NATAF staff would meet and talk through anything that needed discussing. In the evening, before supper with Alexander and his staff, they would all have a drink in Coningham’s caravan. This way, everyone was kept up to speed and at the same time forged a strong sense of teamwork and even friendship. Kuter thought this was the perfect set-up. Meanwhile, Elmhirst got down to licking NATAF into shape with the same vigour he had devoted to the Desert Air Force. The administrative side of NATAF was in a hopeless mess. ‘The only thing really first-class,’ he wrote, ‘was the fighting spirit of both British and American aircrews.4 All they needed was to be organised and directed.’
By working flat-out, within two weeks the squadrons had been moved into wings, a day-bomber group had been formed, new airfields had either been built or were under construction, ancillary units had been moved forward to where they would be of most use to the fighting units, lines of supply had been straightened, fuel and ammunition dumps had been established, and spares had been brought up from Algiers. He also discovered that American flying efficiency had been held back by a shortage of lorries, meaning that supplies were not coming forward quickly enough. Soon after, Elmhirst managed to collar General Bedell Smith about the matter. The American squadrons got their lorries within a week. On another occasion, Coningham was at Thelepte talking to one of the senior American officers there. It was cold and damp and the American apologized for not being able to offer his guests a drink. On his return, Coningham sent him a bottle of rum. ‘Thereafter,’ noted Elmhirst, ‘our friendship and co-operation prospered exceedingly.’5
Before Alexander had completed his reorganizations, von Arnim surprised the British in the north by launching a renewed thrust on 26 February, codenamed Operation OCHSENKOPF – a three-pronged attack that roughly followed the same axes along which the first fighting had taken place back in November. Von Arnim had been given permission for this attack from Kesselring, but had not consulted his new Army Group commander, so demonstrating the contempt in which he held Rommel. Thus, while the Allied command was beginning to gel with a shared fellowship and common purpose, the Axis command was continuing to splinter.
Along the Béja road, the newly arrived British troops, including 17-pounder-equipped artillery, held the panzers at Hunt’s Gap for an entire day; by nightfall, they had been overrun with appalling losses, but three German panzer battalions had been so badly knocked, they were forced to delay their further advance by forty-eight hours, by which time First Army had been able to bring up reinforcements.
Further south, the second German thrust had been sent towards Medjez and Bou Arada, but had also been held and then forced back. Von Arnim, however, had not given up yet and on 28 February his forces again attacked towards Béja through the railway stop at Sidi Nsir. This time, the battle lasted ten days, but the Germans could still not force a way through, despite bringing to bear a number of the new and giant Tiger tanks. The British had learned that when stout-hearted infantry occupied properly dug-in positions and were supported by plenty of well-trained artillery, it was very difficult for the enemy to break them. Artillery – that is, concentrated fire-power – was becoming the key ingredient in the evolving British Army’s way of war.
Meanwhile, in the Battle of the Atlantic, the Allies had had two much-improved months. The mass of U-boats had managed to sink only 44 ships and 307,196 tons in January, and 67 ships and 362,081 tons in February. That was obviously still a lot, but it wasn’t the horrific levels of the previous autumn. What’s more, the decisions taken at Casablanca were starting to kick in. The number of VLR Liberators in RAF Coastal Command had been doubled, and also now operating from the UK was the American 25th Anti-Submarine Wing. While the latter focused on ASW operations in the Bay of Biscay, the VLRs were now able to push all their efforts on to mid-ocean operations. Even better, the Americans came equipped with new, superb 10cm-wavelength radar, which not only offered the kind of range and clarity that had been unthinkable just a year or two earlier, but which was also undetectable by the German Metox. Admiral Max Horton now had more destroyers from the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet, while the rested and retrained Canadians were ready to rejoin the mid-ocean from the middle of the month. At last, the Canadians had new destroyers, frigates and much-improved ASW equipment. What’s more, Horton was now bringing in what he called ‘Support Groups’ – fast, well-equipped destroyers whose task was not to protect convoys but rather hunt down U-boats. ‘I feel strongly,’ wrote Horton, ‘that the solution of the German U-boat menace will be found only by the development of highly trained Support Groups working in co-operation with an adequate number of very long-range aircraft.’6 The Admiralty agreed to provide five such Support Groups for the Atlantic.
That month, a joint Anglo-US-Canadian Convoy Conference was held in Washington, where it was agreed that the US Navy would from now on withdraw from escort duties in Atlantic convoys, allowing more American warships to sail for the Pacific, although they would still operate in their coastal waters. A new Canadian Northwest Atlantic Command was created under Admiral Leonard Murray in Halifax, which left Admiral Horton and his Western Approaches Command a free hand to run the mid-ocean battle on their own. There was also to be an increased cycle of convoys that would see the volume of Atlantic shipping double.
There was, however, one more downturn to overcome. For much of 1942, the code-breakers at Bletchley Park had been unable to crack German naval Enigma traffic, but then had come a break. Through January and February, they had been cracking U-boat signals within twenty-four hours, which was enough for Western Approaches Command to act upon them and steer convoys away from trouble. Unfortunately, by March the brief window had passed and once again cracking Enigma was taking too long to have a tactical effect. There were up to seventy U-boats operating mid-Atlantic, and with the help of B-Dienst they were achieving their highest interception rates of the war. Some forty U-boats were massed together to attack convoys HX229 and SC122 between 16 and 20 March. Never before had so many been brought together for the same operation. The mid-Atlantic was awash with flotsam and debris, as one merchant ship after another went down. In all, twenty-one merchantmen were sunk for the loss of just one U-boat. For both the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy, these two convoys, combined in an effort to make themselves stronger, were amongst the most horrific and harrowing losses of the war so far, while for the whole of March, the U-boats were responsible for a further 633,731 tons of Allied shipping.
Yet, while the escorts of HX229 and SC122 had been unable to cope, the truth was that the U-boats had been corralled into the mid-Atlantic gap. They had proved lethal enough when the combination of signals intelligence and air gap worked in their favour, but the moment it did not, then they would be caught like rats in a barrel; after all, there was nowhere else where they could operate effectively. However bad March 1943 might have appeared from the outside, the Allies were now poised to deliver what they hoped would be a fatal blow.
Back in Tunisia, while von Arnim had been striking in the north, Generale Messe had been preparing a spoiling attack on Eighth Army in the south. Now commanding the renamed Italian Panzer Army, he had decided to strike at Medenine, where Montgomery, at Alexander’s request, had sent forward 51st Highland and 7th Armoured Divisions. They had arrived and were in position by 5 March. Medenine lay around 25 miles south of the Mareth Line, and the movement of these two divisions forward had left Eighth Army ‘off balance’ and without the logistical support Montgomery would have liked. If ever there was a time to deal Eighth Army a painful blow, it was during the ten days these two divisions lay isolated at the front.
Messe’s new Chief of Staff was the newly promoted Generalmajor Fritz Bayerlein, who felt very keenly the loss of German control at the top; in fact, it was the first time the divisions of the Afrikakorps had fallen under the direct command of an Italian. From the outset, it was clear Bayerlein and Messe were never going to get along. ‘Generale Messe was an arrogant, stuck-up officer,’ wrote Bayerlein.7 ‘He did not know and did not understand how to lead troops.’ After listening to some of Messe’s lectures, which he thought revealed a complete lack of tactical nous and appreciation of how to use mobile panzer forces, Bayerlein decided the only hope for the Afrikakorps was if he ignored the proposed command structure and effectively took control of all German troops himself. ‘I took everything into my own hands,’ he noted.8 ‘I did this without him. I took the responsibility at my own risk.’
As far as Bayerlein was concerned, one of Messe’s biggest failings was his inability to act decisively and quickly, and this was certainly the case at Medenine. Unable to organize his forces swiftly enough, his attack did not go in until dawn on 6 March. By this time, most of XXX Corps had reached the front too, including the New Zealanders and 8th Armoured Brigade. Whatever vulnerability Eighth Army may have had had now gone.
Messe’s attack got nowhere, hit by a wall of concentrated artillery fire, as Adolf Lamm discovered. He had never experienced an artillery barrage like it. In his tank, they continued to fire back, but he had a feeling they were not hitting anything very much. Then suddenly, at around 7.30 a.m., a massive blow hit them and Lamm cried out as the heavy radio fell from its mountings on to his legs and the tank turned on its side. A brief stunned silence followed, then Oberleutnant Heinrich Schellhaas shouted, ‘Out!’ The others leaped out of the hatches while Lamm pulled his legs from underneath the radio, took hold of the hatch and, in agony, pulled himself up and out. As he tried to stand, his knees gave way and he tumbled and fell in front of the stricken panzer. ‘My fear overcame my pain,’ he wrote.9 ‘I tried to walk. The others pulled and pushed me. We had to get away from there!’ They managed to hole themselves up in a dried wadi as the thunderous sound of shelling continued all around them. Shrapnel hissed and fizzed in Lamm’s ears as he tried to claw away some soil and bury himself in the ground.
By nightfall, the Italian Panzer Army was in full retreat to the Mareth Line as the British pushed forward. Adolf Lamm and his fellows had managed to stagger back later, his bruised legs still painful but improving. ‘All attacks easily held,’ Montgomery signalled to Alexander, ‘and nowhere has enemy had any success.’10 His own tank losses had been nil. The Battle of Medenine had been a disaster for the Axis. ‘The cruellest blow,’ noted Rommel, ‘was the knowledge that we had been unable to interfere with Montgomery’s preparations.11 A great gloom settled over us all.’
The Sherwood Rangers had been held in reserve throughout the day-long battle, but the following day, 7 March, they broke leaguer and Major Stanley Christopherson sent out half his squadron to mop up. ‘They got one prisoner,’ jotted Christopherson in his diary, ‘who turned out to be a Pole but in appearance looked to be the usual blonde, well-made, thick-necked German.’12 When questioned later, the Pole confessed he had been forced to fight for the Germans but had given himself up on purpose so he could fight for the Allies against them instead. The recce party also came back with other prizes, including American bathing trunks, presumably only recently captured, as well as a notebook with detailed drawings of US equipment. Christopherson also put down his own opinions on the battle. The Axis, he thought, had not properly reconnoitred beforehand. ‘This only goes to prove once again,’ he wrote, ‘that the anti-tank gun will always beat the tank.’13
How right he was. Recently, the Sherwood Rangers had been out of the line, training hard with the new artillery assigned to the brigade. The previous summer, they had arrived at the front every bit as green and undertrained as the US 1st Armored had been. But battle experience, success and plenty of hard training were making them wise in the ways of modern warfare. The Sherwood Rangers, like much of the British Army in this third year of war, were evolving into a very effective force who now knew how to beat their enemy.
The bulk of the Italian Panzer Army now fell back behind the Mareth Line, where they were bombarded from the air and shelled by the British artillery. Giuseppe Santaniello was at regimental headquarters two days later, on 8 March, when another heavy bombardment was under way. The phone rang with the news that a dugout of No. 4 gun had received a direct hit, with one dead and five badly injured. A few minutes later, the updated news was three dead, then a little after five dead and one wounded. The lone survivor was brought to headquarters. ‘Lying prone on the stretcher is a pulp of meat and blood,’ scribbled Santaniello.14 ‘The shrapnel has struck his head, his torso, his legs, his feet. He’s moaning and his moans tear at the heart. “Leave me be, sir, let me die in peace … Mamma, Mamma, I shan’t see you again … It’s a horrible thing, sir, to die.”’ They stuffed field dressings on to him to try to staunch the flow, but it was no use. Finally, the seventh member of the crew and the only survivor was brought in with a splinter in his knee. He was crying. Another of the men hugged him. ‘He’s literally shell-shocked,’ noted Santaniello.
With the failure at Medenine, Rommel now consulted with his Army commanders. Whatever von Arnim’s and Rommel’s differences, they both agreed, as did Messe, that a bridgehead in the north was now their best option. Together, the two armies had amassed more than 350,000 men, and it clearly made sense to have them fighting side by side. This would mean the Italian Panzer Army falling back to Enfidaville, which, while it would hand the Allies some airfields, would also mean a substantial shortening of their supply lines; as it stood, they were only getting around 70,000 of the 120,000 tons of supplies a month they needed. With this agreed, Rommel signalled both the OKW and Commando Supremo his intention to withdraw the Italian Panzer Army into the Tunis bridgehead and so reduce the front from 400 miles to 100. That number of troops, with their combined armour and artillery, still supported by the Luftwaffe and with shortened supply lines, would be a truly formidable nut for the Allies to crack. Kesselring was not so keen on the idea, however; nor, needless to say, was Hitler. With this news, Rommel was close to utter despair once more and so decided it was time for him to return to Germany, to see the Führer in person and then to get his much-delayed medical care.
Learning of Rommel’s imminent departure, Major Hans von Luck, whose forces were now in reserve behind the Mareth Line, rang General Alfred Gause, the Chief of Staff, and asked whether he might see the Feldmarschall and say goodbye in person.
‘Of course,’ Gause told him, ‘he will be glad to see the commander of his favourite battalion.’15
Von Luck hurried to Rommel’s command post and found the Feldmarschall in his caravan, surrounded by maps. He hadn’t seen his chief for some weeks and was shocked at how ill and physically weak he looked. ‘May I,’ said von Luck, ‘in the name of each individual member of my battalion, say goodbye to you, till we meet again, sometime, somewhere. We’ll hold out here for as long as we can, always after the example you have given us.’
At this, Rommel looked up. There were tears in his eyes. ‘Rommel’s tears,’ wrote von Luck, ‘the tears of a great man now cast down, moved me as much as anything I saw in the war.’
On 9 March, Rommel left Africa for the last time. It would be left to von Arnim, as the new Army Group commander, to face the Allied forces. And he would be doing so with his armies still separated and with the Italians now waiting for Eighth Army behind the Mareth Line.
By the time Rommel left Africa, Alexander was satisfied his forces were now in much better fettle and almost ready to go back on the offensive. Anderson still commanded First Army, although he had remained in post by a hair’s breadth. Certainly, General Kenneth Anderson had not had an easy situation: dashed Allied hopes that had been beyond his control, a build-up of forces slower than anyone would have liked, and appalling winter weather. None the less, Alexander had not been impressed by Anderson’s handling of the situation and had realized that the First Army commander did not have the force of character to gel his troops together; he firmly believed it was vital that an Army commander created an atmosphere in which staff and subordinates all followed the chief’s clear and firm leadership. The right person to replace him, however, was not available. And so Anderson remained in post.
The same could not be said for the extraordinary Fredendall, although Eisenhower had taken longer to realize what a liability he was. Having never commanded in battle himself, the Supreme Commander was still very much feeling his way and, despite the talking-to from Marshall, had needed to hear it from several others before wielding the axe. ‘I’m sure you must have better men than that,’ Alexander had told him with typical understatement.16 Others were even more damning, not least Major-General Omar Bradley, who had just arrived in theatre. An old friend and colleague of Eisenhower’s, he had come at the Supreme Commander’s specific request.
‘What do you think of the command here?’ Eisenhower asked him.17
‘Pretty bad,’ Bradley replied.
‘Thanks, Brad,’ said Eisenhower. ‘You’ve confirmed what I thought.’
On 7 March, Fredendall was sent home and General Patton took over as the new commander of US II Corps.
On 13 March, Teddy Suhren became Gruppenführer and Chief of Staff of the 27th U-boat Flotilla in Gotenhafen under his good friend Erich Topp. Their task was to prepare crews for the front by practising convoy attacks on escorts and target ships – this was their last bit of training before being sent out into the Atlantic and elsewhere. Suhren was happy that this gave him the chance to head back out to sea, but each training course was just ten days long. Both he and Topp knew this was woefully short, particularly since it was painfully clear that neither the officers nor crews arriving at the 27th Flotilla were up to the job and were altogether too green. Both men agreed the training period should be at least two months. ‘It was obvious,’ noted Suhren, ‘how ill-prepared they were for it.’18 Having lots of U-boats now operating in the Atlantic was one thing, but whether the crews were both trained and skilled enough to take on the Allies’ renewed effort to smash them was quite another matter.
Not so very far from Gotenhafen was the Luftwaffe air base at Jever, home to JG1. Leutnant Heinz Knoke’s flight had been thinking of different ways of attacking the American daylight bombers now regularly flying over. His good friend Dieter Gerhard had suggested they try bombing them. Knoke had thought this an inspired idea and the two had talked late into one evening, discussing exactly how this might work. The Me109G was capable of carrying up to 500 lb, either as a single bomb or a rack of small anti-personnel bombs. What Gerhard had envisioned was this: they would fly over the dense American bomber formation, some 3,000 feet above them, then simply drop their pattern of bombs. Not all would hit, but they reckoned enough would and, what’s more, this would put them out of range of the Americans’ defensive fire, which, as they had already discovered, was not to be taken lightly.
At first Knoke’s group commander thought the idea a great joke, but Knoke convinced him the plan was a serious one and within a few days practice bombs had arrived, as well as a rogue target and a Ju88 to tow it. His pilots had embraced the idea enthusiastically and they all began practising hard. Knoke was delighted; he had high hopes for this novel approach.
Now, at just a little after 2 p.m. on Thursday, 18 March, they were suddenly scrambled without time to load up their Messerschmitts. As they clambered into their aircraft, Gerhard shouted across to Knoke that he was going to bag the American formation leader. Knoke laughed and asked him whether the Americans had started painting rank badges on their planes.
Climbing high, they soon spotted the formation, then dived down and into them. Knoke hit one with his first pass and saw it explode and disintegrate. For a moment, he was in danger of colliding with a falling engine and a spinning, flaming wing section, but he managed to fly clear in the nick of time. It was his fifth victory; he was now an official ace. Climbing back up to make another pass, he saw his friend flying right in the middle of the enemy formation and, after sending one Fortress down, lining up to fire at the formation leader. Knoke was horrified – tracer was pouring towards Gerhard from the guns of the surrounding Fortresses from every conceivable angle. His friend, he thought, must have gone completely insane. Knoke now dived down to help, firing indiscriminately, but then he saw Gerhard dive away, his plane leaving a long trail of smoke. Knoke dived down after him and watched him bail out and his parachute open, but as he flew past he saw his friend’s face contorted in pain. He landed in the sea and Knoke marked his location, radioed for help and circled overhead. Gerhard managed to clear himself of his parachute and get himself into his dinghy but, as far as Knoke could tell, he appeared to have been hit in the stomach and was now unconscious.
Knoke flew back to Jever, refuelled, then flew back out again but could no longer find him. The sea was a big place. Back to Jever, and the waiting game. Evening came, then night fell and finally the call came through. Dieter Gerhard had been found and picked up, but he was already dead.
The following day, Knoke went to the mortuary in Cuxhaven where Gerhard now lay, bearing a wreath. Looking down on his dead friend it seemed as though he were asleep, not gone for ever. Later, back at Jever, Knoke took out his diary. ‘Good night, Dieter,’ he scribbled.19 ‘You have earned your rest, after fighting and dying for our beloved German fatherland. You were my best friend: I shall never forget you. Alone now, I shall continue fighting in this great battle for Germany.’